This was a series of illustrations I made re imagining the eeveelutions, from the Pokémon frenchise as magical girls. I did this in a series of short videos showing the process in my instagram and my tiktok.

I also tried to create a storyline for these characters, in which eevee is just a normal human girl and she transforms into the different eeveelutions, since in Pokémon eevee evolves into the different eeveelutions. Another story element I added was that each eeveelution was powered by a magical spirit of a girl, and eevee would have to befriend each spirit before being able to transform.

The first character I designed was eevee, the protagonist of the story. For her design I wanted something that resembled the pokemon with the fur arround the neck and the ears but that also looked like a regular human. I gave her the fluffy coat with animal ears as a way to tie her to the original Pokémon design. Underneath her fluffy coat I added a sailor uniform since its often portrayed in magical girl anime, sometimes even becoming inspiration for their uniforms, like in the case of Sailor Moon.

The second design I created was Sylveon, because in the story I thought she would be the first one that eevee would befriend. Sylveon also happens to be the one that most resembles a magical girl, having ribbons as a big part of the original pokemon design.

To create this design I searched for information on the pokemon and I read the pokedex entries available in different games for inspiration.

"When this Pokémon sights its prey, it swirls its ribbonlike feelers as a distraction. A moment later, it pounces."

This particular entry gave me the idea of using the ribbons as inspiration for the weapon, and I thought that a dancing ribbon would be perfect. Its not uncommon for magical girls to have as weapons ordinary items. The dancing ribbon specifically has been used in other magical girl media, one example being Zakuro from Tokyo mew mew. The weapon inspired me to make her design resemble a ballerina, to connect it with the weapon. She also got some fairy inspired elements like the wings since Sylveon is a fairy type pokemon.

I also made sure to keep various elements of eevee's design on the other transformations as a way to indicate that this is eevee transforming into the other eeveelutions. The skintone, the eye shape and overall hair length is the same across all designs.

For the third design I made umbreon. With umbreon there was a lot of darkness imagery due to the pokemon being a dark type. I wanted to make her design inspired by punk and goth elements, so I gave her a big black leather jacket. 

For her personality I imagine her as someone that has a dark exterior but is actually really sweet since the pokemon evolves with friendship. Later in this project you'll se a small animatic I made that shows this side of her personality.

The original pokemon design is fairly simple, the main element being the glowing yellow rings on black. I tried to include as many ring shapes in her design to reference it. In the sketch you can see that I planned on including a ring border too but I felt it was becoming too much and decided to tone that down.

I kept the pallete to mostly black and yellow with some red accents to the design since umbreon's eyes are red in the pokemon design. As a weapon I gave her magical gloves that produce the same glowing yellow rings, I imagine her using the rings as shields or as projectiles.

Espeon is another eeveelution with a very simple design. The most iconic elements of her design are the shape of the pokemon's fur, the gemstone in the forehead and the split tail. When designing this transformation I tried to incorporate these three iconic elements as much as I could.

To incorporate the split tail I gave her a magic staff with the split tail at the end and at the top. There is also a red floating gemstone to reference the forehead gemstone in the original pokemon design. To reference the fur shape I made her hair shaped in a similar way and I added a similar shape to the border of her skirt and sleeves. The red gemstone is also included in her headband, like this the placement of the gemstone is the same as in the original design.

Since espeon is a  psychic type pokemon with future seeing abilities I decided to make her outfit inspired in a fortune teller costume, with the layered skirt, the large baggy sleeves and the headband.

When it comes to her personality I got inspired by a pokedex entry that said:

"An ESPEON is extremely loyal to any TRAINER it considers to be worthy."

This inspired me to make her a character that is extremely loyal to those that she considers worthy, but also very strict with who she considers worthy, and has other people prove their worth to her before gaining her loyalty. This was the main concept behind the animatic I made for her, this animatic will show up later in this project. 

Leafeon's concept was mainly inspired by the weapon I gave her. I wanted to give her a leaf fan, not only because its made of a leaf but also because it can produce wind. Despite being a plant pokemon lots of the pokedex entries reference that when a leafeon is sitting still, its producing clean air through photosynthesis.

The leaf fan made me think of a yokai, the tengu that also has a leaf fan. This made me think it would be interesting to make her design inspired by traditional japanese clothing. The type of kimono I picked was a hakama since its often used by martial artists. I made the hakama shorter though, I felt like it helped the silhouette fit in better with the magical girl theme.

In terms of personality I looked up the pokedex entries for leafeon. Most of the ones that talked about aspects of the pokemon's personality talked about how it doesn't like fighting, but that it will fight for those they care about. I think she would be reluctant to fight at first until she saw her friends in danger and decided to help. 

For glaceon I also went in the direction of traditional japanese clothing. The reason I did this is because glaceon and leafeon were introduced together in the eeveelution line, and I thought it would be fun to connect the two in some way.

For her weapon I wanted something that matched the traditional japanese inspiration, but that also matched glaceon's personality. Based on what I had read on the pokedex entries I imagined her as having a hostile fighting style but still very cautious. I then found the ideal weapon, the naginata. This type of spear was often used by onna-bugeisha, women that were trained in combat to defend their homes. The spear also fits her personality well since its a weapon that focuses on attacking but from a considerable distance.

Since I had given leafeon the hakama I wanted to give glaceon a different type of kimono, and after looking through illustrations of onna-bugeisha I noticed some of them were wearing what looked like a furisode. A furisode is a type of kimono that was worn by unmarried women. I then designed a furisode inspired by glaceon, adding the fur at the bottom to reference the cold and the diamond pattern.

The pokedex entries for flareon didn't give me much to work with. The most notable traits were that flareon breathes fire and that it cooks berries before eating them. The cooking part made me think she would have baking as a hobbie but the fire breathing gave me an idea for a weapon. 

This weapon was inspired by both circus performers that breathe fire but also by a bubble wand. I wanted to create this wand with an arch she could blow fire through it. It resembles the circus performance but it has a shape more similar to a bubble wand.

For her clothing I knew it had to have lots of fur, since flareon's design is the most fur heavy of all the eevelutions. I gave her a little fur capelet and a fur skirt that opens on the front. 

When it comes to her personality, even though we didn't get much from the pokedex, I wanted my version to be a very warm motherly type of character. I tried to portray this in her animatic by having her comfort eevee through a hard moment in her life.

For vaporeon a few things stood out during my research. The pokemon can turn into water and if its faced with a predator it will dive into the water to hide, since it becomes invisible in water. I thought I could translate this into vaporeon being very shy. I think she would dive into the water to hide from people she doesn't know since she would be afraid to interact with them, and after observing them from afar she might feel more comfortable approaching that person.

The pokedex often mentioned that vaporeon is confused for a mermaid, so I thought a harp could be a good weapon for her, I imagine she would be able to play magical tunes. The reason I associated the harp with mermaids is that mermaids are often portrayed singing to attract sailors, so I wanted her to have a musical instrument so she could play her music and sing her songs.

In the illustration I made her feet as if they were made of water as a way to reference the fact that vaporeon is invisible in water. I also created a skirt that looked like vaporeon's iconic fish tail. I also made her hair entirely of fins since vaporeon has no fur in its original design.

The last eeveelution I did was jolteon. Once again I looked at the pokedex entries, and this one called my attention:

"A sensitive POKÉMON that easily becomes sad or angry. Every time its mood changes, it charges power."

Knowing she was prone to becoming sad or angry made me think that she would be very moody and the more likely to pick a fight. I got inspired by this to give her gauntlets and have her fight by punching and kicking more like a typical action hero.

In her design I made sure to incorporate lots of triangle shapes since jolteon's design is already mostly made of triangles, and since she is the more fighty of the group I also gave her bulkier arms to show that she has more muscle than the others. In the animatic for jolteon I actually had eevee have to workout to be able to transform with jolteon.

To close the series I wanted to do one final illustration with all the spirits and eevee together laying on the grass laughing, with the title of the show in the center. I created this illustration as a way to also show the magical spirit's designs since so far we had only seen eevee transformed as them, and not the spirits by themselves.

I also created a serie of little animatics to help tease each transformation, so a few days before I posted the next transformation I would post one of these animatics revealing which would be the next transformation. These animatics also help tell the story by showing eevee's interactions with the different eeveelutions, many of them displaying her first time transforming with each one of them. The following video is a compilation of all the animatics I made.

To end the first part of the series I also created an anime opening theme as if this was an actual anime. The animation is all made of roughs no finals since I did this by myself and I wouldn't have had time to make a full animation op with the time I had. I am working on finishing this but it will probably take a while to be done.