In between submitting the grays for Shockwave, and me actually starting the finals, we finally started getting final ILM models to use as reference. So while I waited on approvals, I got started on some rough development, trying to figure out the vehicle cues, and where they would exactly go on the robot mode.
I also took the time to develop the head. Kind of funny I had designed all these mindless drones as Cyclopian, and then the actual character I get to do is good ol' One Eye here...
This was my first stab at trying to design something in the style of the movie characters. Certainly more successful than the drones, but looking back I think there are things I could have done to push the movie look, without straying too far from the G1 source. With the experience I have now, I find that I can use around 3-4 G1 cues to sell my updated characters, both in the body and in the head, that's enough for fans to immediately identify, despite other changes. Of course, I still had a chip on my shoulder to try to honor these characters, so I didn't want to Bay-verse Shockwave too much. But I coul have kept the same form, and just added a lot of depth in recessing the vents and paneling.
I had set up Shockwave to be a military green, to match the other military based movie Decepts, but I did get asked to explore the purple. I thought it looked a little silly - OK, a lot silly - being the true purple of G1 lore, so I tried a compromise with a purple based black color...
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