Mega Delphox

In my first posted Pokémon artwork, starring Mudkip, I explored using graphics to create a design from an illustration. I hoped this would give the artwork a more unique identity than painting a background or leaving it blank. Continuing with this idea, I wanted to illustrate and create a design of the newly introduced Mega Evolutions for the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A.
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Mega Delphox
Probably one of the most challenging Pokémon I've had to pose, but it had one of my favourite design ideas, boarding on a burning magic broom stick, I knew I had to do it justice. I struggled a lot visualising what kind of motion Delphox would be in, and even when I leaned towards skateboarding as a reference, it still took many failures and rough poses trying to understand body placements before reaching something I really liked the look of. The pose I settled on felt very powerful with its outstretched arm and low angle view, but its flowy fur and balance on top of the broom gave it a sense of elegance. However, this wouldn't be the highlight of the piece as the composition also gave the perfect opportunity to emphasise the flames propelling its broom.
After doing a few of these designs already, I wanted to take a different approach to these next ones that involved the starters. My intent was to design them with aspects of book covers, and with Delphox's witch and coven inspirations, I absolutely had to incorporate magic circles into the design somehow. I took reference from plenty of magic circle design in pop-culture like Hades 2, along with looking at real examples of magic and alchemical circles, and had a go at making up a Pokéball inspired magic circle. While I found it difficult adapting this to look like a magic tome, the patterns do a well enough job selling the idea and the cursive writing looking like Delphox's own signature, is kind of reminiscent of scholars signing their own works.