io9 interviewed MPC’s VFX Supervisor Pete Dionne about Pokémon: Detective Pikachu.

“Being the most recognizable and iconic Pokémon, and character designs, in the last few decades, he was probably the most difficult character [to get right] from the point of, ‘How much do we bend his design before he no longer looks like Pikachu?’,” Dionne told us. “Other characters, there’s a little more leeway poking through than with Pikachu—the slightest deviation from the original TV design and he stopped looking like Pikachu. Knowing that we’re throwing fur on him and putting Ryan Reynolds’ snarky personality in him, how were we going to find the balance?”

Check out the full interview here.

After speaking with Pete, io9 also wrote a piece on the creation of Lickitung.

Naturally, we’re inquisitively-minded folks, so we asked the obvious: What does a Lickitung tongue actually feel like? Turns out, the answer is babies. “It feels like a baby’s tongue,” Dionne revealed. “Ultimately, what we ended up using was a giant, scaled-up baby’s tongue, with the same very soft, but slightly coarse texture, with the slightest level of moisture. And trust me when I say a lot of discussion went into that.”

Full interview here