The name alone may not mean much to most people but his artwork is known to millions. Mitsuhiro Arita has been illustrating Pokémon Trading Cards for over 20 years since the beginning. His illustrations are also some of the first proper artwork of the original Pokémon as he brought the pixel sprites of the first games and gave them form.
The Pokémon Company recently uploaded a creator profile of Mitsuhiro Arita to the Official Pokémon Website. The profile dives into Arita’s history with Creatures Inc. His artistic freedom and how technology has changed the illustrations of Pokémon Cards over the last 20 years.
We have an excerpt of the Creator Profile of Mitsuhiro Arita below.
Like other artists who illustrate cards for the Pokémon TCG, Mr. Arita is not a full-time employee of Creatures, allowing him the freedom to work on many other projects as well. Mr. Arita says Pokémon has been the main focus of his artistic career, but he would never have guessed that would be the case when he began. In Japan, it took about a year for Pokémon to really take off after it debuted, so Mr. Arita essentially had no idea that Pokémon would be the global phenomenon it is now.
“When I first began working on the Pokémon Trading Card Game, I had no expectations I’d be working on it over 20 years later,” he says. Asked if he would he have charged a little more for his work had he known, he jokes, “Of course!”
Mr. Arita came to the interview carrying an incredible testimonial to his experience with Pokémon: a thick binder containing every card he’s ever worked on.
“Going through it, I really have a lot of memories of these, and I really like all of them,” he says. There are 537 cards in the binder, organized in chronological order. Flipping through it is like watching a history of the Pokémon TCG.
Mr. Arita’s long-lasting influence really hits home when the original Charizard and Pikachu from Pokémon TCG: Base Set appear in the first page of the binder.
“I always thought that I’d probably never be able to draw cards that people liked as much as those two,” he says. “But I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback on a recent Mewtwo, so maybe there’s a chance!” He assures us that he doesn’t feel increased pressure when receiving assignments to draw these more famous Pokémon.
A lot has changed in the 20 years since Mr. Arita began illustrating cards for the Pokémon TCG. He describes what it was like when he began—before the Pokémon TCG even launched.
“As you know, the first Pokémon video games came out on the Game Boy in monochrome, with a really rudimentary pixel art,” he says. “So when I started on this project, pretty much all I had as reference were those sprites—the pixel art of the Pokémon.” It’s safe to say that by creating his own artistic vision of these simple graphics, Mr. Arita contributed to how some Pokémon are portrayed today.
To make sure his artwork continues to resonate with Pokémon fans, Mr. Arita spends a decent amount of time playing the video games and watching the animated series. He admits that his busy schedule doesn’t always afford him time to finish every game, however. And, ironically, he doesn’t play the Pokémon TCG as much as he would like.
“I don’t really have any friends near where I live, so I don’t have a lot of chances,” he explains. “In the early days, when Creatures was a much smaller company and we were still just making the game, yeah, a lot of the time we would order a pizza after our meeting and play.”
If you would like to read the rest of the interview, be sure to check it out over at the Official Pokémon Website.
Source: Pokémon Official Website
[…] associated with geeky connotations of the past, Pokémon cards have become high-end collectibles, modern works of art, and nostalgic […]