I'd like to nominate Altaria

Probably Gengar, I think it has better art than Gastly and Haunter, and if I had to choose a second, Golduck. Why? Because of the very few TCG cards I have, Golduck fired it's gem lazor on one. Or maybe Zapdos, I have an older Zapdos card that was my first... Articuno is very awesome, also.....
Disregard anything about Golduck, Zapdos, and Articuno- unless maybe they have a better chance of getting in than Gengar. XD
wait, I found a picture of my Zapdos and my Golduck.

everything by tomokazu

I'll nominate Hitmontop :p 7 cards with all being from different artists(including tomokazu) should be pretty easy to rate.

Okay, I've made my first choice to rank. The winning suggestion comes from Cherrygrove, so therefore I am ranking:

~ Jigglypuff's TCG Artwork ~
Unsurprisingly, as one of the series mascots, Jigglypuff has been featured in a sizable amount of cards over the years. The grand total was fifteen different cards, but I'll be ranking fourteen of them because the fifteenth is a jumbo card that features Pikachu, Clefairy and Jigglypuff, so it'd be at kind of an unfair advantage to rank against other cards that have ONLY Jigglypuff. Out of the fourteen remaining cards, repeat artists include Ken Sugimori (three cards), Atsuko Nishida and Kagemaru Himeno (two cards each), all of whom are some great artists! :O

14. Yuka Morii (Neo Destiny)


Yuka Morii seems to be a pretty divisive artist - some people like her clay figurines, others think she's the worst TCG artist. I personally find her to be pretty hit or miss and, unfortunately, her Jigglypuff is a miss. A clay figure of a Jigglypuff should be cute, but the weird angle and pose really kind of makes Jigglypuff look... retarded. Its eyes look dilated, confused, and too small; its arms and legs look kind of blobbish and and glued on the main frame, and the angle of the figure makes it seem like there's far too much empty space on Jigglypuff's face. Also, a surprisingly recurring problem with Jigglypuff's TCG artwork shows up in this card: its eyes are supposed to be blue, NOT green. Jigglypuff itself is just SO awkward here and, on top of that, the background couldn't be more generic if it tried, either.

13. Keiji Kinebuchi (Wizards Promo)


I am far harsher on the cards that have 3D artwork because, more often than not, they look like bad mid-90's CGI even though though many of them were made in the late 2000's. They also tend to feature the OMG COOL Pokemon rather than the cute ones. In this case, though, the card WAS actually made in the mid-90's, and it features a cute Pokemon, so it's a little more forgivable than similar cards. But, again, Jigglypuff's eyes should be a deeper blue than this, and Jigglypuff itself looks surprisingly blocky and polygonal for a Pokemon that's supposed to be circular. The music notes in the background that have Jigglypuff's eyes are kind of cute, but also: creepy. Really, really creepy.

12. Atsuko Nishida II (HeartGold/SoulSilver)


Atsuko Nishida is a glam goddessa, but sometimes even she makes artwork that leaves me feeling kind of "meh." There's nothing actually wrong with the art style of this card, as the shading and lighting is gentle and lovely, which totally fits Jigglypuff as a Pokemon. And I really love that you can see part of the Whirl Islands in the background, including the surrounding whirlpools, and that the background is detailed and the card in general is so colorful. So why is the card this low? Well, Jigglypuff itself. What is it looking at off-camera that has captured its attention? Why is its mouth gaped open in surprise? Why does it look like it has tears in its eyes? Why do its ears look so freaking weird? Why is this card making me ask so many questions?

11. Ken Sugimori I-B (Gym Challenge) / 10. Ken Sugimori I-A (TCG GB)
/

I was originally going to only rank four cards and leave the top ten for two future updates, but these cards are so similar that I might as well rank them as a unit. To be honest I'm really not that wild about Ken Sugimori's official artwork for the first two Generations. The poses and shading are both SO off for most of the Pokemon in those early pieces that I always thought Sugimori was highly overrated until Generation III when it started looking like he wasn't watercoloring his drawings blindfolded. However, Jigglypuff's original Sugimori art isn't that bad; it's already a pretty light-colored Pokemon, so the whole shading thing isn't as noticeable here, and since Sugimori is the official Pokemon artist, he does have its eyes colored correctly, of course. And it's obviously cute because, really, what can you do to make Jigglypuff look ugly?

But the real problem with Sugimori's cards is that A) I've already seen this artwork eight billion times in other places, which kind of desensitizes me to the pictures, and B) the backgrounds are ALWAYS generic as fuck, making me think they're just slapping his stock art on some free clip art and crediting the cards to Sugimori despite him not actually doing anything. I like TCG GB's card a little more because it has an actual background, rather than a generic purple vortex.

i hereby predict that Great Encounters Jiggly and Southern Islands Jiggly go 1-2.

The clay model is also my least favourite and after that, the HGSS card. It looks like it really needs to use the washroom.

Can't wait for the top 5 :) . My favourites are the DP promo, the Great Encounters card and the Magma vs Aqua card.



Careful, Tomokazu might be lurkin' ;o

I APPROVE OF THE NEW DIRECTION THIS THREAD IS TAKING.

I also should probably buy a few TCG cards...

May I suggest, that for the next pokemon, either Wobbuffet or Slowpoke? Thanks, Frost, you're awesome.

Oh yeah I was doing this thing.

5. Kagemaru Himeno I (Jungle)

If you backed me into a corner and demanded to know my favorite TCG artist, I would probably say Kagemaru Himeno; she's the longest-running female TCG artist and her work, while always always good, has improved phenomenally over time. This Jigglypuff was one of Himemaru's first outings; as a result, it looks a little primitive in comparison, but she still knows how to use color and poses expertly to make awesome artwork. Jigglypuff looks very cute singing in a tree, and the sunset, leafy background colors and the musical scale surrounding Jigglypuff are quite fitting. I do have some qualms that take this one out at #5: in addition to Jigglypuff's comically huge feet, its eyes are also green instead of blue once again. Finally, and while this isn't really the artwork's fault, the fact that the comes from one of the classic sets means that I've seen it ten billion times over the years and, therefore, it's just not as exciting to me as it used to be. Despite this, Himemaru's first Jigglypuff outing set the standard for Jigglypuff artwork pretty high.

4. Ken Sugimori II (EX Team Magma VS Team Aqua)

Like I mentioned two posts ago, I wasn't really a fan of Ken Sugimori's official stock art for the first two Generations, mostly due to the uneven water coloring that left huge blotches of white all over the bodies of the Pokemon. Thankfully, starting with Generation III, Sugimori adopted a more appealing style with bolder colors and cuter poses. Hence why this Jigglypuff card ranks so much higher than the two that have the original Generation I stockart; the pink coloring pops out far more, the shadowing is better, and the eyes are bigger, bluer and far more adorable. The background is admittedly still pretty bland, as the cards featuring Sugimori's stock art tend to be, so really it's the picture of Jigglypuff itself that brought this card so high up into the rankings while the bland background keeps it out of the top three.

3. Keiko Fukuyama (Southern Islands)

SWERVE! Evil Penguin predicted that this would be in my top two, and he was close, but he's wrong. Let's talk about the good of this card first. It was made for the special Southern Islands subset, which always gave the card this elusive, cool feeling back when I was kid. And Southern Islands had really, really cute overall and this card is certainly no exception, as Jigglypuff is delighted to be sitting in a field picking flowers as Dodrio and Weepinbell hang out in the background. (All of the Southern Islands artwork was cropped from six larger postcard pictures, so many of them feature things happening behind the main Pokemon.) Jigglypuff's face is extremely adorable and expressive, and the card's background is very colorful. So what holds this card down? Well, the coloring on Jigglypuff itself. While the eyes are dead-on, thankfully, the coloring of Jigglypuff's body leans more toward the gray side than pink, and while it's not a huge flaw, it is enough to hold this card down at #3, especially with the existence of...

2. Kenkichi Toyama (Great Encounters)

Great Encounters Jigglypuff was EP's prediction for #1 and, although it isn't, it's still my favorite of the Jigglypuff cards that I actually own. Released nearly a decade after Southern Islands, this card is essentially a better remake of the previous card. It's got Jigglypuff sitting in a field going, "I has a flower! :3" with a thrilled look on its face. While I do wish that the flowers were colorful, rather than being white, Jigglypuff itself is drawn in a sharper, bolder style and its undeniably pink, unlike in the Southern Islands version. It also seems just a little happier from picking its flowers in this artwork, but maybe that's just my interpretation. I also really like the subtle windiness of the background, with the clouds slanted and a couple of petals floating up from the flowers behind Jigglypuff. If there is only one minor fault with this card to me, it's probably that they made the white parts of Jigglypuff's eyes a tad too big.

And the winner is...

1. Kagemaru Himeno II (DPt-P Promo)

The other Jigglypuff card by my favorite Goddess extraordinare Kagemaru Himeno, this Jigglypuff was released only in Japan as a promotional card during the Platinum series. And it pretty much combines all of my favorite aspects of TCG artwork into a single Jigglypuff piece: an adorable pose, an in-scale design, BLUE eyes that don't look too wonky or dazed, a delightfully happy face, a lovely beach background, and a nice use of shading and coloring that gives the artwork a relaxed, calm aura, which fits the beach scenery and Jigglypuff's facial expression quite well. This is easily my favorite Jigglypuff card, and about the only flaw it has in my eyes is that it was stupidly never released outside of Japan, even though they could have easily shoved it into the waste of a set known as Call of Legends. It seems to be a really rare card as well, since I've never seen it on eBay nor have I ever even seen a scan of it that's bigger than the one above, which is really a disappointing way to show off the #1 entry on this list. Sorry.

dpp promo out of nowhere

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu so close.

I'll go with all of the Unova Pokemon are kinda jank, a lot of designs and overall feel some of them seem more akin to Digimon, rather than Pokemon, but over all we know the true champ of the Unova region is obviously Sewaddle. That mofo is hardcore.