TF1 - Cybertron 06

These are some 'underground' type ideas. Something to explore a little more of the grungy area of Cybertron, kind of the industrial war time areas.


First up is a smelting room, where they can re-purpose parts, or melt down enemies? This was someone else's idea, which I thought was great, but hadn't really explored in sketches, so I kind of winged the drawing - it came out OK, but the horizon lines are a mess.


So I hid those lines with the color key. Even though those colors are thrown on there really fast, I wanted to make sure to get across the dingy, oily mess that the area needed to differentiate from the rest of the planet, and break up the monotony of 'space world.'


Another underground shot, kind of a back alleyway, a little area off the beaten path.


The colors aren't quite what I had in mind - I wanted it to be really dark in the foreground, and pretty well lit in the background, to get across the 'hideyhole' idea. So when I turned it in with those notes that when I did the final keyframe, I was going to push the lighting more. I threw in a couple of bots doing some quick repairs.

TF1 - Cybertron 05

So the next step in developing these backgound ideas for Cybertron, was to take all of those sketch elements and do some refinement, and throw on some color cues...


...taking some of those Bridge sketches, I picked some of the better deco ideas, and did a quick lineart sketch...


and added a splash of color to get at least a comprehensive idea for this area. I added in some running Autobots to get a little movement in the frame.


This one is just a basic city sketch, just to show a more expanded view of the map. I had the idea of a light rail traffic/transport system, which needed posts, along with regular roadways.


I altered the sketch a bit as I got to the color stage. It was not reading well, so I flipped it, and added a small bridge in the foreground.

TF1 - Cybertron 04

Another concept to get a bunch of pre-vis sketches was a trench area. Again mostly to find basic geometry, and then cherry pick details for the next stage of development.



Along with studies for details, I threw in some battle damage concepts, and what Cybertronian Rubble might look like.


This is just a combined view of the top two images.


And then an even further pulled out shot.


And here's just a few detail sketches, some things I might have put in that I wanted to see a little more clearly. Also still trying find a solution to the rubble...it was something I found I couldn't sketch, so I put it aside to do some colored and painted ideas to better show what I had in mind.

Transformers : Continuum Out Today!

I'm getting emails about this today - I thought it was shipping on the 25th, but hey...I'll take it now!

The reviews have been, at best...mixed. My favorite hater comment was that Spike looked like a profile picture from an emo's MySpace page! Second favorite was 'Worst Cover Ever.' I have to hope that it was written with Comic Book Guy's voice in mind...ah, fandom.

TF1 - Cybertron 03

These are meant to be interior level maps, going inside some of the building of Cybertron. Just to start with these sketches, I kept it fairly geometric, with the plan to add more curves and organic touches as I moved on to the next step.


Some kind of central hub? Maybe a power supply to have the player deal with - no design doc was made up for this level yet, so I was just winging it with general gameplay ideas. You can see the bottom right sketch has some of those original structures being developed further.


Some more large area structure; I was trying to play with opposing angles, to create some more dynamic shapes.


Another central hub idea...just larger and more aggressive. The idea was to have an energy source linking the floor structure to the overhang.


A kind of a gateway, intended to be a mix of metal and transparency, that's why the continuation of the hallway is visible through the structure.

TF1 - Cybertron 02

Here are a couple development drawings for Cybertron that have gone wrong. After doing those fast Sharpie sketches, they want me to dive right into some final art. I was reluctant, but gave it a try. Doing characters based off sketches isn't too hard, but creating a complete world takes a bit more time than a half day of sketching. The top one is an in-game shot, and below...


...is a rough block-in for a world key-frame. Pretty much flat shapes, and some real-world cityscapes thrown in to set the lighting tone. Then they wanted me to put Bumblebee in there for 'action.' So I did. And then gave up. I felt we were skipping too may steps to get to a satisfying set of images, and I asked for a few days more of development.


So I went back to the drawing board and decided to start on key areas, rather than a whole landscape, later I could go back and cherry pick all these ideas for full images. I started with a bridge idea, an semi-homage to the first scene of the first episode of the G1 series. Just really trying to find shapes and elements, how things might be constructed or overlayed atop other structures.

I can't find just the pencils (because these were colored later) but I had done these at the same time, to illustrate the developer-favorite-fill-arts of vents, pipes, and opaque windows...just to get them off the more conventional takes on those types of things, common in game environments. And then the bottom left was kind of a test color, in between location sketches...

TF1 - Cybertron 01

This art was actually created in the time between the enemy drones, and the Shockwave character...there was talk of Cybertron in the movie script, and about it possibly being cut, or reduced somehow. As far was we knew, there wasn't any movie concept for that sequence to pull reference from, but it was being considered as a level in the game.

So I got asked to tackle imagining the Cybertron for the movie-verse. I pulled reference of Cybertron from the toon of course, and got started with some rough sketches.


All of these were done with Sharpies, kind of a really quick shape exploration. I wanted to find shapes for towers, bridges, alleys - all kinds of dynamic areas for game maps.



At this point I wasn't too concerned with finding the 'badass' look, it was more about finding little bits here and there to cherry pick from in the next round of development. Of this structure, maybe the only worthy thing is the doorway...


...and this led to the idea of the world being a series of overlayed structure - ignoring the building, and just taking the background idea!


Some more structure ideas...by pairing these buildings, does this somehow connote an industrial complex, rather than a military or residential area on Cybertron? Maybe...


By the time I got to this last idea, I was starting to find shapes and structures to develop, so for the last drawing...


...I put it all together in a rough layout.