Here at the Daily Dot, we have an unofficial tradition of sharing GIF images with each other every morning. Now we’re looping you into the circle. In the Morning GIF, we feature a popular—or just plain cool—GIF we found on Reddit, Canvas, or elsewhere on the Internet.
In the world of Pokemon, there are few characters more useless than Paras. The crab-like animal is slow and weak, but at the Pokemon Battle Royale, it finally gets the chance to be the very best.
That’s because the Pokemon Battle Royale is a print art exhibition featuring 151 different pieces of Pokemon art created by 151 different artists. Each piece of art focuses on one of the original 151 Pokemon. One of these artists is Diego Garcia, 24, who is tasked with turning Paras into a stunning print.
“I think he’s more interesting in a lot of ways,” Garcia told the Daily Dot. “Who isn’t down with an insect crab with spore shooting fungus growing out of his back? I’m much more interested in Pokemon for their physical design than for their skills and abilities.”
Garcia got addicted to Pokemon in the sixth grade after he noticed that he was the only kid in class without a Nintendo Game Boy. Since then, the game has had a profound affect on his life, inspiring him to focus on animation at Drexel University where he taught himself to draw during math and physics lectures.
“I started doing the pixel stuff for fun after college when I was playing around with some game concepts I wanted to create, but I fell in love with the idea of capturing moments and likenesses within those constraints,” said Garcia who recently released the Ultimate Flirt-Off, a quirky 8-bit game where you try to schmooze a guy or girl using cheesy pick-up lines.
In preparation for the Pokemon Battle Royale on April 20, Garcia created the following Paras GIF as a test run.
“I was just trying to figure out if there’s a reasonable way to make the Pokemon my own without totally separating it from what it is,” Garcia said. “I did the Paras GIF without any planning and with no movement I don’t think it would be interesting enough for a print.”
While Garcia’s animated Paras will never make it to the exhibit, it has caught Tumblr’s attention. So far it has collected about 40 notes.
