The final results of the winners of the 2024 Pokemon TCG Illustration Contest are in, and I really like the winning works.
Earlier this year, The Pokemon Company held a contest for fans of the series to submit some art that, if they won, would be made into an official Pokemon Trading Card Game card (oh, and the winner also got $5,000, which is pretty nice). The results of the contest are finally in, and the winner is an artist named Kazuki Minami, who drew what might be the best Pikachu card I’ve ever seen. You can see it at the end of a video showing off the other entries, or just look at the top of this page, but for those who don’t want to do either of those things, it’s a meticulously rendered piece of art that shows Pikachu yawning and scratching its head with its feet, filled with such a real sense of life, which is hard to do.
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“I’m really honored to receive this award,” Nan said in a statement. “This was my first time participating in this competition and I had no idea what to draw or how to draw it. That’s when my dog appeared in front of my eyes and he’s so cute – I was inspired to draw Pikachu in a way that reminded me of my dog. So this award belongs to both me and my dog, and we are both very happy and honored. Thank you.”
One judge even said that “drawing a Pikachu that everyone knows was relatively difficult for the theme of this competition” but was “impressed by the natural, unpretentious depiction of Pikachu’s daily life as a living creature.”
Speaking of Pokemon TCG, Alex recently tried out the upcoming mobile app, Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket, and said, “Even after only a short time playing Pokemon Trading Card Game Classic, I feel like this game is satisfying my needs in all the right ways. It’s the rare mobile game that I’ll be playing from day one – and I can see myself becoming a competitive collector and player of this app, not just in the short term, but for the long term.”
