TF2 - DLC Soundwave 02

A super hi-res turnaround of the toy. There's really not much more to say...it was a lot of work to basically redraw something. And I saw in the DLC that it's not even colored like the toy, it's more traditionally G1 schemed, lot's more blue.


Again, I wish I had better pictures to work from, or even a prototype to work from, now that the actual figure is out, I see all the mistakes I made, stuff I missed because the details weren't clear enough...


...but along with the toy, there was an earth mode concept of Soundwave for the movie, so we added some of those proportions into this version of the character as well.

So there it is...tomorrow I'll get into the G1 stuff, that's what we all want, isn't it?!?

TF2 - DLC Soundwave

This is a weird one...the Soundwave Movie character, but not what appears in the movie, but the toy version that's coming out in support of the movie. What? Even the Luxo guys were confused. I don't have it any more, but they gave me a few images of the toy prototype to work from, low-res and nearly useless. This was in January, months before the movie and toy were to be released, but I found better reference images on eBay! So anyways, I got to work...


The game version was going to be pretty much the toy, so jet mode and bot mode. I tried to stay as close as I could to the toy, but slimmed down and tightened all the elements to make the jet mode a little more believable. The toy by design has to be a little clunky, so I took some liberties trying to make it 'real world.'


I hadn't seen any of the film yet, so I didn't know that was actually Soundwave's head placement in satellite mode, so I glossed over it when I could have done some different things for it. Either reduce it, or just make it the regular head, I don't know, maybe it works fine this way. Also, these product shots didn't have the exact position for the wings, so I kind of guessed as to where they would be. Nor did I know that was supposed to be Ravage, the black projectile that sits behind the non-head.

The elements are all insanely complex, and even though I was working from reference, and not making it up as I go, like with my characters, it took just as long to do this guy as any other.

By the way, DLC stands for Downloadable Content, if anybody is confused.

TF2 - Turrets 03

I was going for a movie-verse tech, and it needed to be fairly spindly, with lots of negative space to give the impression that the alt mode would be very compact, and could hide in a bot - in the case of the game, Grindor and Ironhide, I believe. Of course, in the heat of the action of the game, sometimes you can't even tell if it's deployed, or know where it is, until all you enemies are taken out, and it's still standing! Above are the Autobot versions...



...and the red themed Decepticon versions, each with the faction symbol on the front.


For modeling purposes, and to help out the guys at Luxo, the secondary barrels are kept in a separate layer, so they can see the side view 'body' more clearly.


And after the fact, they had me go back and do some variations, just in case the opportunity came up for them to do a version unique to each faction.

So that's about it for my characters that came out with the primary release, tomorrow I'll start posting the 4 DLC characters I contributed to, for the Downloadable Content for the XBOX and PS3, that comes out TODAY!

TF2 - Turrets 02

So after I went back in and resketched the assignment, these were the two faves of the group. I redrew them, and threw down some tone - originally there was going to be one per faction, but they were worried that they didn't have time/memory/budget to get it all done, and were trying to figure out a solution. I said...what about one with blue, and one with red?


So after that discussion, Luxo chose the four barrel guy, but had me do a few variations, along with my coloring idea illustrated as well.

TF2 - Turrets 01

OK, so as I was wrapping up the characters, Luxo came to me and asked me to do some deployable turrets, smaller characters that would pop out and wreak havoc ala Frenzy. I took this to mean literally Frenzy; smaller characters that would transform out of a larger bot, like Soundwave and Blaster's guys, Frenzy, Rumble, etc.


So I went to town, and sketched up a bunch of little guys, and when I turned them in, they said 'no...turrets. Not robots.' Miscommunication! They said a pop out turret, like Frenzy, and I guess all I read was Frenzy, not Turret. Granted, all these little guys are basically big gun holders, but that wasn't what was needed. My bad, but there's a few jewels in the Frenzy-like Turrets, maybe someday for some of them?


So I went back to the drawing board, and sketched out a bunch of deployable turret.

Like I was asked to do in the first place.

TF2 - Omnibot Trans Am 03

Whoops - I forgot to add this to the post from yesterday. Transform!


And here is the robot form. Originally I understood it to be two big guys, this one and the Charger, but later it was explained that these were supposed to be Bumblebee's lieutenants, (I say again, why the same/same of a Trans Am then!?) and one was meant to be smaller, and one bigger. So this guy is a bit more slender than BB, and quite a different body frame than his partner, the Charger.

While it's yet another car, and they all need to be very different, I still try to keep some traditional G1 stylization intact, there are a couple of different things with this guy. Namely the wheel solution, pinched together and placed on his back, slid under and back while transforming.


Again with the door wings - I'm going to keep doing it, as long as I can! I like the tail lights shifting vertically to make up the lower legs, and the exhaust pipes following the front wheel in the transformation, coming around to the back.


Bad Shoulders. I remember this especially being tough to reconcile the front and back view, again the danger of creating these characters in plan views, rather than an initial 3/4 view. I should have sketched out the shoulder and repainted it to work better. It's still a mess in the design conceit of the movies, but it's not seamed or segmented as it should be.

TF2 - Omnibot Trans Am 02

And the colors for the Trans Am. I like the white and red one a lot, but the blue one, and along with it's graphics, was tough to find. I wasn't sure what the Luxo guys wanted, and it took me awhile to get the right blue, and then the right graphics. There were a few variations on the flame theme, to match the hood...


The sides were pretty well left alone, but the front and back details went through a lot of legal revisions, and by the end of it, it doesn't really seem like a cohesive design anymore. The back is probably fine, but the front just looks like chunks of details - headlight, scoop, fog light - they don't look like they belong together, or with the lines of the car.


I was also asked to add some sort of exhaust system, so I did two to chose from. Obviously the parallel pipe was the final, but I did a raked set ala the Road Warrior.

OK, this is why I hate this car. It's not so much that it's a lame car, my biggest bitch about it, is that it's so close to the Bumblebee classic Camaro, it's pointless. In the wide world of muscle cars, a Camaro, Trans Am, or Firebird is the last choice I would make, just because this TF world already has Bumblebee.

Of course, I wanted my car to be in there, but they didn't want that. Fine. Charger? Fine. Then how about another Mustang, like a Bullitt style car to go along with that Charger? Give a nod to a classic car chase? How a bout a 'Cuda, great car, not as big as the Charger, so you still get the size difference? And it's something that's not used to death. I think I even asked about t-tops, to give a nod to the Bandit. No. I know my muscle cars, and I never got a good reason one way or the other with these choices, but I'm disappointed that something cooler wasn't done. They were weak choices, in my opinion, easy Bay-esque choices, if you will.

So after that whiney-baby rant, does it even matter? You barely see the car mode in the game, and when you're fighting them it doesn't even matter what they look like, you want to cap those guys with the growling 'HEADSHOT!' exclamation, right!?!?

TF2 - Omnibot Trans Am 01

I'll bitch about the Trans Am choice in the next post. But, here are some bot sketches - I did these in the same batch as the Charger sketches, so you can see some carry over of ideas here and there.


The top right of the sketches was the final choice, so I redrew the sketch, and added tone, and this was sent off to Hasbo for approvals.


But since it was a Trans Am/Firebird, we took the opportunity to see if we could get away with some sort of Hot Rod decal on the hood. I did some variations of the Firebird decal with the Autobot symbol included, a straight Hot Rod re-do, and one with a design somewhere in the middle.

TF2 - Omnibot Charger 03

Burly Boy Charger! This guy is also one of my more favorites. I'm in love with the blower being integrated into the 'heart' of his chest - I'm a lot more familiar with the engine workings of these old cars, so I'm able to bring a lot of those elements into the construction of the body.


Here's the one shot of the green version I'm posting, it just doesn't have the impact, kind of like that blue SLR. Not even different graphics...


Again, stacked up the glass in the back, but I tried to differentiate it with a new back/roof panel arrangement. I alos went with a 'hooded' lower leg idea, with the bumper and tail lights wrapping around, up and over, with the shocks and struts being the support, and the ankle joint being under the wheel.


One of the dangers of doing these turnarounds, as a opposed to a 3/4 view, is sometimes it's hard to match up the fronts and backs, and if I had anything to say bad about this guy, the solution to match the mid-torso area is a little weak. I know in the movie-verse, these parts get sliced and diced to death, but I like to scale that back a bit, and at least have be logical to exist. This still looks like a match-up to me, rather than designed.

Other than that though, he's a good one.

TF2 - Omnibot Charger 02

Oh man, that's a lot of side views. So I submitted black, becasue that's what I thought they wanted, maybe they saw it was too close to F&F, or they had something else in mind all along, so they asked for orange - which again, is a little played, if anybody is familiar with the Hazzard Boys.

So I did some graphic tests, and we settled on the basic striping. Which I was fine with, until they wanted the lime green. It was technically available for this car, but the combination of green and black stripes is too close to a 'Cuda - which is one of the alternate cars I suggested.

Then they had me jack up the back - I did it subtlety, as if I installed bigger leaf springs, but they pushed for more. And I think it's a little ridiculous looking in the final version. That final version also includes the now-ever-present legal revisions.


This is the original view in green, with lights open, along with the rusting patterns and primer spots.


This is the jacked up view, along with the revisions.


The transformation sequence.

TF2 - Omnibot Charger 01

Charger. Burly. That was the directive for this guy.


So, I love a Charger, but I'm pretty invested into the world of muscle cars, and lately, the Charger has been played out. Especially when I get referenced Fast and Furious as a source to look at when I'm designing. With the blower, it's a little on the nose. But whatever, the ultimate goal is to make a cool bot, and this guy was on his way by the time I finished the grayscale...

Grinnin' Chewbacca #3

I'm a day early, but I didn't want to break up the next set of Transformers - 8/13 is the second anniversary of the Bad Flip Blog, and I've made it tradition to do a Chewbacca piece - because he is hard, and that was the very first post I made when starting this endeavor.


Here's the final, colored pencil and airbrush on a a watercolor block with a gesso wash underneath. He is still hard to draw, but since it's my third or fourth effort, I'm finally happy with the face, now I guess I need to work on the rest of him!


And since this is a work in progress blog, technically, I'll show some process. This wash is done with the diluted airbrush paint, with a bitchin' fan brush Mr. Che Lopez gave me while I was up in Washington - it's pretty great, and I already have more uses for it in mind.


And this is the base drawing, and for once I was really happy with my interpretation of ol' Chewie.

Happy #2 Bad Flip Blog!

TF2 - Stunticons - SLR 03

Purple People Eater. It's hard to pull off being a bad guy with a purple paint job, but with glow-y red eyes, half the battle is won already. While I accept the blue in car mode, it might not work as well when he's standing up. Just a bit too garish...


I do like the solution to the transformation, while I still kept grill cues along the chest, the fenders slid through the shoulders to for the 'wings', and the parts of the hood that housed the headlights flipped out the create the forearms. I'm sure it's been done before, but it's a new one for me.


Another stacked roof to hide the glass, and another tailgate bottom.


I put all four wheels into the legs, I used up a lot of mass for the upper body, so it was a good way to fill out the legs and give them some weight.


Pretty good profile too. One of the frustrating things about doing these turnaround views, is that it's so hard to indicate any kind of character - no attitude or style. I need to stand them up as straight as possible to give the builders the best look at all the elements.


The side views are about the only opportunity to indicate any kind of personality, and sometimes it's successful, and sometimes not. While I like the technical aspects of this view, I don't think it indicates any kind character development - he kind of just 'IS.'

This is probably my least favorite of my guys from this last game, and it's not that I'm not proud of the work I put into it, but unlike all the others, I can't just SEE the character alive in my head, like I somehow can with the others.

TF2 - Stunticons - SLR 02

So this is the original submission for the SLR, to legal. I had already done the changes that made the other cars safe, but these super cars are just so unique, that a lot of revisions went into these before they got cleared. The Reventon took longer, but I thought it still maintained at the least the overall feel of the car, but this SLR lost a lot of swagger that those original racing images had. It kind of devolved into a variation of the stock model, which I don't think is that exciting.


After legal approval, I took these guys to the 'paint shop' and threw down colors and graphics. The primary color being the purple, and the Luxo guys requested a blue. I wasn't actually sure what kind of blue they meant and I just did this color as a test - here's a starting point, darker, lighter, more or less saturated - but they went for this one. I thought it was a little over the top, but in the levels in which they appear are the super dark and saturated Shanghai city maps, and that color looks pretty good against the backround.


The top purple is the game version. The one below it, is the first, along with that idea of the numbering system ( 44 for my HSBFF) the graphics were just too much to even show up in the game. So that's why they got scaled back a bit for the resubmission.

And the over-saturated green stripe over the blue in the repaint version. Something nice and sharp and pointy.


The transformation process, again, as traditional as possible, but since I moved around some vehicle cues, it's still fairly different from the other cars in the game.

TF2 - Stunticons - SLR 01

By now I had lots of vehicle variations to choose from, so these were a mix of new and old, and given the Mercedes SLR vehicle cues...and apparently I nailed it with the sketches, and they picked the one in the middle.


So that image got cleaned up and tone added to it, and got sent off to ol' Hasbro for approvals.

I wasn't really familiar with this car, I'm more of a muscle car guy than a super car guy, and even the stock model isn't that impressive to me (looks-wise only, of course) but the tricked out racing ones are pretty cool looking.