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!?!?