This is my illustrated take on the Surfing Pikachu V from the Celebrations set, released in 2021 to mark Pokémon's 25th anniversary. The original card by Kouki Saitou shows Pikachu mid-surf on a perfect wave, ears back in the wind, that classic Pikachu joy on his face. The whole Celebrations set was designed to be a love letter to longtime fans, full of throwback art and reimagined classics, and Surfing Pikachu was the standout. It's a callback to the very first generation of Pokémon, when "Surf" was a rare HM move and a few special event Pikachus could actually learn it.

For anyone who grew up with Pokémon Yellow, this scene means something specific. The mini-game on the GameBoy where you'd surf Pikachu and try to chain tricks for points. The Pokémon Stadium spinoff. The years of trying to get a Surfing Pikachu through some weird convention promo. This card brought all of that back at once.

Like every print at Palette Town, this Surfing Pikachu started as a TCG card I love and got rebuilt from scratch in Adobe Illustrator. There's no painting and no photography in here. Every wave crest, every spray of foam, every spark from Pikachu's cheeks is a vector shape I drew by hand and stacked in layers. Even what looks like linework is shapes. It's slower than digital painting, but it means the file scales cleanly to any size. The print on your wall looks exactly as crisp at 24"x32" as it does at 8"x10", and the ocean colors stay punchy whether you go matte or semi-gloss.

If you're a longtime Pokémon fan, this is a print with real history behind it. If you're new to the franchise, it's just a really happy Pikachu on a really good wave.