TF1 - Tow Truck Drone 01

So next up is the Tow Truck drone - I'm not sure of the order anymore, but I was sent a link about the new Hoist figure coming out on Shortpacked.com, based on this guy, sourced from the Alex Kubalsky Transformers Wiki page, who actually engineered the fig. Here's a quote:

"When designing movie Longarm, reference from Activision had not arrived, forcing Kubalsky to make up his own transformation scheme and robot design (which intentionally borrowed some elements from Generation 1 Hoist). By the time reference arrived, it was too late in the process to make any major changes, but Kubalsky was able to graft elements from the game model's chest and arms onto the newly-created design (which he felt worked out rather well). "

He also designed the Swindle figure, so it is he, to whom down I must bow. Say that five times fast. I apologize, I had no idea this guy was going to be a figure, or that there was any hard deadline for getting these designs finalized for the toy creation process.


At this point, on my side, I just heard they wanted a tow truck. There was no talk of making it the tow truck that drags Bumblebee around, it was just another vehicle to create a character for. That being said, I originally turned him in with a green paint job, figuring why not? Old fans will at least get the connection...but Hasbro was reluctant to go farther, because at the time, all of this was so new to everyone, games, toys, movie, they kind of wanted to save all the characters for the Bay-verse*...so instead of going all out with yellow cues, and hazard stripes, I just turned in a green one. It's awesome to read that on the other side of the world, that Alex, the toy designer, was pushing for the same thing.


But for the context of the film, it does make more sense to make him the tow truck that Mikaela and Bumblebee drive around with. And I'm not sure if this is even close to the movie truck, all I had was a keyframe that featured Bumblebee firing back as he was being dragged...


Here's the action feature, kind of a similar function to Bonecrusher's claw from that awesome freeway fight.

*I know people will say after that statement, WTF? You did Shockwave! Wait for the post about it!

TF1 - Jet Drone 02

And so here is the final render. Meh. I think he's a pretty good design, but posed and proportion incorrectly - he just doesn't look badass enough. He's supposed to be able to hang with the movie Starscream, but I get the impression ol' Screamer wouldn't take but two seconds to dismantle this jet drone down to his landing gear.


These views don't help him out either, it gives the impression that he's very flat back, which wasn't really the intention, but I can see how it was interpreted that way. I did want to stay in the family of Starscream, but again, we were behind on getting the concepts, and at this point, all I had of Starscream was a rendered pencil drawing. Which in the end, stayed fairly close, but I probably ended up emphasizing the wrong things before seeing the final. And again, I now had this less-advanced-than-the-movie drone style established, so I needed to keep that consistant as well.

You know I'm proud of all my babies, but like I said, I'm glad I got a second chance at doing jets with the Seekers and Arielbots from the RotF game.


Of course I knew how these characters were breaking up in their transformations, and I thought the A to B transition in the illustrations were enough, but Travelers put in a request for me to show a transformation sequence to help them with the animation. So I basically chose a 50% stage, and highlighted in text the specific movements.


Meet Dreadwing, the jet drone toy. Despite my misgivings about the design work that I did, this is actually a great little action figure. He's really econonomical in his transformation, and doesn't have little bits that fall off as you transform him, and you can get pretty good poses out of him. Again, I bow down to the engineer who had to make this guy into plastic...

TF1 - Jet Drone 01

So after the first batch of drones were done, and beginning to integrate into the game, it became clear we needed some more, and Hasbro was happy to have us create a few more characters. They suggested a jet, but it couldn't be an American fighter, so I went with a Mig 29, because it closely resembled an F15. Well, not closely, but similar enough. The movie starscream existed at this point, but only in colored line art form, and it was in dispute between Bay and Hasbro, so I/we didn't know what was going to happen - was he going to stay the same, or get reworked in a more G1 style that Prime had been? So that kind of made it hard to design around, wanting to keep some G1 aspects...


...but make it clear it was it's own design. So I don't know, I've never been really happy with this guy, I'm at my worst when I have to design in a box, so to speak, and so I felt at the time he was going to be less successful as the others, and now looking back 2+ years later, I don't think he holds up. And even these sketches could have been taken in a better direction when I got to the final. It's not like I hate myself over this or anything, but we just didn't have the time to really explore ideas at this point, and it was go, go, go to get these guys to Travelers' Tales, to get them in the game. I certainly feel redeemed with the Arielbot and Seeker designs from the RotF game, so it's all good.


After that first three designs were being implemented by the developer, they asked for additional help with the layouts...originally I just gave a 3/4 front and back view for the alt mode, but they needed a plan set of views, so I started giving them these, and this was also the birth of the transformation sequence drawings...


...along with the beginning of these, the action sketches - which literally became the action feature of the toy, as well!

TF1 - Forklift Drone 02

Ah, my little forklift guy. This is my fave of the first game, he just kind of cracks me up. He's a little badass, rough and tumble kinda scrapper. The vehicle mode is a combo of two real forklifts, and I was really starting to figure out the mechanics of designing transformers by this point. He's also one of the pre-movie designs I did that can actually stand aside the movie characters without too much of a design discrepancy.


Even though it seemed more difficult to work with so little mass, it actually made things easier as I got to work - to keep as many vehicle cues as I could, that left not much other mass to work with, so he came in more streamlined in the end. I'm a little disappointed he didn't retain the potbelly look by the time he got into the game, but that's on me for not pushing it enough in the 3/4 profile view.


Meet Dirt Boss! I was a little sad his color isn't right, but since it's Constructicon Green, I can't complain too much! This guy wasn't released for the first movie's toyline, but he came in the first wave of the Revenge of the Fallen toyline. He's pretty great, favorite fig of all the first game guys, too...

TF1 - Forklift Drone 01

So now we have the big sized truck, the mid sized car, and on to the little guy - the forklift drone. I went right to the forks being the underarm weapon of choice, with the fork guard acting as shields for the shoulder, and that left not much mass for the body. So he basically unfolds, with the halfway point hinge at the back end.

This is the one that got picked from Hasbro, but I already had the dogleg going on with the truck drone, so I knew going in I would need to give him more humanoid knees...


And this is just the whirlygig idea, a defensive use for his forks, for close range combat with the player.

TF1 - Truck Drone 02

The finals for the truck drone. Originally just gray, after the toys were being decided on, Hasbro sent us their graphic preferences, so I took him to the paint shop, and matched up as close as I could to the toy. This is before I fully figured out how to keep a separate graphic layer, and know what other layers to keep separate, to make the changes really fast...so the purple doesn't blend very naturally. It gets the idea across, at the very least.


Again...'quaint.' I did weird stuff with the front wheels, and ignored the rear wheels, split up the glass in strange ways...of course I designed him before I knew he was going to be a toy, but I should have not sliced up too many of the elements - again needing to emulate what we were aware of at the time with the movie designs.


So this is Dropkick, and I think the toy design came out better than the game version that I did. Somehow I missed getting the bulk, and taking advantage of the mass that the truck has versus the car, and created a more spindly character than I meant to. This version of him pushes what I had started into a more well rounded design. He's pretty cool...

TF1 - Truck Drone 01

The origins of the truck drone, AKA Dropkick. After making a good impression with Hasbro with the car drone, they said we could do more, and initially we were just going to do three. The car would be the middle range guy, and we needed something smaller and something bigger. The bigger was decided to be a pickup truck. Something that didn't compete with the Ironhide design as a vehicle, and something stood a little bigger as a robot.


I guess the one on the end was selected, but I had to drop out the tuck bed stuff - I can't really remember why at this point, but I think people responded to the pose more than anything else. Looking back, I think it would have made more sense to put the middle idea from above into this pose - make him a lot bigger, or at least the impression of size.

Again, a bit of character, having him be able to combine his arms into a gun - I didn't know ol' Megs was going to do that in the movie just yet...