User:Fanofcoolstuff27/sandbox/Character model

A character model is a stylistic guide created to help animators and licensee artists depict the Transformers in a consistent and recognizable way. A typical character model is illustrated with a series of model sheets, containing two or more line drawings of each of a character's modes, showing the front and back, weapons, and sometimes details as well. Character models are most often derived from a character's toy, though in some instances the toy and character design may be designed simultaneously.

Character models produced in the 80s were typically black & white, with a separate color guide that would often cover just the front of the model. Modern character designs are usually in color, though sometimes the designs for the backs are only produced in black & white.

Character models are not to be confused with control art, which is used in the toy design process.

Creation

The Transformers

Shōhei Kohara's original Autobot designs

In the developmental stages of The Transformers franchise, pre-dating the original cartoon and ongoing comic series, the very first Transformers character designs were created by Takara artist Shōhei Kohara based on the Takara products Hasbro was given licensing rights to reproduce. It is unclear just how many designs he was responsible for creating, but he is credited as the creator of the original eight designs, these being: Optimus Prime, Sideswipe, Jazz, Prowl, Megatron, Soundwave, Laserbeak, and the shared Seeker body-type. These eight designs would later be refined by Floro Dery for the original 1984 Transformers commercials and subsequently refined several more times before being utilized in the animated series itself, for ease of animation.

Floro Dery's modifications included the removal of wheels and the enlargement of the characters' heads, and the more extreme redesign of Megatron to better resemble his toy. Dery went on to become the primary named designer for the majority of the cartoon, with evidence that he created a few of the remaining 1984 character models using the toy's package art for reference.<ref>Zobovor traces the ancestry of select 1984 character models to the toys' boxart</ref> All of the 1984 character artwork for both the cartoon and package art were designed using photos of the toys themselves, oftentimes being in the original Japanese decos, which were compiled into briefing binders that were given out to just about every company involved in the initial steps of developing the franchise. Among these companies, aiding in the creation of all character models for the cartoon, were Marvel Productions and Toei Animation. Most steps to developing character models from this point onwards consisted of Floro Dery and Marvel Productions creating the majority of initial designs with Toei requesting or making tweaks to these designs and having several moments of handing material and notes back-and-forth between the companies until the desired final design was reached. As Toei dealt with the bulk of animation duties, they oftentimes had the last say. It also appears that there was quite a disconnect between the two companies and when a set of models would be finalized for animation, as all character models given to Marvel Comics' staff for use in the original ongoing comic series were never final models, suggesting that Toei would make drastic alterations at the last minute and never provided the finalized set to Marvel. Evidence would also suggest that Toei was largely incharge of rear-view models, this became more apparent as time went on.

In 1985, model production for season 2 was largely the same as before, only this time Hasbro evidently provided less photos of toys in their briefing binders, with toys taken on front-facing 3/4 angles in both robot and vehicle mode, leaving Dery and the other designers to try to interpret what they could with these visible details, often leading to kibble that is supposed to be on their backs being attached to random places such as their arms and legs. While these models adhered closer to toy-accuracy when compared to some of the models from the previous year, the lack of rear-view photos of the toys also led the designers to make up entire rear-views for the characters that were oftentimes completely wrong (see "Design oddities" below). A fair amount of models for season 3 also suffered from these same issues.

In 1986, The Transformers: The Movie, flipped the sequence of events around, with all the new cast members being developed by Dery, with his designs subsequently translated into toy form. While Dery got to pour his heart and soul into all of these original character designs, Toei would ultimately once again have the final say as to what would appear in the film and the then-upcoming season of the cartoon. Not even one of Dery's initial designs appears in the final film. While the previous cartoon seasons saw Toei providing minor tweaks to Dery and Marvel Productions' designs (e.g. a new head design, maybe some details removed, etc.), Toei would ultimately use his models as more or less a basis and design entirely new models from scratch, oftentimes with a much larger [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}mecha|{{#if:||mecha}}]]-style influence, similar to the character models for the ever-popular [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Gundam|{{#if:||Gundam}}]] franchise cartoons of the time, an aesthetic that would become much more apparent in the Japanese series' continuations (more on that below).

By season 3, Floro Dery had ultimately left the franchise, and the bulk of character model designs for the remaining 1986 and early 1987 toys were being heavily reworked by Toei based on Marvel Productions' designs, much like the cast of the movie were with Dery's designs. Like the movie, a noticeable shift in aesthetics started to become more apparent in some of the season 3 model designs too; namely the Predacons and Sky Lynx, who featured squared hands and had their rear-view models drawn on some hard 3/4 angles that looked up at them from the ground, with massive black comic-like shadows cast under them and inside their vent-like greebles on their bodies—both aesthetics being entirely absent in all previous Dery and Marvel Productions designs. From this point, the status quo really gets a shake up.

In 1987, the US cartoon's three-part episode "The Rebirth" was entirely animated by AKOM, as Toei had split off and started working on Transformers: The Headmasters, a Japanese-only spin-off of the US cartoon. Much like previous seasons, the models were first designed by Marvel Productions—but unlike the seasons before it—Toei didn't have a say in the design process, so everything that appeared in "The Rebirth" was solely US-based and no major overhauls ever took place. Toei did still have access to some of the first few Marvel Productions' model designs for the Headmasters and Targetmasters, but ultimately created their own original model designs to fill in the missing models they received from Marvel. As mentioned further up in this section regarding Toei seemingly being the sole designers of rear-view models, this became more apparent in season 3 and "The Rebirth" as none of the Marvel Productions-only materials ever had rear-view models drawn in any of their modes. In season 3, characters like Octane and the Terrorcons lacked rear-views altogether, and so animators made up rear-views as they went, leading to no two episodes having the same rear designs for these characters. The same happened with "The Rebirth". If you pay close attention, the majority of newly introduced characters in the short-lived "fourth season" face the front almost the entire time!

With The Transformers cartoon being completely over at this point, the Japanese side of the franchise continued producing loosely-tied sequel cartoons, with Masumi Kaneda and Ban Magami taking over on a lot of the character design for both the subsequent Japanese cartoons and its related and semi-related media (see: Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers). On the US side, however, Marvel Productions continued producing some character models for toy and Marvel comic commercials up until around 1990, but the Marvel comic artists themselves seemingly started producing their own character models where necessary, and taking concept art from Takara designers such as Masakatsu Saito, to use as character models for characters such as the 1988 Decepticon Pretenders, likely to save on time and money. It was pretty clear by around 1988 that all design collaborations between Marvel Productions and Toei had ceased entirely, with Toei only working on the toy commercial animations with whatever was provided by Marvel.

Fast forward to around 2007, author Jim Sorenson and artist Bill Forster made an outstanding effort in compiling production material for both the US and Japanese cartoons into a series of non-fictional books, using both the production materials that they had gathered themselves and a massive bulk of production materials from Bob Budiansky's personal possession after his time working on the cartoon and comic series. However, as the years have gone on and the internet has progressed, more materials have surfaced through online auctions in both the US and Japan, and more fans, and Marvel and Sunbow staff alike are sharing the materials they have in their possession, revealing that the vast majority of US character models published in the series were unfinalized models; generally the early Marvel Productions work that had been revised several times by both themselves and Toei before use in the cartoon.

Beast Era

Preliminary designs for season 1 of *Beast Wars*

The development process of creating the US Beast Wars cartoon and its character models was very similar to that of The Transformers, only this time, rather than everything being hand-drawn, it was all 3D animated, as this was the then-biggest game-changing development in animated media going forward. Like the original Transformers cartoons' production process, Hasbro provided a range of toys to Mainframe Entertainment that they had made, for the animators to then render digitally. The first few selected characters were rendered as basic block models that heavily resembled the figures, however, as production went on, creative liberties were made for both ease of animation, and to give the models more character, making for the majority of the 1996 cast barely sharing any resemblance to their respective toys. When developing a character model for the Beast Wars cast, Mainframe created roughly three 3D models per character; one for robot mode, one for alternate mode, and one that was a simplified version of their robot models that could be manipulated in a variety of ways to simulate transformation between the two forms. Very early on during the first season, animation and swapping of models during transformation sequences wasn't as streamlined as it was by the end of the series and the beginning of its sequel. Characters often remained standing around in their simplistic transformation model for brief periods before the "camera" would cut away and flash back to the final form in a later clip. As the season went on, the swapping of models became more fluid going: beast mode performs a motion and cuts out, transformation model cuts in and contorts/decontorts and cuts out, then robot mode cuts in and performs a motion and the scene continues from there (and vice versa for transformation sequences going the other way). By seasons 2 and 3, characters adhered closer to toy-accuracy, with the bare minimum of the characters' details altered (e.g. Transmetal Tarantulas featuring a visor like in season 1, rather than two separate eyes like his toy). With the addition of a "secondary alternate form" in the Transmetal characters, a fourth model (or even fifth in the case of Optimal Optimus) would be made to accommodate these new toy-based gimmicks.

For Beast Machines, Hasbro and Mainframe would again adopt the same strategy as the first season of its predecessor, where models were altered heavily from the toy designs and decos to make for more articulate models and to give the models more character. With the addition of the Technorganic feature being present in the show's Maximals' aesthetic, and the idea of all of the alternate mode kibble being absent in robot mode, it is also likely that this played a huge role in the streamlining of designs too. As for the Vehicons, they were among the most notably different from their initial toy designs as the first three generals Tankor, Thrust and Jetstorm were made to look more robotic, drone-like and a teeny tiny bit beast-like (e.g. Tankor having non-articulated treaded-struts for legs, Thrust having a unicycle design, Jetstorm being a flying merman, and all of their vehicle modes having articulated head-like cockpits). Unlike the show's predecessor, Hasbro offered up more cartoon-accurate toys in later waves of the toyline. Season 2 of Beast Machines ultimately strayed away from developing all-new designs that vaguely resembled the toys they were based on (much like season 2 of Beast Wars), where the designs would only be altered slightly, with the biggest change generally being their color schemes instead.

As for the Japanese side of the coin, Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo went back to basics with hand-drawn animation. The character model designs for these characters were also very toy-accurate, even down to the characters having model sheets performing almost all of the attack gimmicks of their toys. Much like the cartoons before them, all of the designs were drawn based on samples of the toys, with the only miniscule differences in the final models being: the addition and subtraction of extra appendages on hands and feet (Diver's robot and beast mode feet and hands); removal of unpleasant-looking kibble (Apache's shoulder kibble, Diver's frog legs on his back); parts on the robot modes positioned in ways that are unachievable on the toys themselves (Skywarp's eagle feet facing forwards in robot mode, Magnaboss's forearms facing outwards); and kibble being resized for convenience (Galvatron's dragon wings and tank drill forming a massive cape, Longrack and Break's forearm panels being unobtrusive). As a lot of the designs for Car Robots were by the same artists who worked on Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo (Hiroyuki Taiga and Takahiro Yamada being among the most notable), all of the above applies to the models of that cartoon too (including its dub).

As for the Beast Wars Special film short "Lio Convoy in Imminent Danger!", designs of all the second-half characters appearing in the second half (the "season 2", if you will) of the Beast Wars II cartoon, were given entirely different models designed by Takashi Yamamoto. Yamamoto not only also produced an alternative model for Lio Convoy (which is the exact same design as Hiroyuki Taiga's design, just drawn differently, with a little bit of the Yamamoto's own artistic flare), he was also the creator of Majin Zarak's models and responsible for translating Optimus Primal's season 1 design into a series of 2D models for the short.

Nuances

If the same toy is used for multiple characters, they may be depicted with very different character models—for example, Sideswipe and Red Alert. These two toys are essentially identical, but while Kohara's design for Sideswipe is tall and athletic, Dery's more toy-derived design for Red Alert is short and stocky. This pattern of artistically differentiating two very similar toys in order to make distinct characterization easier was particularly common with the 1984/1985 toys, many of which were redecos of other toys. Examples include Trailbreaker/Hoist, Prowl/Smokescreen, the Seekers/the Coneheads, and others. In general, the 1984 toys were vastly anthropomorphized for the screen, while the 1985 character models resembled their toys much more closely, resulting in a stockier group of robots.

The practice of varying the character models of characters who share a bodyform was revisited in Transformers Animated. Though Ratchet and Ironhide share a bodyform, Ratchet's character model has a paunch while Ironhide's form is more buff. Bumblebee shares a bodyform with roughly a dozen other characters, and their bodyshapes run the gamut from skinny to stocky to curvaceous, depending on the character's needs.

Guess which one can actually turn into an ambulance?<ref>**Answer:** Neither. While Ratchet's character model clearly can't transform into anything, Ratchet's toy transforms into a Onebox minivan *pretending* to be an ambulance.</ref>

Character models may vary wildly from the toy itself, leading to greater or lesser degrees of "show-accuracy". Perhaps the most conspicuous examples are Ironhide and Ratchet. In those instances, droid-like and "alien" toys were heavily anthropomorphized in the character models, adding humanoid proportions, heads, and faces.

Perhaps the best representation of both of the above factors—character models differing from the toys, and later character models differing from earlier ones based on the same toys—is shown by Tarantulas and Blackarachnia.

A few exceptions, such as Whirl and Roadbuster, who only appear in the Marvel UK comics, appear to have no character models at all, and their art is based on their toys. Regardless, even in the later years of the Generation 1 franchise, the creation of character models persisted. One example is the 1989 Pretenders, whose character models are replicated faithfully by José Delbo. Even though artistic interpretations of Bludgeon, Stranglehold, and Octopunch diversified with later artists, elements taken from the character models continued, such as their individualized melee weapons. (These weapons were not included with the individual toys.)

Most of the Generation 1 character designs from before 1987 were done by Floro Dery. The widely distributed model sheets of those characters may have been redrawn from his designs, or they might be his direct work. The first three years' worth of Generation 1 character models formed the basis for the artwork of Marvel's The Transformers Universe profile books. Additional profiles were later published in the back of the main comic book, showing character models for some of the 1987 and 1988 characters.

A vast collection of Generation 1 character models are available in the books Transformers: The Ark, Transformers: The Ark II, and Transformers: The Complete Ark. Many of the same designs are also available in Transformers Generations, though its pictures are quite small and typically feature only the front of the robot and the alt mode.

Design oddities

On the left, Optimus Prime's head as it appeared on his original character model; on the right, the more stylized version from his later-produced head turnaround. Note the change in shape and thickness of the cheekguards, and the alteration to an angular, straight-edged mouthplate instead of a curving one.

Head turnarounds

In addition to full-body character models, close-up head turnarounds were also created later in the production of the Generation 1 animated series for the various Transformers, which depicted them with more stylized, angular heads, their helmets sometimes slightly different shaped, and with sharper facial-delineation lines compared to the softer renderings used on the original models. The influence of these close-up models can be spotted in some of the better-looking season one episodes, but became the default look for characters in season two. AKOM, by all appearances, never got these turnarounds, and consistently drew the Transformers with the softer heads of their original models; drawing the new characters from the second season in this manner also appears to be a hallmark of the mysterious unknown animation studio.

Package art influence

Some character models clearly used the toys' package art as reference, which had some knock-on effects on their designs.

Hound's character model is in the same pose as his box art. The model misinterprets the box art's foreshortening of his rifle, which resulted in Hound wielding a stubby little gun in robot mode, while in vehicle mode, it was its proper length.
Wheeljack's model also shares his box art's pose. The box art adds an assortment of technical details to the insides of his lower legs that are not part of his toy, but which wound up transferring onto his character model.
Ravage's character model and package art share an identical pose, which would go on to be widely replicated across much Transformers media.
Rumble and Frenzy's package art shows them with only one of their Thruster guns attached to their backs, and one in their hands. This translated to the character models, which resulted in the two brothers intermittently having only one gun on their backs throughout the show.
Superion's character model has a very long rifle attached to his arm that is not part of his toy. This appears to have been added to his character model by a designer who misinterpreted the toy's package art, which uses forced perspective to make his normally-sized handgun appear much longer.

Made-up rear views

Some Generation 1 character models appear to have been created from photos of the toys that show only their fronts, rather than from the artists having in-hand samples of the toys to work from. After generally accurate, front-facing character models were created based on these images (likely by Floro Dery himself for pre-movie characters), a rear-view model then had to be made up based on that design, probably by Dery's assistants, rather than the man himself.

Pretty much all of the new characters from the 1985 product introduced in season two bear hallmarks of this. Grapple and Inferno are missing the crane arm and ladder, respectively, that ought to hang down their backs; in Grapple's case, a misinterpretation caused details representing his crane arm to become part of his legs. Red Alert and Smokescreen feature their vehicle mode trunks on the backs of their torsos, when those parts are supposed to become their legs. The wheels of Hoist's tow-trailer, poking out from behind his arms, became reinterpreted as the hinges of some extraneous panels hanging off the larger panels on the backs of his arms. Astrotrain has a tail fin on his back, when it is supposed to sit on his chest. Instead of his tank turret, Blitzwing has a "rocket pack" to which the wings that are supposed to be on his shoulders are attached, while his tank barrel is moved to extrude from the back of his head. And the other new Autobot cars and Decepticons jets feature rear view designs that, while not noticeably bizarre, are generally simplified and lack even basic details from the toys. Omega Supreme and Seaspray are the two definite exceptions to this strange rule; Omega's rear view model that incorporates a very detailed rendering of his toy's molding, while Seaspray's includes his toy's wheels and screw-holes, ironically features that shouldn't be part of his in-universe appearance!
In 1986, the Protectobots continued the trend, with rear views that misinterpret and/or omit virtually all kibble. First Aid's windshield-panel and Hot Spot's ladder, for instance, are both completely absent, while Blades's cockpit is misinterpreted as two random panels sticking out of his back. Groove still has his front section hanging off his back... but because it wasn't visible from the front-view, the designers didn't realize his front wheel was also supposed to be attached to it. Defensor, meanwhile, does have some of the kibble that's missing from the individual 'bots (like First Aid's and Blades's panels hanging off his shoulders), because it was visible in the photo used for reference!
From the 1987 line, the pre-final models for the Technobots fell victim to the same foible, with all the team's members featuring made-up rear-view designs that mirrored other chunks of their body to create the backs of their torsos—even the back of their combined form Computron was a mirror of Lightspeed's chest. In particular, misinterpretations of the three-quarters view of the front-facing models resulted in Scattershot's cannon and Afterburner's wheel—parts that are supposed to rest in the middle of their backs—becoming parts of their shoulders in the rear-view designs. These borked designs only appeared in AKOM-animated episodes; corrected character models were used for appearances animated by Toei.

Created from early concept art

The original Megatron character model was based not on the toy, but on early concept art for a prototype version of the figure that differed significantly from the finished article. This design—featuring a different, black-helmeted head, an alternate scope/cannon, and the gun's barrel on its back rather than its hip—was used for the very first Transformers commercial, and the first two issues of the Marvel Comic. Although the model was amended to slightly better resemble the toy before the cartoon itself was produced, much of the finished Megatron design remains rooted in the prototype.
In 1986, the Aerialbots' character models were mostly based on simplified lineart of their toys, rather than the actual toys themselves, but this did not result in much divergence from the finished toys. The exceptions came in the form of Silverbolt, whose rear-view model lacks the jet nosecone that ought to rest on his back, and Superion, whose model has a mouthplate instead of the toy's visible mouth.<ref>"Scramble My What?" on the NTFA forum explores the history of the Aerialbot designs</ref>
Also 1986, the Stunticons' models were created in a similar way to the Aerialbots, except they were based on lineart of prototype designs for the figures, which included head designs that were very different from the noggins the finished toys would ultimately have. The team's models were then subject to further design revisions, which wound up taking the designs even further away from the toys, even retaining the early head designs. The result was a team of character models that looked virtually nothing like their toys. An early character model for Breakdown, published in The Ark, shows his early, concept-art-based design.<ref>"Why do sports cars have square heads?", another NTFA article on the history of the Stunticons</ref>
Given that the Combaticons also look nothing like their toys, it seems likely they went through the same process as the Stunticons. Early models published in both The Ark and Transformers Generations show alternate designs for the whole team that are not especially any more toy-accurate in robot mode, but with much more accurate vehicle mode forms; presumably, these early designs underwent the same revision process the Stunticons did, resulting in the finished Combaticon model seen in the series. Unlike the Stunticons, however, the Combaticons early head designs were replaced with more toy-accurate ones, likely based on the toy's package art.

Variations

When applied to fiction, character designs are often interpreted differently by various artists. Other times, a model may not be available at all, resulting in art based directly on a character's toy, or something entirely made up.

Jetfire / Skyfire had two different character models from early Generation 1 series. The toy-accurate one appeared three times "fictionally," once as a miscolored, partially-obscured background character in the fourth Marvel Comics issue, again in the Marvel Comics as a spectator at Optimus Prime's funeral (right next to his "Skyfire" model), and finally in the The Transformers|Milton-Bradley promotional comic. It would also occasionally crop up in secondary media, such as coloring books and the animated portion of the commercial for Jetfire and Shockwave.

The Broadside on the right has had kibble-reduction surgery

Broadside has the distinction of having two sets of drastically different character models. His pre-final models are based on a prototype of his toy that apparently went just short of production for some reason and features a similar color palette to his final models. His final models, on the other hand, are based directly on his finished toy. The pre-final model was rendered in animated form in the episodes "Thief in the Night" and "Carnage in C-Minor", as well as the commercial for the 1986 Triple Changer toys. As with most of the characters used in the Marvel comics, all of Broadside's appearances used the pre-final model—even going so far as to color it with the same palette as the prototype toy!

Grimlock had a pre-final model design which quickly disappeared from the original The Transformers cartoon, replaced by a more toy-accurate model with the episode "War of the Dinobots". This pre-final model has the distinction of having a much rounder robot mode head as well as a few more smaller details that had not yet been refined to the smoother look of his body in the final. The pre-final version would often return in episodes animated by AKOM, however. The pre-final model was also used in the US Marvel comics, up until he became an Action Master in "Still Life!".

Soundwave's having his mouthplate dry-cleaned

Marvel US Soundwave was drawn without a mouthplate by artist José Delbo, based on an early version of his character model. Soundwave was also colored purple in nearly every appearance in the US comics, probably due to the early model's seemingly lavender coloration. The UK comics coloured him blue in every appearance there and gave him the toy's yellow visor, working off a different model sheet.

For their character models, the face/Nebulan and helmet/seat pieces of Nightbeat and Siren were inexplicably switched. (It is difficult to tell for sure, but they may have kept the correct antennae/guns judging by the basic shapes involved.) This switch gave comic book Nightbeat the "shades" he's remembered for, as well as the crest on his forehead, while comic book Siren ended up with his trademark combined brow/nosepiece. How or why this switch happened, and in what stage of development it occurred, is unknown. Nightbeat was depicted with his own toy's head (for the first time) in Dreamwave's The War Within: The Age of Wrath. Nightbeat's appearances in IDW Publishing's Transformers comics retain the Siren face design, but inside the Nightbeat helmet. In Fun Publications' "Cheap Shots," his appearance is based on his new toy, whose head is based on Siren's face and helmet.

Devastator had two different animation models in the original Transformers cartoon; at the least, he had two different head designs, one with a visor and one without. Though the visored version was the finalized model, both head designs would continue to be used (almost at random) in subsequent episodes. The correct visored design was used for his dramatic scene in The Transformers: The Movie, and thus seems to have "won out"; it appears on all modern Devastator merchandise.

Shut your mouth or I'll shut it for you! (by erasing it!)

Hot Spot would occasionally switch between having a faceplate or having a mouth drawn on his faceplate in his appearances on the original The Transformers cartoon. He had a mouth in "Ghost in the Machine" and "The Ultimate Weapon" — episodes that seem to have been animated by two different animation companies, suggesting that Hot Spot's mouth may have come from an alternate character model.

The Transformers: The Movie: Most of the cast of new characters in the movie had early versions of their character models that changed to varying degrees before the movie was animated. These character models were often used in the Marvel comics and occasionally showed up in season 3 episodes of the television series. Since the toy design process had longer lead times, the toys were designed from the earlier models.

Model sheet poses used in fiction

Occasionally, animation studios (most notably AKOM) actually used the character models of certain characters in the episodes themselves in order to spare themselves from having to draw new poses. Examples are the Predacons when they first appear in "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 5", various scenes with Devastator, Broadside and Galvatron in "Carnage in C-Minor", and at least one shot from "The Autobot Run". This would also routinely happen in Marvel Comics stories (most notably by José Delbo and Robin Smith) as well.

First there was the package art.
Then they used the package art to make the character model. Look for this pose basically everywhere.
See?
There's a whole fleet of 'em!
He even hovers like this when he's recuperating.
These are all from two consecutive pages. The bottom two are of Ravage's from-behind character model!
A textbook "pounce from the shadows".
Man vs. Wild
Now in fun size!
Okay, this one was on purpose.
Someone at TakaraTomy has most likely been reading this page.
Skywarp's standing at an angle with the far arm slightly raised and his head turned toward us, you say?
Even holograms do it.
Starscream wants in on this, too!
Galvatron's early model sheet pose.
That's right, even the movie did it!
AKOM showing off their awesome model sheet tracing skills.
Apparently Nel Yomtov didn't have access to the model sheets, unlike Alan Kupperberg.
This one is interesting: The helmet and the fusion cannon are taken from the animation model, but the crotch is based on the older Marvel model that appears in the The Transformers Universe series of profile books.
He's actually more on-model in this issue than in the regular title for a while.
Flip it and paste a gun over one hand and no one will notice!
Recoil and Peacemaker somehow avoid this.
Both Spike and Delbo have Fortress Maximus's character model on the brain!
How many times can he do it?
Buzzsaw just loves to fly at this exact angle.
It's a hobby he sometimes shares with Laserbeak.
To his credit, Delbo isn't always that blatant. Sometimes he swipes the package art instead. Or even varies the pose a little.
It's odd how everyone always arrives in a 3/4s overhead view!
Compare this to the Bludgeon above.
"Okay, now what angle do I have to draw the room at so I can just paste everyone's art in a cascading row?"
It's a Robin Smith panel. Let's play the popular game named "How many of these characters are recycled from their model sheets?" (Hint: Fortress Maximus apparently isn't.)
"I'm a cardboard cut-out now."
How to make a character model look dynamic.
Weirdwolf's feet flat on the ground, Skullcruncher's tail forward, that's enough variation for today.
Let's play the Robin Smith game again.
One page later, and he barely raised his arm.
If I depict Springer from behind and crop the image frame, no-one will notice!
Okay, one or two of them may actually be original poses.
Surprisingly enough, only Soundwave is lifted straight from his model sheet. While the poses do match for the rest, the perspective is different.
This one is a close call. It's mirrored, the shoulder cannon is on the correct side despite that, the proportions and details are slightly different... but at the very least it's a clear swipe.
The script called for a small shuttlecraft, so let's just copy the Ark's cartoon model.
Take cover! Animation model about to crash!