How Detective Pokémon was animated?

Pokémon the anime series was released in 1998 creating a huge universe of super-powered animals of which has spawned into a huge franchise. Now the live action film has released, the question is: how did the studio create/animate the Pokémon itself while sticking to the roots and looks of each Pokémon and making their moves realistic in the real world? The animators had one caveat from the Pokémon creator that the Pokémon had to look cute and not scary.

Video: How Pokemon Detective Pikachu Was Animated by Movies Insider

Animators used the Pokémon series and game as a reference to build the looks and feel of each Pokémon. However, to create Pokemon that move realistically, the animators had to find real-world animals that they could base their Pokémon on to get the movements for each Pokémon right. From there they could get the muscle movements correct when they move, thereby making the movements of the Pokémon more realistic. In the film, you can see individual muscles moving when Pikachu speaks or when moving to create that illusion of realism.

Now for each Pokemon, they either have fur or no fur and different textures. For Pikachu, the animators studied fur patterns of rabbits and applied those to Pikachu. However, for Mr Mime, the animators created the Pokemon using different textures from different objects such as dodge ball and plastic. This enables animators to create detailed Pokémon and allows them to deal with light as they can use the everyday material and textures to see how lighting interacts with the texture either when it reflects the light or absorbs it.

For battle scenes, the animators studied animals/humans during play or watched clips of wild animals hunting to see the physics behind their movements to create more realistic battle sequences in the movie. Certain Pokemons were based on an animal while others were based on several animals. Mewtwo was animated to look like a muscular child but cats heavily influenced his movements. For Mr Mime, they literally filmed the movements of a real-life mime.