This might be a long shot or sound a little odd but I was wondering if there was anyone that could help me out.
I’m a big fan of Pokémon and I’m also a podcaster who focuses on art/artist. I’m wondering if there are any illustrators who have worked on Pokémon over the years who might be interested in doing an interview on my podcast? I’m not sure if any of them speak English, but I was curious if maybe anyone could help me out further with this or point me in the right direction. I’m also curious if this has been done before or if you think it’s something people might find interest in
If you know of any illustrators who might be interested, please let me know! Thanks!
From my understanding, most illustrators prefer to speak in Japanese and have not made many appearances on Western media. If they were to do a podcast in the future, it would likely be with The Pokemon Company or a well-known group in Japan.
In my experience, it is very difficult to contact artists and even harder to request favours. They are skittish by default because TPC has a lot of rules about what they can or cannot do. It is also more of a cultural thing in Japan where you would need to develop a level of trust or reputation to get to a point where they would be comfortable to consider a request like this. Many of them also speak very little English.
So not impossible but it would be extremely hard to pull off. And many of the interesting questions about the design process might not be allowed to be answered because TPC doesn’t want that info out there