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.