For several years, Pokémon has been rooted in 2D, with only occasional ventures into 3D graphics. But with a little time and a fair bit of processing power, we’re given a glimpse of what the series might look like in HD.

Developer Christian Davis—an environment artist who’s worked on Epic Mickey 2 and Warhammer 40K: Dark Millennium Online—put together a rather stunning model of Blastoise, the fully-evolved original water Pokémon starter, using a combination of ZBrush (a digital sculpting tool) and Maya (3D animation software).

According to his forum posts on Polycount, Davis spent a little over a month working on it during lunch breaks, updating his progress in small chunks as he got the model down, such as the final details on Blastoise’s shell.

Overall, it’s immensely impressive, especially when you consider that Davis did this in five weeks.

If one developer can do this in his free time, just imagine what a full team could do, working around the clock for a solid year or more—it’s enough to make a Pokémaniac absolutely giddy.

Hopefully, Davis is spurring something that Nintendo will notice somewhere down the line, especially given how much attention his artwork and models have picked up as a result of getting highlighted on Reddit‘s front page.

Source: Reddit