Wallpaper: Journeys Gap Ad

The last desktop wallpaper that I made was three years ago, and that's a pretty long time. There was an intent to change it with a new creation, but between my businesses and the happenings of the world, the wallpaper worked out and applied to the sentiments of the times. As much as it was still appropriate, I wanted to go in a new direction, and thus a new wallpaper had to be made. Fortunately, I found the perfect concept that put together Pokémon with a certain "homage" that could also be in part considered a "parody".

This wallpaper is titled "Journeys Gap Ad". Evidently, it could be construed as a (promotional) advertisement for Pokémon Journeys, the series that is represented by the two protagonists of Ash and Goh, shown with their choice partner Pokémon here. Scorbunny is fiery, Pikachu is electric, and they're both together as their Trainers are together, and thus the tagline above ("What's best is fiery, electric, and together"). This is coupled with the tagline and title of the opening song of the series as placed below, along with the identifier for the characters and the appropriate disclaimers. The depiction takes a black-and-white retro approach, despite that Pokémon Journeys is not from an era where such advertisements are present, especially in certain magazines.

Actually, this was made to resemble a certain real advertisement, and this is the "homage" and "parody" part. The advertisement is for a certain clothing company, and the specific advertisement featured two well-known figures who are actually the creators behind another game series that I'm also fond of (see this Twitter tweet for the reference). Here, the advertisement is replicated with as much detail and precision as possible, taking a few liberties to include the Pokémon context. The original advertisement is from 1995, which is obviously retro by now and was far before Pokémon Journeys came into being, but the feel was also replicated faithfully. I consider the results to be quite fitting.

As shown in the image above, the wallpaper is made for PCs, but I've actually created a mobile version for smartphones as well, and in fact it was created before the PC version. The mobile phone version takes a few more liberties due to the reduced scale but is otherwise equivalent in spirit to the PC version. Speaking of scaling, both versions are intended to be ably scaled to different screen aspect ratios by adding or subtracting the beige part, with the initial wallpaper for the PC version being originally designed for a 16:10 ratio that does not take much to be adapted to 16:9.

With the previous wallpapers, it becomes obvious that I have a fondness for simple ideas (and additionally, imitative qualities). Yet it is also obvious that when they're done right, simple and imitative can actually be quite expressive, in this case of Pokémon. In this case, the result is a "promotion that transcends time" that honors an external journey of the past with one that is related to Pokémon and certainly way ahead of its time.

One year ago: Multilingual Pokémon Go

Two years ago: Gym Tours

Three years ago: (A Further) Local Ex-Raid, 9/10/2018

Four years ago: Cosplay: BJF - Shizen ni Modoru