Game Freak on how HarmoKnight came to be, Drill Dozer's female lead, pixel art, how Pokemon are designed, and more

Game Freak has been doing a new video series where they showcase their artists and developers doodling while talking about various games in the company's history. We've shared all the videos in the series so far, but sadly, there have been no English translations. Today we get some details from those videos. Check out tidbits on Pokemon in general, HarmoKnight, Drill Dozer, and more below.

- HarmoKnight was the first game project that was developed via Game Freak’s ‘Gear Project’ internal competition
- the game’s design document was illustrated via a short manga that showed how the game would play
- Art Director James Turner says that when drawing, the most important thing for him is the the character concept
- Turner then aims for a design that isn’t too complicated, all while having a distinct silhouette
- this goes for Pokémon concepts he designs as well, such as Poipole, Phantump, Golurk, and more
- Art Director Takao Unno revealed that Pokemon ideas are collected from Game Freak employees no matter their position
- these ideas are then filtered for what is needed for the story (and region) and game balance
- as for who draws the Pokemon, it generally depends on if a character designer's work was well-received in previous games
- sometimes if Unno feels that particular staff member is able to bring out the feel of the Pokémon, he'll choose them specifically
- 2D graphic designer Hironobu Yoshida was in charge of character designs for Drill Dozer
- the last time he directly helped with pixel art was Pokémon Black 2 & White 2
- Yoshida describes development of Pokemon Black 2/White 2 “like a festival”
- Yoshida’s a bit worried about whether the current generation will understand the appeal of pixel art
- to him, the appeal of pixel art is how little space is wasted, and how artistic it is
- Yoshida was very opposed to having a female main character in Drill Dozer, as he found them hard to draw
- as something of a protest, he added boy-like eyebrows to Jill’s design
- having a girl be the protagonist was Ken Sugimori’s decision
- the logic behind the the decision came from the idea of mixing a mech game with a cutesy girl pilot to make things interesting