Yuka Morii and the clay-modelled Pokémon card.
YM
Clay · Spring 2026
When the Pokémon is sculpted, photographed, then printed.
Yuka Morii does not paint Pokémon. She builds them in clay, photographs them in real light, and prints them at card scale.
This guide collects seven Pokémon cards whose subject was not drawn but modelled. Yuka Morii works in clay — small physical figurines built by hand, then photographed in real light against everyday surfaces. The paint stage comes last, on top of an image that already has volume.
The picks span seventeen years, from a 2005 POP-series Pikachu to a 2022 Silver Tempest Baltoy. Different eras, different palettes, one method. The reading rows after the selection name what Morii’s signature actually looks like, on a card.
Seven cards built by hand.
Selected for tactile sculpture, real-world light, and still-life staging at hand-scale.
Baltoy
2022A clay model of a clay Pokémon. Morii sculpts what was always sculpted; the medium photographs its own subject.
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Metapod
2017A chrysalis photographed under real green light. Hand-built volume, fine surface — the bug Pokémon as Morii’s signature still life.
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Slakoth
2007Photographed dozing in muted warm shadow. Morii’s only Calm-tagged card; the sloth Pokémon at rest reads as small sculpture, not illustration.
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Ralts
2018Small clay figure against pastel pink ground. Tactile fragility — Ralts at the scale a hand could hold.
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Beldum
2015A metal Pokémon photographed in near-grey monochrome. The corpus’s only colourless Morii — sculpture, gloom, restraint.
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Foongus
2016Mushroom on a forest floor, photographed close. The Pokémon as woodland still life — earth, moisture, and quiet.
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Pikachu
2005The most-illustrated Pokémon, treated as a small clay object. Morii decorates Pikachu rather than animating him — paint as surface ornament.
View cardWhat handmade looks like, on a card.
Three threads recur — the criteria the selection was built against.
- Defining method
- Morii builds a physical clay figurine, photographs it in real light, and paints the photograph. The figure has mass before it has colour. Look for surface texture that survives the print: thumbprints, dust, paper grain — the small irregularities that pure illustration smooths out.
- Subjects she chooses
- Almost always small, quiet Pokémon — bugs at rest, sleeping mammals, mushrooms, mineral evolutions. Cards built on stillness and on the believable scale of a thing that fits in a hand.
- What she does not do
- Action, smoke, light effects, holographic chrome — these belong to other illustrators. Morii’s contribution to the medium is small, photographed, and quiet; rarely the most prominent card in any set, almost always the most physical.
More to read.
Illustrator guides are selected by Artchu editorial — weighing surface treatment, light, palette, and the illustrator’s recurring method across the catalogue. The selection cuts across set, era, and Pokémon; availability of high-quality imagery is a baseline criterion. Rarity, market value, and grading are not selection criteria.