We're doing generation 3 now! As always, whenever possible, the artwork are all taken from Pokemon Home.
A wonderful set of neon green for the Treecko line. Love both the neon green on Treecko and Grovyle, and the more bluish shade for the Sceptiles. I like that the "leaf" parts of Grovyle and Treecko are given a shade of reddish brown, which actually calls out attention to those parts better than the original colours. Pretty great!
Yellow Torchic is the only nice Shiny here, I would say.
Shiny Combusken looks washed-out, shiny Mega Blaziken looks like someone pissed on the white parts, and shiny Blaziken doesn't even look that different.
They all bexome this shade of pink-purple and it is a surprisingly fun colour on them! It obviously looks best on Mudkip, and I think Marshtomp and Swampert would look much better if the accents contrasted better. Maybe that's why I like sjiny Mega Swampert with its orange highlights?
Not the biggest fan of the shades of yellow they used here, again looking a bit more piss-like. Not terrible, though. Really like the colours of shiny Poochyena's eyes.
Shiny Hoenn-variant Zigzagoon and Linoone become orangey-brown, which is an okay shiny. It works better on Zigzagoon and he ends up looking like a regular raccoon.
The shiny Galarian line, on the other hand, go WILD with colours, going for eye-searing 90's neon pink and baby blue. Fits well with the design, particularly on shiny Obstagoon. Love that the tongues also change colour! They look stupidly over the top. I approve!
Purple Wurmple is great! It's just great, a simple but striking palette swap. I feel like shiny Silcoon and Beautifly feel minimally-changed. Particularly Beautifly.
Leaf-green shiny Cascoon is surprisingly appropriate regardless of the camouflage or toxic connotations. Shiny Dustox... I don't dislike it. I'd prefer for the main body to change as well, but the leaves becoming a bit more dull and autumn-like works for me.
I reasonably like these guys! The lilypads all turning into a darker shade of green is pretty, and this is what a 'off-colour' shiny should look. Ludicolo probably changes the least but it's still evident what's different. But shiny Lombre's lime-green body and Lotad's dark-purple body both work well placed next to the altered green of the lilypads.
I don't like these ones as much. Shiny Shiftry is a huge disappointment. The white-silvery cap on shiny Seedot is cute enough, but I still think they should've changed more with the main nut body. Shiny Nuzleaf looks the most different, but it's still not a particularly flattering colour.
Ash has a shiny Swellow in the anime, right? I feel both Taillow and Swellow just look washed-out, though. The pale green doesn't really do them any favours, though at least they look vividly different.
I own a shiny Wingull in Pokemon Go! It's a simple change from blue highlights to neon green, and it's a pretty highlight! I think they probably should've changed Pelipper's prominent beak, but I can also understand why they just swapped out the 'feather' colours.
The Ralts family are all winners in my opinion. Changing the green helmet and limbs into a nice shade of baby blue works for all six forms, though shiny Ralts' body being pink looks a bit off. Shiny Kirlia, Gardevoir and Gallade all look great!
And Shiny Mega Gardevoir and Gallade takes it a bit further by tossing in some black into the outfit. It's particularly neat for Mega Gardevoir since all the 'black' portions are also white in Mega Gardevoir's regular colouration, but they clearly went and just painted her 'skirt' and her 'gloves' black to give the impression of a ballgown. Cool! Shiny Mega Gallade isn't quite as impressive, with just the underside of his cape being silvery-gray. Kinda wished they added some colour to his blade or chest.
Shiny Surskit just looks dirty. I don't like it.
Shiny Masquerain is fun! The eyespots going into a green-yellow-red colour scheme works pretty well as an alternative to what regular Masquerain has.
Oh, I love them. It's a muted colour scheme that really fits an 'autumn' theme. Grass-types always have an easy out with an 'autumn' palette. Shiny Shroomish in particular looks great. Shiny Breloom probably would've worked a bit better with a different shade of yellow, but I definitely appreciate the two-tone colouration which contrasts against regular Breloom's more colourful look well.
Purple Slakoth is a'ight. Shiny Vigoroth and Slaking are different enough for me not to go "wah wah I can't tell the difference", but still disappointing.
Shiny Nincada is all right. Yellow body, silver claws? Not the best thing on this page, but it's all right.
Shiny Ninjask and shiny Shedinja are disappointments. Shedinja in particular, where I'm not even sure what they changed.
Again, another line where the pre-evolved form looks great! Shiny Whismur with the neon-green highlights and the very pale off-white replacing the pink looks very strikingly different from regular Whismur.
Meanwhile, shiny Loudred and Exploud... they look different, sure. They have the same shade of lavender that a lot of shinies from generation 1-3 have, but regular Loudred and Exploud are basically already a slightly darker shade. I really want them to retain Whismur's colouration, or at least the neon-green highlights replacing the two's yellow highlights. Disappointing.
I own two of these in Pokemon Go. Shiny Makuhita is an extreme disappointment that just looks a bit paler, but shiny Hariyama is amazing. The sumo skirt going from yellow to orange, and the brown parts of his anatomy going into purple somehow works well for a nice negative-colours shiny. A fan of this one!
Also a fan of these two! Shiny Probopass in particular. Yellow or gold can make for some really great shinies, particularly for rock or metal based Pokemon. I like that they kept the red noses around, but the golden body for both shiny Nosepass and Probopass are really cool!
Terrible. Shiny Skitty is just pale, and while shiny Delcatty is technically different, it really just feels like a monitor saturation glitch.
I love the idea that shiny Sableye's gemstones change colour, going from ruby-red to emerald-green. Extra-noticeable in the Mega Evolution, with the big-ass emerald it's holding. Not the biggest fan of the main body being this weird shade of yellowish-green. White, black or red might work better?
Regular shiny Mawile isn't quite pink enough, but they clearly picked up on how fabulous the design looks when the did shiny Mega Mawile. Love the two giant pink monster jaws, and I do really like that the colour of Mega Mawile's "pants" are reversed with the pink pants turning black. It's a nice little internal reversal of Mega Mawile's accents, and this results in a really fun shiny.
I have a couple of shiny Aggrons in Pokemon Go. And... the red eyes are really cool, particularly on Lairon and Aggron, but the weird green-chrome body is honestly not that good looking. Bizarrely, for being a much newer shiny, Mega Aggron's silvery parts gets painted a rather nasty yellow-gray. Kind of a miss.
Oh, interesting. Meditite and Medicham kind of swap colours! And shiny Meditite with only a pinkish-red colour to contrast against the white parts of his body is pretty neat. The pale blue works very well on the two shiny Medichams, but unfortunately for whatever reason they decided to paint Medicham's main body piss-yellow, which is never a good look.
Oh yeah. Shine Electricke goes from mainly green into a very nice shade of bluish-green that screams 'electrical beast' a lot better, but it doesn't hold a candle to how cool the jet-black shiny Manectric and Mega Manectric look. Black is an easy colour to put on any 'cool' Pokemon, and the Manectrics definitely deserve it!
Surprised they didn't swap the colours. Shiny Minun's accents become a very pleasant shade of minty green, but shiny Plusle is just slightly darker-tinted and it's kinda m'eh.
(I'll be combining some of the 'paired' Pokemon in a single line. Generation III have a couple of them. I'll separate Zangoose and Seviper as 'rivals', though.)
Oh, wonderful! Absolutely sublime! It could've been easy (and honestly rather boring) to just swap Volbeat and Illumise's colours. But look at them! Look at their over-the-top neon-coloured negative-photo look! Volbeat has lavender skin with bright yellow and blue as highlights, while Illulmise has baby blue for her skin, with orange and yellow highlights. For otherwise being pretty irrelevant Pokemon, these two have some of the prettiest shinies.
I can see what they were going for here, and I can't say I dislike it? Basically, shiny Roselia and Roserade swap their traditional red and blue rose for purple and black. I like that it's not an obvious black-and-white, for sure! Shiny Budew is very pretty, too, changing just a single colour but it being quite enough to make him memorable.
Interesting! The shiny palettes actually have the side effect of making shiny Gulpin and shiny Swalot's colour schemes match each other a bit better. I really do like blue Swalot, come to think of it. Pretty nice shinies.
I'm not sure about shiny Carvanha? The colour scheme definitely screams 'shiny', it's evidently different than regular Carvanha, and the combination of green, blue and yellow are gloriously eye-searing. I'm just not sure if the colours work well for Carvanha, is all. Very pretty overall, I do appreciate what they did here.
Shiny Sharpedo and Mega Sharpedo being purple is all right, though not eh best colouration they could've gone. Not complaining that much.
Insert your own Thanos joke for shiny Wailmer. Got that out of your system? Okay? Good. A perfectly serviceable purple shiny. Not the best, but an okay one.
Shiny Numel is just pale and disappointing, but shiny Camerupt and Mega Camerupt going black not only is cool on principle, but is also rather appropriate with the whole volcano vibe. I actually think the random rings on base Camerupt's form being yellow-on-black is much better on blue-on-orange.
I caught one very randomly -- and I didn't even notice it until the battle screen begun -- in Pokemon Violet. I really like mine!
Oh! Pretty! Turning just Torkoal's body yellow-gold is nice enough, but the shell goes from gray to a nice shade of reddish-brown, as if the coal furnace is kind of overheating. A surprisingly nice shiny!
Another one that's pretty great. I love that the pearls for both shiny Spoink and Grumpig both become black, because 'black pearl', yeah? Shiny Grumpig is an okay, distinct shade of yellow (I like that the pink parts are kept) but shiny Spoink is the clear winner. Love that pinkish-orange pastel shade they used on him.
Green-spots Spinda is... okay. I'm not a big fan, but it's not terrible.
Pretty interesting set. Shiny Trapinch being metallic green is okay, and looks a bit better rendered in this art style compared to the original sprites. Shiny Vibrava shies away from the neon-y colours and trades all the green for a nice shade of brown-red, which I thought is kind of appropriate for the desert.
I kind of wish shiny Flygon went for a similar 'desert camouflage' colour scheme, but the pale lime-green with neon blue and orange highlights are all just so nice to look at that I can't help but like him.
Nowhere as nice as the other yellow shinies on this page, but on the other hand I do admit that having the cactus Pokemon be coloured like they're dehydrated is appropriate?
Oh, pretty! The soft, almost-golden yellow works well contrasted against the clouds, and it's such a nice, majestic and even celestial feeling for shiny Swablu and shiny Altaria. Shiny Mega Altaria loses a bit of points because the pink cloud-wings don't quite look as nice next to the gold, but all of these are nice.
A wonderful shiny! Shiny Zangoose swaps the red parts of his fur into a great shade of baby blue, which is nice enough. But what makes this shiny work is swapping the claws into blood-red, making this alternate-coloured Zangoose look a bit fiercer.
A fun colouration! They keep Seviper's main body black, swapped the fangs and tails into a glorious psatel blue, and the rest of him has a nice combination of neon green and neon pink. Remove just one of the three highlight colours and shiny Seviper wouldn't work quite as well, but combined exactly like this makes another wonderfully fabulous shiny.
Shiny Lunatone swaps the eyeball colour and becomes a slightly different shade of moon. He's evidently different, but I'm not the biggest fan.
But he's at least a bit different, though. Shiny Sorlock just isn't clear without comparing him side-by-side to the original.
Shiny Barboach swaps his blues for a very pleasant shade of yellow, which looks pretty wonderfully different.
Unfortunately, shiny Whiscash barely looks different. The blues and yellows are dark enough for me to instantly know that he's shiny (unlike someone like Dusknoir or Skitty), but not enough to make him look significantly different.
Shiny Corphish is okay enough, looking just different (and tasy) enough of a shade of red, but shiny Crawdaunt just looks washed-out.
I'm pretty sure I got one of these in Pokemon Sword! And Shiny Claydol is... well, his eyeballs go a bit paler and become orange. That's a bit disappointing, honestly, and this is the type of shiny that I really don't like all that much. The colours are different, yes, but withot comparing side-by-side to the original Claydol it just doesn't look evident.
Look at shiny Baltoy, though, where it's obvious that the red markings are traded in for a bright glow-in-the-dark green. Pretty nice compared to his evolevd form.
Love this. It's just a byproduct of the palette swap, but shiny Lileep and Cradily swap colours. I love it since Cradily already vaguely has a 'mimickry' vibe going on. That said, shiny Cradily becomes a bit more pink than purple and doesn't look the best, but green shiny Lileep is excellent.
Shiny Anorith is a bit more golden, which I think is a nice change! It's a great example of a somewhat more subtle shiny. But pale-pink Armaldo just looks like a washed-out sepia photograph.
Purple Feebas wouldn't be as good withot the silver fins. I like the end result! It's pretty cool.
But I am absolutely pleased that Milotic, which is all about beauty and elegance, retain it with this alternate palette. The main cream eel body is still retained, but swapping the ears/hands with a glorious pastel blue, and then using a combination of yellow and orange for the rest of shiny Milotic's colour scheme ends up for a very gorgeous colour scheme. Wonderful!
Pink Castform is okay. Not my favourite, though. All the weather forms are slightly different, but I had to look up the original colours. The rainy and snowy forms' "masks" being slightly different colours does make Castform look somewhat different. I think the snowy form reminds me of Grapploct.
The red band on shiny Kecleon's stomach go from red to blue. It's admittedly a very interesting place to change since that band is the only part of Kecleon that doesn't get camouflaged, but it's not the most noticeable change... and the anime and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon both feature very prominently a purple Kecleon with neon-green highlights and that's such a superior colour scheme.
Shiny Shuppet looks good! I love how the teal-blue contrasts with Shuppet's own mesmerizing eyes.
Shiny Banette is one of those you can't really tell without putting it next to the regular Banette colours. Shiny Bannette brings back the teal, but it's not quite as striking as shiny Shuppet and I kinda wished they did something with the pink inner body.
You know, they had a great thing going on here. Shiny Duskull and shiny Dusclops aren't quite blood-red, but they went for a muted metallic red that matches their own red eyes. It's not ideal since it takes attention away from the eyes, but I'll not say no to a creepy red skull-ghost.
...and then shiny Dusknoir becomes one of those terrible shinies that makes me double-check if I copied the wrong image. Sigh.
Yeah, sorry, shiny Tropius. You just look like someone forgot to water you.
Also very disappointing. Shiny Chingling doesn't even look different. I actually have one in Legends Arceus and I wouldn't be able to tell it's shiny if not for seeing the little shiny star-sprinkles. Shiny Chimecho is... green? He's obviously shiny but he looks like the result of a mouldy photograph.
All of this is kind of extra-disappointing because you'd think that the decorative red markings on their ribbons would've been an obvious part to change.
I don't like Shiny Absol as much as a lot of people out there, but the pink-orange shade that they replaced his black parts with is pretty striking. Love that Absol's red eyes become blue, I feel like it's the change that completes the look.
Shiny Snorunt (I have this in Go!) is amazing. The baby-blue cone and the yellow borders alone already make for a great colour palette, but it contrasts so well with the two red dot-eyes on Snorunt's face.
Shiny Glalie (and Mega Glalie) changes a single detail. The eyes go from icy-blue to demonic red, and it... it works? It works better on regular Glalie since the eyes are the most eye-catching part of the design. Meanwhlie, shiny Froslass tries to do the same, swapping her obi from red to pink... and it's hardly noticeable. Sorry, Froslass.
Another purple-lavender set of shinies. Not the best on this page, honestly, but it works particularly well on Wailmer. It's okay on Sealeo and Walrein. At least they look different? I've got a shiny Walrein in Pokemon Go and I completely forgot I have one. Though I kinda forget this line more times than I care to admit.
They may be some of the most forgotten Pokemon from Generation III, but good god they make for wonderfully beautiful shinies. Shiny Clamperl's purple + baby blue + gold combo is a winner by all stretch, and I am definitely a huge fan of this one. The pearl being golden works well, too!
Shiny Huntail is probably my favourite out of the line, a great usage of eye-searing bright green for this design. Shiny Gorebyss isn't far behind on looking pretty as well, swapping the original pink to a much nicer bright yellow. I like that the purple seashell ornaments and accents are kept, and the yellow/purple contrast does look pretty nice.
I like the teal colouration on Relicanth. It's a nice teal colour. I like that he still looks somewhat raggedy and crusty even with a new shiny colouration.
Another pretty one! Yellow shinies almost always look good if they're not piss-coloured! Not much to say, this one is a pretty fishy.
Shiny Shelgon just looks mouldy, but the eye-searing neon green surprisingly works well on Bagon and the two Salamences. Make your own Yoshi jokes as you want for Bagon, but green is just a colour that does work well for dinosaurs and dragons in general. I don't actually mind neon-green Salamence as an alternate palette, but it's just not as good as the regular blue one.
One of the best shinies full stop! Beldum's original dark blue and gray colour scheme already gets across the idea of a robot Pokemon pretty well, but do you know what does? Silver with gold highlights! Every single member of the Beldum line just looks so badass with the shiny colouration, and the neon blue X on Mega Metagross's face works pretty well! Pretty much perfect. So perfect that they gave basically everyone one of these shiny Beldums for free during Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire's original release.
The only one of the three Hoenn Regis to get a good shiny! I like that the white stones are turned into dark chocolate rocks. I love the possible explanation that this particular shiny Regirock might just have absorbed rocks from a different locale, like from a canyon instead of a desert. Very nice, and looking like a chocolate box is a nice bonus.
Terrible. You really need to put this side-by-side with the non-shiny Regice to tell it's shiny.
Slightly less terrible than shiny Regice, but the icky metallic green just doesn't do him any favours. Eh.
Shiny Latias is a wonderful shade of golden yellow, replacing her red. It's wonderful, and as good of a palette as regular Latias.
The shiny version of Mega Latias is a terrible puke green, and is as terrible as everything about the mega.
Shiny Latios follows shiny Latias in having a very pleasant shiny, being a glorious neon blue-green shade. Again, shiny Mega Latios is a disappointingly ugly shade of puke-green.
I'm... okay with pink Kyogre? It's not the best. But shiny Primal Kyogre is jet-black with all the glowing blue and yellow tron lines going all around, and... okay, the pink 'fingertips' kind of ruin the vibe. But I absolutely find it pretty damn cool. It's a bit of cheating that the Generation VI remakes basically slap all the three box legendaries with black shinies, but... don't break what's not broken.
Shiny Groudon is a shide of bright yellow. Again, not the most terrible, but the shiny Primal Groudon goes for jet-black and this Godzilla colouration with the magma Tron lines is just amazing. Regular colour Primal Groudon already adds a lot of black to the colour scheme, and turning it all black is pretty great!
And, of course, the original black-and-gold shiny is Rayquaza. Whether it's regular Rayquaza or Mega Rayquaza, they both look just straight-up badass. Yes, it's a very obvious colour scheme, but it's also one that just works. Easily one of the coolest shinies ever, and while the cool factor is a bit basic in this case, for black Rayquaza basic works.
An interesting change? Shiny Jirachi swaps his regular blue wish-tags for red ones. It's not the best shiny and I kinda wished that his yellow parts got altered as well, but it's a very obvious change.
Shiny Deoxys being bright yellow and bright green is... okay? I much prefer the traditional orange-and-blue, but this is a perfectly fine and sensible colour scheme. I think it works a bit better in the Attack and Speed Formes of Deoxys, with the black torso breaking up the colour scheme a bit.
