TF2 - Protectobot Warrior 03

And so, here he is, Big Boy #2. Like I said, I like how this guy turned out, despite the pain in the ass growing pains of the development. And I really do give JT co-design credit on this one - I did the final art, but I would get very detailed feedback on the changes he was looking for, so we really did it together. But yeah, I think it's effective. I like the wheel placements, and the arrangement of all the siren lights...


...and the back is pretty solid too. The main thing, I think was to make him look as powerful as the Combaticon Warrior, but not just like him. I'm pretty happy with the highlight too, the idea that these were all shiny, freshly painted Protectors of the world of TF


This guy is bulky - he almost doesn't fit on the page! And after revising the vehicle's flamethrower, I was happy to go back and finish the original version, used for bot mode.


Jeez, the foot saga. I probably spent an additional day just making feet revisions, here's a taste of the round and round, making these adjustment. JT wanted the back ankles to be freed up for a joint, I kinda thought it was already, but hey. And the toes...man. If anything I would have made them solid feet, ala movie Ratchet. But I got back this chop-suey-many-toe overylay back, to try and revise the feet. I did the revision, but then dropped one toe element out, because it was just too much. Usually I would turn in on average of 4 work-in-progress files, per view. A block-in, and pre-final (which is everything finished, except for additional colors and graphics, and shading) and then the final, and then maybe an addtional revision.

I did 10 versions on the front view, thanks to those feet.

I understand how some people have the opinion of that they should/could let me do what I want, but you need to understand that Luxoflux as a company, has so much invested into this game, just for their own reputation as a game maker, and a group that is be extremely reliable to create games for big franchises, like TF and Kung Fu Panda. I'm a small piece in the overall puzzle of creating a game, and I'm not even on their staff. They have system in place, and I was an outside hire through Activision, to come in and reprise my role as the character designer, while they have AWESOME artists already working there. So you know, every once and a while, we would butt heads, but it's their game, and it almost always led to a better OVERALL design.

I just wouldn't have had clawed feet on nearly every design. ;)

TF2 - Protectobot Warrior 02 *

This was the first pass at the Warrior vehicle, based somewhat on a Bearcat. Obviously, we still hadn't settled on the blue yet, but this is where I found the color for the Protectobots. It was pretty close to what the Bearcat is sold as, but I was asked to go back in and 'Ratchet' it up.* As I did with the armored car from the last game - when in doubt kids, add diamond plate! I gave it lift kit, beefed up the winch on the front, added a step deck to the back, emergency boxes, bigger flashers...

...and so this is the final product. You can also see I was asked to change the flame thrower on top. I didn't necessarily agree with that, but I was able to use the original for the bot mode.

Makes for an imposing opponent when you see this come barreling after you!


*After my breaking away from the approved grayscales kept getting me in trouble with Luxo, I was starting to get gunshy with adding or changing stuff as I went, and so it started with this character, my sticking as exactingly as I could to the approved stuff, but then that didn't seem to work for them either. It kinda sucked for awhile, but laid down a good development system for future characters.


*Update! It was brought to my attention I forgot to add the transformation sequence for this guy - so here ya go!

TF2 - Protectobot Warrior 01

This guy was a bit of a pickle for me. And I really need to give co-design credit the Justin Thomas, the Art Director at Luxoflux for this one. These were the sketches I turned in for review, based on a Bearcat armored car...now I usually don't mention my faves when I turn in these sketches, but I remember it being clear to me that the middle one might have worked best.

But they picked the one that was dotted, and when I turned in this drawing for a pre-final check before submisssion, I got this image reworked into a rough version you can see below. JT did some photoshop magic to squash and stretch elements into this basic shape*, and I redrew it for final.


Normally I am pretty open to making changes, but this time it was a little annoying to have basically this version already in the thumbnails (drop the ribcage armor, and it's pretty close, I thought) and to go to final drawing with another. Time was tight for this, and I had a bunch of these robot grayscales to submit for Hasbro review...though overall, I think it was a great choice to go this way instead.

*I couldn't find the reworked feedback version...stuff like that got saved to a feedback folder, which I don't archive afte projects, so it's lost (to me anyways) forever.

TF2 - Protectobot Scout 03

When I did the first game, I submitted the grayscale concepts to Hasbro, with the caveat that these designs would change a bit as I developed them. It afforded me a little wiggle room to discover new elements as I was putting them together. The relative size and shape of the concept would stay the same, but details might be different by the time the final was turned in. For whatever reason, Luxo didn't seem to want to go that route, and so during the Combaticon development, I had to keep pretty strictly to what I had turned in as grayscale...but...


After blocking in the Scout, it seemed pretty clear that the grayscale was a starting point for this guy, not something to paint the final over. So, for pre-approvals, I sent in this; a few options, rearranging elements into a more cohesive design. (you can see I have the old headlights in there!)


So that led to the final, with a few more adjustments to the feet. Feet were a sticking point between me and JT a lot over the course of this project, for whatever reason. Well, I know...I hate claw feet for every robot in the movie-verse, and I tried to get some old school looks in there, but honestly, JT was being a good art director, and sticking to the projects' universe. I kept pointing to movie Rachet, but that only got me so far.

As far as a design, like I said yesterday, Streetwise was a consideration, but Prowl is the ultimate TF cop car. So I wanted to do an homage to Prowls' design, but I couldn't just make Prowl, due to that character being a main player in the canon. Whether or not he ever gets used in the films, there are some untouchables (Shockwave is still an unexplained miracle!)

A couple designs for the guns in there as well. The ones on the right are the originals, but Luxo had me go back and do a redesign, to fit an animation idea they had been working on. I like the originals better, and I honestly can't get close enough in the game to see if his guns transform and look like the revisions.


The back view. Car #56. Me, highschool football number. A little Nepo-tizz. Can you blame me? How often to do you get a chance to put in secret self-referential stuff in a AAA franchise project? And now back to the design...windshield and rear window double-stacked and hidden underneath the back panels. Another conceit used to reduce big panels of glass to a more manageable location in the design.


I mentioned it before, to hide the wheels, and someone asked why hide? Maybe 'hide' isn't the best descrition, it's more about placement, both logical to the transformation, and a little movie bias. I don't like chopping up the wheels, and I don't do it, if I can create space for them to be incorporated into the design. But doing 8 or so wheeled (and additionally trying to avoid the wheeled movie characters) characters, you have to make them all have different solutions where the wheels go.

Of course, I still have a few more ideas for future bots...

TF2 - Protectobot Scout 02

So here is the Charger-not-a-Charger Scout, vehicle mode. Pretty straight forward, as far as police styling goes, mag wheels and sleeker front bumper pad, LED siren lights. And of course, here and there lines are changed, front and rear lights, the usual legal evasions.


The coloring idea was blue and white, like the G1 Protectobots, but after having it so light blue, we went back in and darkened it. This pic is the original color submission. Above it, I thought you guys might like to see a little process - I pretty much do a neutral gray. I keep the elements on separate layers, the body, the windows, the lines/elements (door handles, seaming, etc.), the shadows, and the highlights. This leaves nearly unlimited coloring possibilities, I can change the colors, and add badging and stripes, or anything else, and maintain the integrity of the car elements, with minimal adjustments.


The fact that it's a white car kind of led me to this technique, I wasn't doing it for the Combaticons, but helped a lot in the months to come. The conceit we used for the coloring was mostly white with blue for the car, 50/50 for the Warrior truck, and then mostly blue for the Sniper chopper, so I had to come up with something a little more adaptable while I designing the paint apps for these guys...

And then the transform sequence. Tomorrow, I'll talk more about it, but I do realize I should have used more Streetwise, and less Prowl, for an influence...but c'mon.

TF2 - Protectobot Scout 01

And now for some Protectobots!


Starting out with a police car, we needed an Autobot mirror of the Combaticon Scout, another mid-sized vehicle. It made my life a little easier, since I already had a body type defined, this character was mostly about finding ways to reconfigure the vehicle cues into bot form. I also toyed with the idea that he'd be a two gun sheriff type, taking advantage of the police origins.


The Luxo guys chose the new Charger to be the cop car, which was convenient, because I was living in Glendale at the time, and all the new police cars were Chargers! So my influences were from that, and some aspects of Barricade.

So I slapped some gray tone on the refined drawings, (and some little character sketches) and sent it off to the big H for approval...

TF2 - Combaticon Heads...and stuff

Kind of lame, huh? These where the original heads for the Combaticons. My first characters since coming back, and I was still working under the drone conceit from the first game. One of the first thoughts about these guy were that they were a team, and operated out of a hive mentality, they were different but the same, hence sharing the same simple design for the head.

If anybody remembers the first game, the characters you battled were originally meant to just get a hit of Energon, be able to transform and fight; but not be smart - or Cybertronian. But of course, by the time the movie came out, all that logic was thrown out the window. Mountain Dew, anyone?

That's why I gave them the cyclops eye...so I started with that similar conceit with the Combaticons and Protectobots, until Hasbro told us that these are considered movie-verse characters, and had us go back and revise the heads.


So this is the first pass at the new heads, a series of sketches. Although it's not dotted as the pick, I believe it's the top second, from the left. I made that head for final, and then did the same thing, squashed and stretched the same head into three different sizes for each of the characters.


But then, Luxo had me go back and do different heads for the Sniper and Warrior, keeping the new one for the Scout. You can see the picks are dotted.


And here is the final turnarounds for the new heads. Waaaaaaaaay better. I know I say us and we a lot in the explanations...but it's really me. I'm doing these designs myself, but I'm glad I was asked to do revisions for these, they were really needed. And it set a new tone for the rest of the characters following the 'teams.'


Along with the star, here's a few other ideas I tried out in the beginning, for Combaticon markings. Couple of combinations of army and Decept, and some Cyber-fied designs, based off Starscream's tats from ROTF.

And then finally, a near miss on losing the Combaticon Warrior. Since we used a Striker for the Warrior, Hasbro came back and asked us to use the Wreckage design from the first movie's toy line. The problem was (and annoyingly) they didn't mention this until AFTER we turned in the final design for approval. Weeks earlier, they approved the fact that Luxo wanted to do a Striker, and that is when they should have asked us to movie-fy Wreckage. I wouldn't have been against it, but AFTERWARDS? For my part of the budget, a lot of time and money had been spent on the Combaticon Warrior, and there was really no time to do another one. And the simple fact, he is one of my favorites I did for this game. So, the guys from Luxo and myself, had a quasi-vote, and pushed back against Hasbro, and said no.


While we were waiting, though, I whipped this up as a test (I believe this is a toy shot from the awesome galleries at Seibertron.com) just to see how a repaint would look. Luxo never knew I did this, I just wanted it in my back pocket in case we had to re-do the character. Not bad, but I love my babies.

Well, we got our way, with Luxo's expert debate skills, and the Big Boy made it into the game.

Next week: Protectobots!