In closing, the opening "Notes" page of the first book states that these were the materials they had at their disposal, and that Jim and Bill knew that there were more models out there that they either didn't have or didn't have good copies of and enticed readers with any materials to aid in their compilations by contacting the listed email address. In recent years, some of Jim Sorenson's other ''Transformers'' art compilation works, such as ''[[Transformers: A Visual History]]'', saw newly-surfaced materials that weren't published in this series or in the tie-in "Ark Addendum" posts on his blog.
In closing, the opening "Notes" page of the first book states that these were the materials they had at their disposal, and that Jim and Bill knew that there were more models out there that they either didn't have or didn't have good copies of and enticed readers with any materials to aid in their compilations by contacting the listed email address. In recent years, some of Jim Sorenson's other ''Transformers'' art compilation works, such as ''[[Transformers: A Visual History]]'', saw newly-surfaced materials that weren't published in this series or in the tie-in "Ark Addendum" posts on his blog.
==Chinese reprints==
The Chinese reprints have been published by [[DMAN]].
* '''''Transformers: The Ark I''''' <small>(November, 2017)</small>
* '''''Transformers: The Ark II''''' <small>(November, 2017)</small>
Despite being a specialty product printed on heavy-stock premium paper which caters to a fantastically small audience, the series has sold absurdly well.
2009 — Transformers: The Complete Ark — Omnibus addition of v1 and v2, with edits, additions, corrections and new content to replace pages that were dropped because they overlapped between the two volumes.
The Ark Addendum
In addition to The Ark book series, Jim Sorenson has published several Ark Addendums on his blog, featuring character models too trivial to include in the book, or expanded profiles (such as weapon details) which simply could not fit in the print edition.
Left: Junkyard's pre-final models by Floro Dery as published in The Ark. Right: Junkyard's finalized models by Toei as published in Transformers Generations.
In the years since The Ark series books were published, multiple model sheet collections and production bibles have surfaced through various auction sites, social media and fan archive blogs, revealing that the vast majority of the models from the original cartoon that Bob Budiansky and Jim Sorenson had in their collective possession at the time of publishing, were not final. An overwhelmingly large portion of the character models published in the books were older models that had received several revisions before making it into the cartoon, meaning that some of the details that can be found on these models had either been removed or redesigned afterwards, hence why some of them don't match up with what can be seen on-screen.
Several of the season 3 model sheets that appear in the books—such as the ones for the Predacons, Pipes, Swerve and Sky Lynx—all received entirely new models by Toei, different from what was originally drawn up, with Sky Lynx and the Predacons drawn from angles that are much more stylistic when compared to the standard ¾ angles used in past seasons, and feature large, black shadows underneath their rear-view models, which also hadn't been used until this point. Also among the drastic changes in the art style are the "boxier" hand designs used on the Predacons, which would be utilized more frequently in the subsequent Japanese cartoons like The Headmasters, instead of the rounded hands that were more common in Floro Dery's work for seasons 1 and 2.
A compilation of Rodimus Primes' "final model sheets" as presented to animators.
Also discovered years after the book series was published, were models for The Transformers: The Movie that were either not known about or fully understood at the time of publishing, such as the unique head design that appears alongside Rodimus Prime's models in the books. For years, the fandom assumed the boxy Rodimus model used in the books was the model used in the film and season 3, but it was actually scrapped in favor of the sleeker design used for Hot Rod's final model. Rather than designing an entirely new model sheet for Rodimus that fit the slender aesthetic they wanted, all that was designed was a new head with the animators simply instructed to draw a larger version of Hot Rod's body with Rodimus's head slapped on top. Because of this, no official robot mode model exists for Rodimus, just a head design.
The JunkionsJunkyard and Scrapheap were also given entirely new models by Toei for the movie, that had parts matching the other non-Wreck-Gar Junkions, giving them a collective "mix and match"-type design, rather than the two stand-alone designs drawn by Floro Dery. The problem with the Junkion models though, is that the only known trace of the final Toei Junkion models as of 2026, is a small section in the back of the Transformers Generations guidebooks. That being said, Dery's original designs for these two Junkions did still appear in season 3 of the cartoon, due to AKOM animating the two episodes they appeared in.
In closing, the opening "Notes" page of the first book states that these were the materials they had at their disposal, and that Jim and Bill knew that there were more models out there that they either didn't have or didn't have good copies of and enticed readers with any materials to aid in their compilations by contacting the listed email address. In recent years, some of Jim Sorenson's other Transformers art compilation works, such as Transformers: A Visual History, saw newly-surfaced materials that weren't published in this series or in the tie-in "Ark Addendum" posts on his blog.
