Editor's Note: Due to some error in FurAffinity's servers, I'm unable to upload the full reference. Therefore, I am uploading both versions of him separately. Please visit the upload on DeviantART - https://www.deviantart.com/ikyle/ar.....-2-0-826106388 - for the full picture.

Additionally, this picture was originally uploaded to DeviantART on January 6, 2020. It has also been updated 2 times.



Happy New Decade, everyone!

And even I've surprised myself, a few days ago I just had the desire to do some doodling. While at work early in the morning, I decided to do it then, drawing some expressions and a full-body doodle while trying to work on paw and leg anatomy. Combine this with a few ideas I was having for my Raichu, Rae, and after having a discussion with ryex-617 (https://www.deviantart.com/ryex-617 | http://www.furaffinity.net/user/deltasmasher89 | http://www.furaffinity.net/user/shadedblue89/), I put those ideas to work and made this!

Rae is easily one of my favorite characters to use, but even after I was able to draw a Raichu for the first time and feeling fairly satisfactory on the end result, there were still a couple things about his original design that I just didn't really like, and wanted to try again. More than a year after I originally drew him, I went for a different angle for him to face, as well as actively trying to work on the anatomy; I can say that I'm still not great but I feel like I was able to get what I wanted, for the most part.

I also never was settled on his color scheme at the time, I wanted to continue my trend of using mainly one color for my characters but with a Raichu, it's a little difficult to do when there are multiple colors on the body, particularly over the paws and on the ears; taking all of those away just didn't look good in my head, so the only thing from a normal Raichu's design that I took away was the white fur on the tummy, yet I wasn't satisfied after still. However, over on Twitter, user TheRaichu_ (https://twitter.com/TheRaichu_) proclaims January as a month to celebrate the electric mouse, and by lesser extent, Raichu's former forms. I decided to join in formally this year by taking Rae's original artwork, and giving it a rather awful paint job to make myself into a Raichu (https://twitter.com/12378K/status/1212802503324114947?s=20). It was that moment that got me wanting to draw something again, and put all of this to work. This update aimed to help me work on anatomy and change Rae's color scheme to be what I wanted it more to be, as well as address any changes to his character via roleplays that had taken place in the last year.

So here we go!

1 | Grown Fur
Hair is also another one of my biggest challenges. Of course, I also don't aim to become a better artist, it really is just a hobby for me, so learning to get better is a usually slow process. Nevertheless, in my case, it's knowing the right shapes and curves to do in order to get the best visual that I'm looking for. I think I'm getting better! In this case, I improved Rae's hairstyle to be a little longer, and show that he has some bangs in comparison to his previous iteration, as well as some grown fur on his chest. Don't ask how this is possible when he's a Softie.

2 | New Color Scheme
Perhaps the biggest reason as to why I did this, I wanted to redo the colors on Rae's body and make them more unique to him as an Ioan Raichu, rather than follow what a Pure Raichu would look like. As such, I followed a suggestion made from ryex-617 as well as my own desire to keep the single color theme but add in some originality with the brown fur that Pure Raichus have. So, his left upper paw and both lower paws are the same color as his body, while his right paw retains the brown fur that Pure Raichus have, with a new pattern to it, using circles as the tool of choice, which overlaps smaller circles that become lighter the further up his arm they go.

This also applies to Rae's back, where instead of the classic lines you would see on the mouse, he has a splotch-like design that also utilizes circles as the main tool. Note that the example shown is not an exact representation of what its supposed to look like but rather a rough idea. This also includes a small patch of fur over his left eye that is now his secondary color.

3 | Marriage
That's right, Rae is a married mouse! As of March 8, 2019, and as described in Rae's original artwork, Rae was in a relationship with LilArrin's Raichu (https://www.deviantart.com/lilarrin) that both made official. He wears a silver ring on his right paw. On it is a thunderbolt design that uses a topaz on top, amber in the middle, and a ruby on the bottom, with each color representing something. The yellow of the topaz represents the Pichu and Pikachu both Raichus once were, where the orange of the amber represents the Raichus they are now. The red of the ruby represents where they came from: Rae from his Pokémon Trainer, Kyle, and Lady Raichu from her exploration team, the Guardians, where their team color is red.

As a side note, this also shares a new naming style I'm starting to adapt with any Pokémon I show off from my teams, they will share my last name with the name of their species. The latter has been something I've been doing for a little while now, but doing it this way will allow things to be more unique and specific as to who they belong to.

4 | Emblem
At the same time of making their wedding bands, I also took the liberty of making this design as Rae's official emblem, allowing the emblem on his collar tag to be more unique and give him more of a personal identity.

5 | Raichium Z
The last update to Rae involves the yellow and orange diamond that's on the middle of his tail bow, which is a Z-Crystal. This was obtained during the summer as Kyle had decided to travel to Alola for the summer on yet another Pokémon adventure (as in, I was back in a Pokémon phase after beating Let's Go, Eevee! (https://twitter.com/12378K/status/1083926971980034048?s=20) at the beginning of the year, then finishing the rest of Y (https://twitter.com/12378K/status/1109299301241577473?s=20), and after that, taking my brother's copy of SoulSilver (https://twitter.com/12378K/status/1126156919524208641?s=20) and beating that; I wanted to play Ultra Sun next and Rae pitched the idea to his wife that Alola would be a wonderful travel destination for their honeymoon, so they went. Of course, well-known to the Alolan people are Z-Crystals, that power up moves of Pokémon into Z-Moves, and you earn one for each Pokémon type as you complete the Island Challenge.

Early in Kyle's travels, and with his growing collection of Z-Crystals made Rae very curious about their abilities, and he would often inspect the newest one to the collection. All of a sudden, while inspecting a piece of Electrium Z, he felt a stinging pain in his paw while looking at one, causing him to drop it and prompt Lady Raichu to check on him. In the next moment though, Rae would turn into an Alolan Raichu (this would allow me to have a Raichu on my team under the name Rae, while coming up with something fun and creative to add onto his character)! There didn't seem to be any immediate way of turning Rae back to normal, so the crew called it a night; unfortunately for Lady Raichu, she woke up being transformed into one herself.

It was later discovered that Ioa, where everyone lives and travels from to Alola, with its atmosphere and environment being crafted mainly by magic, means that creatures of Ioa are often exposed to magic power that can have an effect on other objects or being with a different energy or power, such as Z-Crystals. The contrasting powers surged into Rae at the time, and since Lady Raichu was right next to him, it had an effect on her too, just not as quickly. To negate the effects, the two would have to make it to Poni Island, where the Z-Crystal, Aloraichium Z, was supposed to be.

It took some time to get there, but after obtaining it, and dealing with some pesky Team Skull Grunts, the two of them used their Aloraichium Z crystals to perform Stoked Sparksurfer and decide the battle in their favor. Once they used the special move, they found themselves back to normal, with the Aloraichium Z's now a blend of yellow and orange, and having the design of a Pure Raichu tail and an Alolan Raichu tail together (not pictured). It was then explained that the energies canceling out and finding a new source to be inside changed the Aloraichium Z into Raichium Z, and only Rae and Lady Raichu possess this unique Z-Crystal. This allows both of them to assume their Alolan forms at will, and with it, gaining the powers, typing, and movesets that come with. This effectively means that both Rae and Lady Raichu are capable of knowing eight moves at one time, four for each form; nine moves if you count Stoked Sparksurfer.

In Rae's case, his color palette remains mostly the same; his primary fur color still remains that reddish-orange color, while the browns in his fur become an off-white. This applies to the fur on his right paw, his back, and the patch of fur over his eye.

This was really fun to make, it's been a long time since I drew something but I feel better about this piece than I did the last, and I hope that every one after this just continues to get better! Thanks for checking it out and reading!



Time
Sketching | About 2 hours
Coloring (Ioan Form) | #
Coloring (Alolan Form) | #
Total | #

<s>Yes, I did actually set a timer for exactly how long I took.</s>



Update 1 • January 29, 2020
After a bit of debate and gathering some opinions, I decided that Rae should have a little bit more added color to him, so instead of one paw being his secondary brown/off-white fur color, I decided to add that to his left footpaw too. I did this to have a pattern going across his body, or at least, what you can see from the front. He has his secondary fur color over his left eye, then in the middle it's on his right handpaw, and then on the bottom, his left footpaw. That way, it zigzags a little and still continues the one-color scheme I wanted to try and apply to Rae.

Update 2 • February 1, 2020
Well, that didn't take long. I was copying the updated drawings of Rae to be their own separate files and realized that there were a couple of pixels I had failed to color in the first time. It bugs me how I didn't fix these in the beginning, but now they're colored in, there shouldn't be any "dead pixels" on here now!