Winners Announced for 2022’s Pokemon TCG Illustration Contest!

Creatures has announced the winners of this year’s Pokemon TCG Illustration Contest! The theme of the contest was to draw a Pokemon in its daily life.

As originally announced, three illustrations will be turned into promo cards. The winner is REND, who will receive $5,000. The two runner-ups — one from Japan and one from the United States — will each receive $3,000. Like past contests, the three promo cards will presumably be released to the public sometime in the future.

Two more runner-ups will receive $1,000 each. The illustrations will not be turned into promo cards:

Fifteen honorable mentions will each receive $500, including our retired site artist, Xous54! :D

You can read a Google Translate version of Creatures’s announcement here, which explains why the judges chose each illustration.

What do you think of Creature’s choices? Did your favorites make the cut?

Trivia: The first 2 winners of the Illustrator Grand Prix had already commisioned artworks to the Pokemon TCG. The first one was commisioned the promo Jolteon and Eevee (BST Promos), and the second one was commisioned ASR Ponyta
 
Pretty disappointed by this one tbh. They screened out a lot of my favorites and of the ones they narrowed it down to I'm not sure they picked the winners. If nothing else, it's nice to see Xous made it to honorable mentions.

Trivia: The first 2 winners of the Illustrator Grand Prix had already commisioned artworks to the Pokemon TCG. The first one was commisioned the promo Jolteon and Eevee (BST Promos), and the second one was commisioned ASR Ponyta
Both have done more than just the few you've mentioned!
 
Serious question, why do we not get more art like this in our cards? A lot of what comes out lately feels pretty generic. Not to say there are not still stand outs in every set but I'd take artwork like this over most of the 3D stuff any day.
 
Serious question, why do we not get more art like this in our cards? A lot of what comes out lately feels pretty generic. Not to say there are not still stand outs in every set but I'd take artwork like this over most of the 3D stuff any day.
Par for the course when half your set is ultra rares...
 
The winners just don't really impress me compared to the runner ups. Was really rooting for the paper-esque Greninja, and at least one Cramorant to win. Don't think I'll be searching for these cards for my collection.
 
The art is good. I think they should have done some of the runner up as promos though.
 
Serious question, why do we not get more art like this in our cards? A lot of what comes out lately feels pretty generic. Not to say there are not still stand outs in every set but I'd take artwork like this over most of the 3D stuff any day.
We need them to hire western artists too.
 
Once again in classic tones a massively wasted opportunity by the pokemon company in this artist contests by not buying out a bunch of these pieces of artwork and selling them as play mats because ive seen about 30 different pieces of artwork i would gladly pay $25-50 per as a playmat.

Whoever runs the marketing and sales departments needs to be fired and they need to hire somebody with a drive to take things to the next level.
 
Very happy to see Xous make it as far as he did. I remember the days when half of this forum had his artwork as an avatar. Congratulations!