Detective Pikachu is the first official
Pokemon film to make the jump to live-action. On account of this, the visual-effects company, The Moving Picture Company (MPC) had to decipher how to adapt the franchise's many iconic creatures into a real life setting.
A visual-effects supervisor, Pete Dionne, who worked on
Detective Pikachu recently revealed (via
Gamefragger) that the inspiration for many of the realistic adaptations of Pokemon came from real life creatures. Firstly, Dionne explained that simply porting the classic look of each Pokemon wouldn't suffice as their usual designs would look unnatural in real life.
"The thing with Pokémon is they’re very simplistic 2D designs. They're really adorable with their big heads, small bodies and big eyes and all the things that in character design you can turn to to make an appealing character but in real life if you saw an animal with these same kind of features and proportions, it would look grotesque and unnatural."
Dionne further explained that, regularly, they would think about how each Pokemon could survive and thrive in the wilderness, how they would be able to outrun a predator and the like.
"A term we threw around a lot at MPC was 'How would this Pokémon survive the night?' Could this animal make it through the night in the woods on its own? Would it be able to run away fast enough from whatever predators might pursue it? So we decided to follow the logic of nature's design."
As the titular Pokemon spends most of his time standing up, the team had to find a way to prevent him from coming across as too humanoid. Dionne explained that the accomplished this by taking inspiration from rabbits and red pandas, two real animals which often stand on their hind legs.
For Pikachu, he spends so much of his time upright in the film and cartoons, with a range of motion that a human performer would have. But very quickly he turns into looking like a guy in a Pikachu suit. So I imagined him as an upright quadruped, like a rabbit. When you think of a rabbit up on its hind legs they really swing a lot of momentum into their steps. They’re not very well balanced.
"The moment that Pikachu would go down on all fours, that’s when we’d allow him to embrace the natural quadruped look. We referenced a lot of red pandas for those movements."
Synopsis: Ace detective Harry Goodman goes mysteriously missing, prompting his 21-year-old son, Tim, to find out what happened. Aiding in the investigation is Harry's former Pokémon partner, wise-cracking, adorable super-sleuth Detective Pikachu. Finding that they are uniquely equipped to work together, as Tim is the only human who can talk with Pikachu, they join forces to unravel the tangled mystery.