Pokemon Concept Artist Imagines Future Descendants of Modern Pokemon

A well-known Pokemon concept artist is imagining what Pokemon species would evolve into after millions of years of natural selection. The Pokemon franchise is built around the concept of “evolution,” which in the Pokemon world means a sudden metabolic change that causes a Pokemon to suddenly change into a different, more powerful species. Evolution in the Pokemon world is triggered by many different stimuli, ranging from exposure to various kinds of items to becoming strong enough to withstand the sudden mass genetic rearranging to the stress of being traded to another Pokemon trainer without any consultation or say in the matter. 

In recent years, the Pokemon franchise has revisited the more traditional idea of evolution, which involves a species gradually adapting to its environment by adopting different traits honed over generations of exposure to certain climates, food sources, or living conditions. Regional variant Pokemon species were first introduced in Pokemon Sun and Moon, showing that familiar Pokemon could adapt to radically different environments by adopting new typings and movesets. An Alolan Vulpix becomes an Ice-type due to living in a frigid climate, while a Galarian Weezing becomes a Poison/Fairy-type after adopting smokestack-like filters to clean the industrial region’s polluted air. By introducing regional variants, the Pokemon franchise showed that its Pokemon could evolve in the traditional sense as well as the spontaneous genetic splicing seen in the series to date. 

Recently, RJ Palmer, a well-known concept artist who worked on the Detective Pikachu movie and whose “realistic Pokemon” has gone viral several times on the Internet, introduced another take on Pokemon evolution. Palmer debuted several Pokemon “descendants” that evolved from popular Pokemon species after millions of years. Similar to how modern chickens are the evolutionary descendants of dinosaurs, Palmer debuted concept art for Emperooster as a descendant of Tyrantrum, as well as the plane-like Garbooster (a descendant of Garchomp) and the whale-like Cetaceon (a descendant of Vaporeon). You can check out the concept art below. 

It's fun to imagine what Pokemon descendants might look like in millions of years pic.twitter.com/TcMhynTEn2

— RJ Palmer (@arvalis) May 15, 2022

While Palmer is just playing on the concept of evolution with his designs, it’s certainly possible that The Pokemon Company could one day visit this concept in a game. With several “fossil” Pokemon species, there’s nothing to say that we couldn’t see a lost pocket of prehistoric Pokemon appear in the modern day with radically different forms. 

What do you think about these new Pokemon species? Be sure to let us know in the comment section and follow Palmer on Twitter for more fantastic artwork.