Chris Snyder

RJ Palmer: I'm RJ Palmer, I'm a concept artist at Ubisoft, I draw creatures and monsters, and I worked on "Detective Pikachu."

Narrator: He started drawing when he was just three years old. He continued to hone his craft at the San Francisco Academy of Art. Then in 2012, his drawings for an amateur fan art project gained so much attention on the internet, it ultimately landed him a job on the new Pokémon film.

RJ: So I started drawing a shark dinosaur, and that turned into the Pokémon Garchomp, and people really, really responded to it, so I kept drawing more.

Narrator: RJ used real animals as inspiration.

RJ: The natural world is so inspiring, and I think pulling from that, as much as possible, is really cool.

Narrator: For example, Mewtwo was a combination of several creatures.

RJ: Kangaroo, and a little bit of rhino, and hairless cat, and some barn owl.

Narrator: For Charizard, he focused on different lizards.

RJ: So I looked at a lot of monitor lizards and brought qualities of crocodilians in there that I liked, as well.

Narrator: Surprisingly enough, RJ's main tools for designing his realistic Pokémon were simply a Wacom tablet and Photoshop.

RJ: And I've got a second monitor up, so I can have all my references.

Narrator: Ultimately, it was the amount of time and effort RJ poured into the project that made his Pokémon come to life. RJ researched every animal he used for inspiration, and in the end, each Pokémon he created took 30 or more hours to complete.

RJ: The one that took the longest to make is Tyrantrum. Tyrantrum is my favorite Pokémon.

Narrator: He posted them on the popular fan art community site, DeviantArt, and his work won over fans on the internet. It also got the attention of the production designer of "Detective Pikachu."

RJ: He gives me a call, and he's like, "Would you like to work on the Pokémon movie?" And I'm in shock, it was amazing. I've always been really into Pokémon as just a franchise, because I think it's really fun and creative.

Narrator: He moved to LA and worked on the film for seven months, doing concept art for characters and the environments. He helped come up with the initial designs for the Pokémon.

RJ: And then it gets given to all sorts of crazy effects houses.

Narrator: While his Pokémon on DeviantArt are more realistic, the ones he designed for the film had to be a bit more traditional.

RJ: So working on the movie, they had to get more in line with the cartoon aesthetic, I think. You do a design, and the people have opinions, and then you do another design, and they also still have opinions, and so it's a constant back and forth, trying to make one person happy, which is going to make somebody else unhappy, and you have to try and find a middle ground that's going to work for people.

Narrator: Pikachu, as the star of the film and franchise, took a while to nail down and get right.

Pikachu: Pika pika!

Woman: Yeah, pika pika pika, he's adorable!

RJ: Pikachu's one of the most well known cartoon characters ever, right?

Narrator: Despite speaking English and being a bit more furry than the cartoon, the Pikachu in the film is different from his realistic design.

RJ: I based him on rodents and lagomorphs. Lagomorphs are like rabbits, just like small, woodland critters.

Narrator: But it was Mr. Mime that really grabbed the internet's attention. Since his debut in the trailer, he's become a meme.

RJ: Mr. Mime was always going to be weird, right? 'Cause what do you make that thing? When I did my realistic version of it, I made it a frog, because it can be so many weird things. I think a detail that I didn't know they were going to go for, but the little shoulder pauldrons actually look like kickballs. I thought that was a pretty fun idea. And the Jigglypuff I like. In the Pokédex entry, they talk about it having a balloon-like skin texture, which would probably be pretty creepy in real life.

Narrator: So they made it more furry with a curly wisp of hair. In the end though, it's the fans who have the final say.

RJ: Everybody has their own idea of what Pokémon is, and I've certainly encountered that working on my own stuff. I've had some very divisive takes on certain Pokémon. So I knew that was going to be a problem going into the movie, and so far, at least, the response to the trailer, at least from the circles that I've seen, seem pretty positive.

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Narrator: The Pokémon in "Detective Pikachu" have a new look, and they've never seemed more real or terrifying. That's in large part thanks to this guy.

How Pokémon were transformed into lifelike creatures for 'Detective Pikachu'

For starters, it's not the same fish. Canned tuna typically comes from albacore. They're small, grow fast, and are abundant for fishing. And they certainly don't weigh 489 pounds. There's only one type of tuna in the world that grows that big, bluefin tuna. And if you wanna try some, it's gonna cost you.

Derek Wilcox: We could buy tuna from Japan that we'd have to charge maybe $80 for one piece of otoro.

Narrator: Derek Wilcox is a chef at Shoji, a Japanese restaurant in New York. He was trained in Japan and worked there for more than 10 years. Restaurants like Shoji serve raw bluefin tuna, or what's called kuro maguro in Japanese.

They get their tuna from a number of different sources, including Japan's Tsukiji fish market.

There are several different varieties of tuna, but bluefin is what you're most likely to find at high-end sushi restaurants.

Wilcox: Bluefin is the most sought after. Only bluefin has the intense marbling. Bluefin also, when it's aged properly, has a particular balance of flavors.

Narrator: A large adult bluefin can weigh around 450 pounds or more, and the price of the fish varies based on a number of different factors.

Wilcox: It completely depends upon where you get it from, but it's never cheap. A local bluefin on the east coast will run anywhere between $20 and $40 a pound. You could be paying north of $200 a pound for bluefin from Japan.

Narrator: According to Wilcox, tuna from Japan is better than American tuna during the peak winter months. While Boston tuna is best during summer and fall. But it's the tuna that comes from Oma in Japan that's widely considered to be some of the best in the world.

Wilcox: Peak-season Oma tuna will, in Japan, cost 400-450 a kilo. Which means by the time it gets here, it'll cost close to $400 a pound.

Narrator: Besides its superior fat content, another reason fish is more expensive from Japan is that it has further to travel, and it goes through a rather lengthy process before making its way to your plate.

Wilcox: There's more hands that it passes through in Japan, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Narrator: Wilcox says the fish is also handled better in Japan than the US. So there's less damage and more precise cutting.

Wilcox: We get like a Boston bluefin, it goes from the fisherman, to the distributor, to our door. Whereas in Japan, it's going from the fisherman, usually to a collective or cooperative, to the government that's running the auction, to a middle wholesaler, to a final wholesaler, to a restaurant or a hotel.

All high-end fish are auctioned in Japan. Fish that's more sought after, that's caught in a better place, that's handled better, that's clearly better quality will go for a higher price, and that fisherman will get more of the money.

Narrator: The first auction of the year in Japan is when you'll see ridiculously high prices for fish. Mostly as a symbolic gesture, or a publicity stunt. Which is partly why the 489-pound tuna sold for $1.8 million in 2013. And the first fish of 2018 sold for $323,000.

Wilcox: In Japanese culture, that first thing you do all year is the most important. It sets the tone for the whole year. That first tuna of the year always goes for the highest price that any tuna will go for the whole rest of the year.

Narrator: And the different parts of a bluefin tuna also vary drastically in price.

Wilcox: If you imagine a tuna as like a torpedo, they'll split it into quarters lengthwise, cut off the head, and the collar, and we will take one of the two belly quarters.

Narrator: Here's what one quarter looks like when it's delivered. This piece came from Boston, and was caught the previous day. Wilcox splits up the meat based on type.

Wilcox: It's just like sides of beef. You know, you buy a side of beef, it's all the same, but once you break it down, the filet ends up being the most expensive part, because it's the most desirable. It's also small, and it requires a lot of labor to peel off the silver skin. Otoro is the fattiest part of the tuna outside of the head and collar area.

Narrator: This is the most expensive. And depending on where it's from, and where the fish was raised, the price can vary anywhere from $10 a piece to upwards of $80.

Wilcox: The chutoro is getting around toward the side of the tuna, and it doesn't have the striations of fat, but it still has fat within the red of the meat, so you get a mix of fat and red. And then, akami which means, literally, red meat in Japanese, is the leanest part which you find more towards the center of the tuna closer to the backbone.

Narrator: Akami is the most common and cheapest part of the fish, but it's still more expensive than that can of albacore at your local market.

Wilcox: When you're assessing the quality of the tuna, you wanna taste the red meat, the akami. It's a wild animal, so it tells you whether it had a good diet, whether it had a good life, and it got exercise, and it lived in clean waters, and was able to swim around a lot. So, a farm-raised tuna is, generally, force-fed sardines, and you can actually taste sardines in the fat of a farm-raised tuna. Whereas a wild tuna has a varied diet, and has a much cleaner and milder flavor to the fat.

Narrator: But for decades, wild bluefin tuna were over-fished in the Pacific, which was harming their population and making it more difficult to come by. However, more recently tighter controls on fishing have led to a resurgence in the population. But they could still be better, Wilcox says. In fact, Wilcox avoids any Pacific bluefin that is not from Japan, and says you should too.

Wilcox: If you eat Pacific bluefin, not specifically from Japan, then that's really irresponsible.

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Narrator: In 2013, a 489-pound tuna sold for a whopping $1.8 million. But you can buy a can of tuna fish at the grocery store for under $2. So, what's the difference?

This fish was sold for $1.8 million — here's why bluefin tuna is so expensive

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Pulse Ghana is the most followed news and entertainment platform, informing and engaging young Ghanaians round the clock, providing updates by the hour.

Chris Snyder

Articles written by the author

How Pokémon were transformed into lifelike creatures for 'Detective Pikachu'

This fish was sold for $1.8 million — here's why bluefin tuna is so expensive