Bats

I'm still working on getting all the TF1 cutscene storyboards organized - in the meantime, enjoy the Batman sketch I did while waiting for an oil change yesterday...

TF1 - Cybertron 07

Here's a couple Decepticon specific areas...first, a landing platform. I guess the inspiration was a variation of a aircraft carrier, offset to the side, and placed stories up in the air.


I also used this idea to further push the concept of a lit grid to stand in for 'streets' to help guide traffic patterns, in the good times at least. At war time, maybe just used as landing signals? The craft/robot would land, transform, and take the elevator located in the center of the structure.


And this is a concept for the Decepticon Headquarters, or at least the lair of Megatron, an outcropping connected to the larger structure, which included the high above landing platform.


Someone visiting would be very exposed down the long ramp, with sentry emplacements on either side - it would be a very daunting walk down to visit ol' Megs...

And so that's it for Cybertron. All told, this was a very fast and furious four days of work, to get this all together, and I had received just a few notes of feedback from Hasbro to push the craziness of the background skylines a bit more when I did the finals...but then the level got canceled, and that was that.

TF1 - Cybertron 06

These are some 'underground' type ideas. Something to explore a little more of the grungy area of Cybertron, kind of the industrial war time areas.


First up is a smelting room, where they can re-purpose parts, or melt down enemies? This was someone else's idea, which I thought was great, but hadn't really explored in sketches, so I kind of winged the drawing - it came out OK, but the horizon lines are a mess.


So I hid those lines with the color key. Even though those colors are thrown on there really fast, I wanted to make sure to get across the dingy, oily mess that the area needed to differentiate from the rest of the planet, and break up the monotony of 'space world.'


Another underground shot, kind of a back alleyway, a little area off the beaten path.


The colors aren't quite what I had in mind - I wanted it to be really dark in the foreground, and pretty well lit in the background, to get across the 'hideyhole' idea. So when I turned it in with those notes that when I did the final keyframe, I was going to push the lighting more. I threw in a couple of bots doing some quick repairs.

TF1 - Cybertron 05

So the next step in developing these backgound ideas for Cybertron, was to take all of those sketch elements and do some refinement, and throw on some color cues...


...taking some of those Bridge sketches, I picked some of the better deco ideas, and did a quick lineart sketch...


and added a splash of color to get at least a comprehensive idea for this area. I added in some running Autobots to get a little movement in the frame.


This one is just a basic city sketch, just to show a more expanded view of the map. I had the idea of a light rail traffic/transport system, which needed posts, along with regular roadways.


I altered the sketch a bit as I got to the color stage. It was not reading well, so I flipped it, and added a small bridge in the foreground.

TF1 - Cybertron 04

Another concept to get a bunch of pre-vis sketches was a trench area. Again mostly to find basic geometry, and then cherry pick details for the next stage of development.



Along with studies for details, I threw in some battle damage concepts, and what Cybertronian Rubble might look like.


This is just a combined view of the top two images.


And then an even further pulled out shot.


And here's just a few detail sketches, some things I might have put in that I wanted to see a little more clearly. Also still trying find a solution to the rubble...it was something I found I couldn't sketch, so I put it aside to do some colored and painted ideas to better show what I had in mind.

Transformers : Continuum Out Today!

I'm getting emails about this today - I thought it was shipping on the 25th, but hey...I'll take it now!

The reviews have been, at best...mixed. My favorite hater comment was that Spike looked like a profile picture from an emo's MySpace page! Second favorite was 'Worst Cover Ever.' I have to hope that it was written with Comic Book Guy's voice in mind...ah, fandom.

TF1 - Cybertron 03

These are meant to be interior level maps, going inside some of the building of Cybertron. Just to start with these sketches, I kept it fairly geometric, with the plan to add more curves and organic touches as I moved on to the next step.


Some kind of central hub? Maybe a power supply to have the player deal with - no design doc was made up for this level yet, so I was just winging it with general gameplay ideas. You can see the bottom right sketch has some of those original structures being developed further.


Some more large area structure; I was trying to play with opposing angles, to create some more dynamic shapes.


Another central hub idea...just larger and more aggressive. The idea was to have an energy source linking the floor structure to the overhang.


A kind of a gateway, intended to be a mix of metal and transparency, that's why the continuation of the hallway is visible through the structure.