TF1 - Car Drone 02

And here is the final for the car drone. In addition to the single eye, I placed a central power source, that and the eye would be a shared characteristic to show the player that these were drones. Now it seems pretty unnecessary, but at the time we didn't have clearance to use any other characters in the Transformers Universe (we'll talk about Shockwave later) and really, we still didn't know what the movie characters would end up looking like. So this was the best effort to create characters for the movie-verse, without really knowing how they'll match up in the end. We also didn't know how the GM deal was worked out - turned out it was for movie only, but I had already played it safe, and used a Chevy Colbalt for the base, later having to go back and change details for legal. I am not a Chevy fan, nor do I think a Colbalt is a cool car. We wanted something to invoke maybe a more (albeit CHEAP) import car within the product range of GM at the time...but, if it was me, GM would have been the last company I would have gone exclusive with. Especially at the time, they were way behind the crest of the tide in car design. They basically had the concept car that turned into a Camaro/Bumblebee, and some cool trucks. Lucky the Mustang/Barricade snuck in there...


He's almost 'quaint' to me, looking back at him now. I want to pat him on the head, and say 'good try.' I took the Production's design philosphy, and went my own way with it. For what he is, it came out pretty well, and now from an art director standpoint, I wouldn't say it fits in the movie-verse for the first movie, but I still think it looks more like a Transformer than Ironhide and Ratchet from the movie. Anyways, Hasbro absolutely freaked out on it, and said we could do more.

Meet Swindle.


Little did I know that they were planning on making a toy out of it...I got a call from the producer - "are you sitting down? I'm going to blow your mind!" What an honor, 20 years of fandom culminating into a character I designed turning into an actual action figure. On a card, hanging on the pegs in a toy store. Not only that, but they put this character in all the press kits for the movie, so he got used has a promotion tool for both the movie and the game. Pretty awesome. What really blew me away is the attention to detail, the extra effort to create the details into the forearms and ribs/waist from my artwork -it really touched me. I still haven't met the actual engineer who did the sculpt and tooling for this guy, but I will bow down when I meet him or her.

TF1 - Car Drone 01

AKA Swindle, as he's known to the public! He is mostly a reaction against what they had going for the robot designs, in particular Bumblebee and Jazz - remember those guys were still in development, and had a serious lack of vehicle cues on their robot forms. So my main goal was to have wing doors, and a headlight/hood chest, on MY car-based Transformers.


The conceit being that these were drones, and relatively mindless; this was the reason behind the cyclopian eye, intending to give the impression that they were single-minded in causing trouble for the player.

Now this was based on the animatic and description we were given. Unfortunately, we weren't familiar with 'BayLogic' and by the time the movie came out, they just made the Energon created characters as full on as the main characters...whatever.

And so this is what was sent off to Hasbro for the intended design, they liked it a lot, and I went ahead and got started on the final.


This was a game play idea that existed at the time of the roughing out phase of this character, but I don't think this actual art was created until all the characters had been modeled, and the animations were starting - I basically threw together a basic move for each guy to send off to England, to see if Traveler's Tales could fit it in. I think in the actual game, he was given like a side step move, that made it tougher to track him with the player weapon.

TF1 - Drones

So it came clear fairly soon, that with only around 6 characters per faction, the game player would run out of stuff to do pretty quick. The idea came about that the movie characters would stand as either playable characters, or boss enemies, and we needed to create other robots for the player to beat up on as he/she progressed through the levels.


We had seen the animatics for the (at the time) iPod getting a drop of Energon on it, to make it transform into a mindless robot, so we developed a conceit that the Autobot/Decepticon factions could drip some energon on Earth vehicles to create little armies to help in the fight.


So these were just some really quick sharpie sketches (in reality, they're about 1-2 inches high) to get the ball rolling for what level of sophistication these drones would have...

TF1 - Animatics From Memory pt. 2

Continuing with the memory-boards, these are based on the scene they had in rough animation, showing Prime rolling down the freeway, and facing off with another Decepticon. Again, all from memory, and based on in-progress character designs...I think that must be Barricade, who was called Brawl at the time.


When we were there, the production had shown us what they wanted Prime to be for final, and an artist at Hasbro did an overlay adding in the windshield chest, and spires on the helmet, and a couple of other G1 cues, asking if they could rework the final to make it more like the source - and while I thought that looked awesome, the production designer was all pissy about it, but it looked really good. In the end, what we got was a 50/50 compromise between what Bay wanted, and what Hasbro requested. SO close. Anyways, I semi-based the Prime in this set to look like the Hasbro image...

Hopefully you folks can tell that this turned into the Prime vs. Bonecrusher fight that kicked off the finale; in my opinion, by far the best action sequene of the film. Because it had a beginning, middle, and an end. Go figure.


And this is just a clip of a building top fight, mostly to show that the game would have an all roam environment that went from street to rooftop. This must be Prime/Megatron duking it out, but the animatics we had just been shown had two generic robots fighting it out, working out the camera moves.


I think I just added helmet spikes to insinuate that it was Prime, you can see the fall between the buildings down to the street was kept in the movie.

It was pretty cool from a technical standpoint, to see the rough animations turn into the final frames, how that process was worked out from start to finish.

TF1 - Animatics From Memory

So soon after the script session, we all went down to the offices of the Production Designer, who I wanted to punch in the face after about ten minutes of listening tell us how dumb the original Transformers were. I don't know if he was over-compensating in protecting his director's vision, or if he was just clueless - statements like 'if you could be anything, why would you be a truck? That's so lame, you'd get your ass kicked by the jets!' Obviously the guy didn't immerse himself in the lore, and just pointed out a problem with the movie script.

If anybody has the TF-Movie special editions, you can see him continue to mock the source material. I have lots to say, (I won't) but the movies really speak for themselves, whether you like them or not; but I will say, ILM shored up all the concepts and made them way better. And that's not a quip against Ben Procter, (the Lead Designer) who is really a master artist. I hate when people rail against the designs of the movies, and the concept artists get thrown in the mix...if you hate the movie versions or not - either way the artwork is incredible...but we all have to answer to somebody who is driving the vision, and you have to do the best you can in creating the art.


We were shown a ton of animatics, and afterwards I was asked to recreate these scenes from memory, coupled with the notes/thumbnails I was able to pull out of the script. The discovery of the Ice Man Megatron was originally the opening of the movie, and we were playing with the idea of opening the game with a Megatron level, flying through space debris, and eventually crashing on Earth, in search of the Energon Cube.


And these were meant to be the following cut scenes leading into the next level in movie continuity...


...which was the Qatar scene. This was a more stealthy infiltration, with Skorpnok sneaking in and then creating mayhem.


After the destruction, he sneaks off, and then the Blackout (still called Vortex) level would begin.

TF1 - Amblin

This is more of a story than an art post. So after a couple of weeks off, finally it was time to get started on the game. The deal had been made, Activision got the game, and Mr. Suarez asked me to be a contributor. Sweet!

There's a couple days in early January 2006, of fast and furiousness, a big all day summit meeting with all the developers for the various platforms, a couple of Hasbro guys, the Activision production team, and me. Then there was a trip to Amblin to read the script, and a trip to Bay's art production offices. And a bitchin' dinner at a place in Santa Monica.

This might not be the exact order of what happened, but this is for sure the first movie focused art I created. A special few were invited to Steven Spielberg's office, called Amblin on the Universal Lot, to read the final draft of the script. The main two producers for the old gen and next gen consoles, Suarez the executive producer from Activision, and crazily...me. Daniel had wanted me there to 'storyboard' the script. So we got put into a meeting room, which for anybody, would be the ULTIMATE den in anybody's home. It was glorious. The 'offices' of Amblin is actually a Spanish style mansion hidden behind thick trees, it really is a haven in every sense of the word. No Steven, but the coordinator gave us free lunch, and two hours to read the script. We each got a copy, with our individual names plastered watermark style on every page - there was no stealing this thing. The script was very close to what was shot, just less dumbass jokes, and a couple badass things that got left out. The best thing in the script was when Megatron finally got out of Hoover, and Starscream tells him that the cube got away, Megs bitchslaps him, before saying 'you've failed me yet again.' No slap in the movie though. One of many disappointments.

So while others read, and retyped/paraphrased the script, I drew like a muthaF'er for two hours...*


Notable - when Sam was falling off the building in the finale, time froze and he 'went' into the cube, and was given a history lesson by Sentinel Prime, about Cyberton's War, and the relationship with Prime and Megatron, and was given the clue to overcharge Megatron with the cube. So some of that was broken up and repurposed for the film, and the weird-o fantasy scene made it into the non-sensical sequel. You can see as I was running out of time...I wrote more than drew...

*The art wasn't posting with the correct size/proportions, so I broke it up and re-posted it.

TF1 - The beginning...

OK. Jump into the Way Back Machine to December, 2005. I had just spent the fall freelancing for Activision, helping them with the pitch to Dreamworks to get the next slew of animated movies locked down, working on Monsters vs. Aliens, Madagascar 2, Shrek Racing, How to Train a Dragon, and development for the Golden Compass. So I was nearing the end of Compass, and I got asked if I liked Transformers. Oh man.

I knew there was a lot of behind the scenes stuff trying to get a movie made, but I didn't know Spielberg was involved, or Bay was already locked down as director, or that production had finally actually started.


So I went to a meeting, and met with the team that was doing the development demo to try and get the game, and we discussed some game mechanics to get started. No one knew anything about the movie yet, so we kept it simple, and just created characters and worlds based on G1 reference. So simple combat story boards got drawn up, by me, featuring a land/air fight between Optimus and Starscream.


You can see an idea for transforming into combat was an idea that was intended waaaay back, unfortunately, Travelers Tales in the end couldn't pull it off - like the studs at Luxoflux could for the second game!


At the time, Megatron was rumored to be a tank, so we had a simple story written up, that I story boarded, featuring Prime vs. Megatron.


One last thing, they liked that last frame from the Meg vs. Prime sequence, and asked me to expanded to show Robot Gore...a take on battle damage.

Then I went on Christmas Break, and hoped they landed to project, for me to get started on in the new year...