Fakemon, also called Fakémon, are fan-designed fictional creatures based on the ''

Pokémon is a Japanese media franchise consisting of List of Pokémon video games, video games, Pokémon (TV series), animated series and List of Pokémon films, films, Pokémon Trading Card Game, a trading card game, and other related media. The fran ...

'' franchise of

monster-taming game A monster-taming game (also known as a monster-catching game, and sometimes a ''Pokémon'' clone) is a subgenre of role-playing video games that most notably includes the ''Pokémon'' franchise. While ''Pokémon'' is the most recognizable exampl ...

s. While many such designs have been created purely as

fan art Fan art or fanart is artwork created by Fan (person), fans of a work of fiction or celebrity depicting events, Character (arts), character, or other aspect of the work. As fan labor, fan art refers to artworks that are not created, commissione ...

, others are made specifically as hoaxes to fool fans into believing they will appear in future series titles, or as unique creatures added to

game mods Video game modding (short for "modifying") is the process of alteration by players or fans of one or more aspects of a video game, such as how it looks or behaves, and is a sub-discipline of general ''modding''. A set of modifications, commonly c ...

History

Etymology

The word Fakemon is a

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

of the words ''fake'' and ''Pokémon.'' In Japanese, they are known as .

Origin

According to ''

GameRant Valnet, Inc. is a Canadian media company established in August 2012 by Hassan and Sam Youssef in Montreal, Quebec. It operates primarily in the entertainment media industry, where it has sought to acquire producers of content in this space. In ...

'', Fakemon have existed "for almost as long as Pokémon itself", but began to proliferate with the advent of fan-made video games as well as the advent of the internet. Founded in 1998, "Mewthree and Frogglet's Pokémon Factory" (later called Pokémon Factory) became the first website to formalize the creation of Fakemon. A public forum, it required members to post their creation to other members, who would provide critique until its revisions deemed it "presentable for review by Pokémon Factory staff." The intent of the website was to create "an outlet for fan innovations in pokémon ." The popularity of the creatures has led to the creation of various online Fakemon image generators. For example, in 2022, Lambda Labs researcher Justin Pinkney created Text-to-Pokémon, which utilizes

Stable Diffusion Stable Diffusion is a deep learning, text-to-image model released in 2022 based on Diffusion model, diffusion techniques. The generative artificial intelligence technology is the premier product of Stability AI and is considered to be a part of ...

to create creatures based on a user's written prompt. The model was trained on "BLIP captioned Pokémon images with two

NVIDIA RTX Nvidia RTX (also known as Nvidia GeForce RTX under the GeForce brand) is a professional visual computing platform created by Nvidia, used in mainstream PCs for gaming as well as being used in workstations for designing complex large-scale model ...

A6000

GPUs A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

on the Lambda GPU Cloud for around 15,000 steps." As of 2024, Fakemon are popular on websites such as

DeviantArt DeviantArt (formerly styled as deviantART and thus abbreviated as dA) is an American online community that features artwork, videography, photography, and literature, launched on August 7, 2000, by Mathew Stephens, Scott Jarkoff and Angelo Sotir ...

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...

, and

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

, as well as

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. Some Fakemon designers are professional artists in the video game industry. Fakemon design has been described as "a way for fans to express their individuality while honoring the franchise they love."

Design

Fakemon are designed by fans of the ''Pokémon'' franchise using design principles from the ''Pokémon'' video games and

anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

, such as color, level of detail, anatomy, and relatability. Fakemon designers have employed the use of

Microsoft Paint Microsoft Paint (commonly known as MS Paint or simply Paint) is a simple raster graphics editor that has been included with all versions of Microsoft Windows. The program opens, modifies and saves image files in Windows bitmap (BMP), JPEG, GI ...

and

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editin ...

to mimic the pixel art of the ''Pokémon'' video games. Fans design Fakemon based on real-world concepts such as culture, architecture, animals, plants, and mythology. Fakemon are often created to accompany fan-made ''Pokémon'' regions or games. For example, the fan game ''

Pokémon Uranium ''Pokémon Uranium'' is a fan-made video game based on the ''Pokémon'' series. The game was in development for nine years, and used the RPG Maker XP engine. The game adds 166 new fan-made species of Pokémon, with only 160 currently available, ...

'' has over 150 Fakemon featured in it.

Controversy

Fakemon designs have occasionally been so similar to the visual language of ''Pokémon'' that they have been confused for real leaks. For example, a set of three fake fire, water, and grass starter Pokémon were created by Leopoldo Spagna as a hoax in 2018, prior to the announcement of ''

Pokémon Sword and Shield and are 2019 role-playing video games developed by Game Freak and published by The Pokémon Company and Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch console. They are the first instalments in the 8th generation of the Pokémon (video game series), ''Pok� ...

.'' Spagna's designs were featured on multiple websites as a legitimate rumor, leading fans to create fan art and

meme A meme (; ) is an idea, behavior, or style that Mimesis, spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying c ...

s of the supposed Pokémon. While he later apologized for the hoax, PokéNinja, a

Twitch streamer An online streamer or live streamer is a type of social media influencer who broadcasts themselves online through a live stream to an audience. History Streaming arose in the early 2010s, originating on sites like YouTube where users could uplo ...

, backed a special tier of the

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

for '' Temtem'', a game resembling ''Pokémon'', putting forth one of the fake Pokémon, Platypet, as a monster design. Platypet was first included within the game when it released

early access Early access, also known as alpha access, alpha founding, paid alpha, or game preview, is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can purchase and play a game in the various pre-release Software release life cycle, developm ...

through

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

on January 21, 2020. In the game's universe, Platypet stars in a cartoon about toxic-elemental Temtem creatures.

References