Flittle and Espathra

This is...what is this? It's a pure psychic type resembling a little yellow ball thing that flares into a skirtlike wavy frill, with a second pink frill under that one, and a couple of little pointed legs on its brown underside. It has a pair of pigtail-like white fin things sticking out of its head, black-ringed eyes with fat eyelashes, and its mouth is a little pink sucker, like a cartoon octopus.

I'd say this is an interestingly abstract monster, but believe it or not, this is supposed to be a little baby bird. I guess I can see the "cartoon bird chick" in this design once I'm looking for it, but I never would have guessed at just a glance. There's little to its concept otherwise, except that it "wanders wastelands," that its frills are what generate psychic energy and it really likes berries.

Flittle evolves into an "ostrich" Pokemon, Espathra, and dang is this thing cool looking?! I have to say I didn't fully appreciate it until seeing this official artwork. Its body is simplistically puffy and white, but covered mostly by its large, orange wings, which look almost more like a beetle carapace with "frilly" ends. Multiple layers of yellow and white frills extend from beneath these, resembling hanging plumage made of curtain fabric. Its limbs are very cool looking, the thin purple ostrich legs wrapped in white segments that aren't just markings, but thicker pieces almost like flexible pipe. The neck is designed the same way, albeit with gold-colored "pipe segments," and the simple, purple head tapers into a noselike beak with no obvious mouth, but it does have big, eerie, penetrating teal eyes and what looks like a white "hairdo" made of the same cloth-like material as its frills.

It's technically a kind of cluttered and messy design, but the execution of it is still beautifully organic. I feel like other Pokemon might have made these elements look like stiff, awkward plastic, but look at how the edges of those leg and neck segments are subtly bent outwards, like vertebrae! How the neck gentle tapers toward the head! The curvature of the cascading frills! The overall principle of this design feels like it's supposed to be a bird put together from gaudy fabric instead of feathers, with a bit of an "Ancient Egypt" art style, which definitely gives a bit more context to its unevolved form.

I'd also like to point out that this "organic cloth" aesthetic is quite common to psychic Pokemon, but traditionally the humanoids. This is of course because humans wear clothes, yes, but this look is even more common to psychic type humanoids than to fighting type humanoids, and relatively rare on non-humanoids. I think it looks dang cool on an animal shape like Espathra! I actually kind of dismissed this Pokemon when I first saw it, and even thought it looked a bit bad due to its mostly brown and gold palette, but I've decided it's actually pretty awesome.