I've been wanting to try writing for a while now and being stuck in a place with nothing to do left me to think about stuff. One of these things was Pokemon Red/Blue/Green and to a lesser extent Yellows sprites and how, it's a style I rarely, if ever see truly replicated.
I remember first evolving my Pidgeotto whilst on the bus to Spain and getting jumpscared by the sprite. The sprite itself pretty much exemplifies why I love RB's sprite style. It looks off from the official design in a very uncanny, fascinating way. The face looks bunched up and the eyes take on a strange crescent shape of joy. It's also really chunky like an actual pigeon. The eyes especially fascinate me for some reason, like it's happy to a point where it's face is deformed.
I think another amazing example of this would probably be Moltres and Articuno in both their RG and RB sprites. Articuno feels otherworldy, in it's RB sprite the eyes feel unnatural, I can's really tell if it's like a big eye or a small beady one. as a kid I could barely tell what it's eye were at all. and the pose is also strangely ethereal.
Surprisingly Green's Articuno sprite is not as strange, still off model, I've heard it compared to Togetik but I don't think I would've been creeped out by this nearly as much. Still a bit probably though.
Onto Moltres, This sprite is also kind of unnerving. Ignoring how hard it is to tell where the head flame and wings separate. One thing I notice here is that the eye doesn't really look like it has a pupil, it looks like a black sphere kind of like a bug with eyelids. I think the part I focus on here and with most of these sprites is the faces, again strangely uncanny. The wings seem really stretched and the fire aspect seems only slightly there. I also like the somewhat glaring light highlighting across it's wing to it's face, even the tip of the beak seems to glow bright. I especially like the long streaks of white on it's outward wing.
Moltres's green sprite is lanky, with weirdly human looking, half closed eyes (Not even sure if that's the right way to describe them.) that look oddly big. The wings appear like they're mid flap as though it's about to take off but it's face doesn't seem to match that interpretation.
Weirdly calm with the harsh highlights across it's body, including it's eyelid giving me vibes similar to when the camera zooms in on Rap Rat The shading on this sprite especially makes it look like a cooked chicken, the flames on it's wings look scraggily, more flame like too.