TF2 - Stunticons - Reventon 03

This guy is so skinny, two of them can fit on one page! Maybe it's that he's very tall, you can notice the scale of the wheels looking a little small, that's a tip-off to indicate height to the model builders. All the vehicle cues are scaled down to give the impression of size, and in the transformation, I wanted him to have a 'stacking' effect as he goes from car to bot.


Usually I have these guys transform with the mass being distributed fairly evenly, with the top mass being from the front of the car, and the legs coming from the rear of the car - this guy is kind of a top and bottom transformation. The arms come from the sides and tail lights, with the engine windows making up the back of the torso, and the traditional headlights on the chest area. Then the legs come from the rear end of the car heading towards the front elements, including the running board.


Here's the alt paint jobs highlighted separately.

This is one of my faves from the game, I don't know if he's on the figure list or not, but I hope so - I'll fight him against Sideswipe!

TF2 - Stunticons - Reventon 02

Here's the vehicle mode for this guy - lots of legal revisions went into this. These cars are so unique, that a simple swap of round lights to square lights doesn't cut it. A lot of little changes to the tail lights and intakes, spoilers and the basic lines of the car finally got it to a point where it was safe to put into production.


This is the primary paint, what I called a Sharkskin application, using black and purple to Evil Decepticon-ify him.


Same car, just a different paint app but using the same colors, just in a different arrangement. I originally had the color as red, but Luxo wanted to keep it purple, and honestly, if there is a difference in the paint schemes in the game, I haven't been able to tell yet.


This side view shows off the scheme better, and I try to keep in mind where those parts go in bot form, so I try to design the paints to look good on the bot, too.


Originally all the reference pix that Luxo sent for the super car idea were racecars, so I initially thought that they wanted a number scheme or something like that, but I was mistaken, and simply dropped off the numbers.

You can also see the original red, and some original vehicle cues that got lost in the legal revisions. I was sad to lose those wheels...


And of course...the transformation sequence.

TF2 - Stunticons - Reventon 01

This one came together really fast...and now that I think about it, I did the Omnibots first, so there were already a lot of car idea sketches to pull from, but in this case, the crouched over, skinny one on the left side middle captured the prize.


So I went to work and came up with this guy, kind of an Alien Warrior Meets the Transformers. These guys were to be Super Cars, so the Reventon'-esque' made the final cut, and I kept all the angles sharp and flat in bot form.

TF2 - Aerialbots 03

The Unpainted Man stands. I like this one, I thought the arms were a pretty good solution to break up the standard shoulder and elbow conventions, and with the jets I tried to play a lot with the idea of hydraulics and linkages holding everything together. More an idea of creating jointing appropriate to the vehicle - linkage for jets, as opposed to the differential and disc brake gearing approach of the ground vehicles.


This view shows off the airframe, which I almost lost - I placed it in the block-in, showing a lot more with the intent of integrating better as I took it to final, but Luxo had a big reaction, and I had to talk them down a bit. That's a tough thing, they took a lot of things too literal in the roughs, which is how I best work, get all the ideas in there fast, and refine as I go. Their approach was to lay all the groundwork even in the tone drawings - but to me those are the most basic of ideas, to set up the discovery of new ideas along the way.


The side view is my favorite of this guy, just in that it illustrates the movie-ification of a G1 concept, with the canopy/nose, meeting the tail/engine to form the back torso.

It pleases me, I wish I could have done as well for all of them!

TF2 - Aerialbots 02

Again, a slightly modified F-16, and again, no paint job. Just posting these up, I'm getting annoyed again. I mean, there's not much to talk about without the colors, it's pretty much a straight up illustration of the jet.


Along with the slight mod on the real world jet, I do the same for the missiles and other armaments. The Autobot symbols were temporary until I got a chance to do the paint jobs, so they got left as is.


There was a break of a few hours before I was told to move on to the Stunticons, so I managed to whip these up really quick. In the design doc, it stated they wanted to try air show type paint jobs, so I did one (the middle) that was similar to one they used for reference, and then I of course did a Skydive paint job, and threw in a Fireflight one as well.

So, they're really fast, pretty much flat color over top the finished vehicle, so they're not very well integrated...but I just wanted to get SOMETHING in there to see if I could push them towards a G1 reference instead of something I thought was a little abstract, with the airshow idea.

I see in the game both G1 paint jobs made it, but I wish I was allowed to go back and re-integrate the paint jobs to fit the shape of the jet better - especially the Fireflight paint job, it's a little much in it's current state, I would have pulled more white into the red areas. Of course, I would rather have exact G1 coloring, rather than none at all!


And again, I tried to make the transformation as close to the original Skydive as possible.

TF2 - Aerialbots 01

An F-16 Aerialbot? I say 'sweeeeeeeeeeet.' So this is what I started with, Skydive, the original F-16 from the cartoon - no more messing around. I grabbed a pic from the gallery at Siebertron.com, and a pic from my invaluable Ark compendium of G1 model sheets, and got going...


A series of sketches, all different shapes and sizes, but keeping the main transformation and vehicle cues as close as possible to Skydive, with the tail/engine and canopy merging, to form his upper back torso, leaving the rest for limbs.

Some additional head studies, the original (below) wasn't quite 'movie' enough yet...


And this was the first submission...my fault we had to go back, as requested by Hasbro, it seemed they kind of got caught up in the way he was standing. They got the impression that this was an evil guy, more Decept than Autobot, so they wanted me to rework him.


So this guy isn't really too much different, I stood him up like the Breakaway concept art, and JT and I took the opportunity to tweak some details on him. Hasbro approved, and I went on to the final views...

TF2 - Custom Seeker for 'Frogger'

So I know an F18 pilot. Or former F18 pilot I should say, he's now Top Gun, flying an F-5, training new batches of supreme American badasses.

Geoff Hughes, as I know him -the dude I went to Middle and High School with - or as it's written on his old Super Hornet, LT G.D. Hughes, "Frogger". Now it's 'LCDR Geoff Hughes' on his F-5.

The least I could do is throw his name up on the Seeker, (sadly it couldn't be in the game that way, because of the damnable legal department!) so hopefully he knows we're thinking about him, while he defends our country.

He's a real American Hero, and I'm proud to know him. Stay safe up there, buddy!