Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
His 3d model in the games doesn't translate into a 3d live action world because its heavily stylized. The spikes on his head are supposed to represent quills, but if they stay the way they are in a non cartoony setting it just looks like he has a bunch of tumors. Ergo he ought to look more like this if the setting is going to be realistic
Except not because that looks like a horrifying goblin child almost as much as the one they're actually using.

None of the Pokemon designs should translate to a live action world but it turns out that they do if you have competent animators.

This film doesn't. So they stuffed someone in a mocap suit and the shape of their horrifying goblin child comes from the fact they were working with mocap data.