Seeing wild Pokemon would be terrifying in real life

Pokemon Legends: Arceus made catching Pokemon more immersive, with an open world designed for sneaking and throwing Poke Balls. Players could now watch Mr. Mime make little gestures while sitting in a meadow or see a bashful Teddiursa skittering away. Wild Pokemon can also be seen approaching players, which makes the game more frightening for those who aren’t used being approached. In Arceus, encountering massive Alphas became a singularly terrifying experience.

As a newbie to the franchise I found it enjoyable and satisfying. It was a strange world. I had never seen a place where games offered more entertainment than combat. The world of sneaking and real danger were much more interesting. My TikTok feed brought me to some amazing and disturbing animations, which made Pokemon seem as real as they are in reality. The animated sequences, created by visual effects artist Seth Whittenburg, have gone viral, with individual posts commanding millions of views. You’ll see why. Similar to other art like Pokemon , Whittenburg’s animations, which are often frightening

A few of Whittenburg’s animations show Pokemon being caught in wild. Others stick Pokemon in modern-day spaces — a Mew floating near a person sitting on a couch, like a regular apartment cat. There are chill sequences, like an assembly line creating Poke Balls. But the animations depicting random encounters with wild Pokemon — like Gengar wreaking havoc in a grocery store or a large Snorlax snoozing under a tree — are almost always discomfiting. A lot of Whittenburg’s animation techniques draw heavily from horror elements, playing with shading, texture, and camera perspective. The Poke Ball found in someone’s hands seems flimsy.

Whittenburg told Polygon that he grew up watching Pokemon on Cartoon Network and felt inspired to start making these 3D animations after the live-action Detective Pikachu movie came out. He’s self-taught and has been creating visual effects for three years, though he only started using 3D software Blender, which has become his favorite, a year ago. Creating these animated sequences is work intensive, and he says he’s been spending “10-14 hour days” at his computer for the past half-year.

“I have to be patient with my computer, which is why I need to use a slower workflow when I am working on a large-scale project.” Whittenburg shared this information via Instagram. “Due to that, an animation that would only take 2-3 days ends up taking 5-7 days occasionally. The character-building process typically takes 2-5 hours, depending on what kind of character I’m dealing with. Some are trickier than others.”

Whittenburg also counts other TikTokers and YouTubers as his inspiration, including popular horror VFX accounts lights.are.off and Jakefellman, but he mainly credits his love for Pokemon as a jumping-off point for his own work.

“Pokemon has given me lots of happy childhood memories, and even continues to today,” Whittenburg said. “Occasionally I dig through drawers for my Nintendo DSI to go back and play through the old Pokemon games.”