ShÅhei Kohara
Shōhei Kohara (小原渉平 Kohara Shōhei) was one of the Takara artists who translated the earliest Transformers' toy designs into character models that formed the basis of the designs used in the cartoon series and comic books.
Indications are that Kohara designed the first animation models for the characters who appeared in the original 1984 Transformers commercials. His designs were simplified for the commercial animation by Floro Dery, who generally removed wheels in robot mode and enlarged the characters' heads; Dery would revise the models further for the cartoon, and would go on to design most new Transformers characters for the series.
The most notably different of Kohara's designs was Megatron's, which he based on a prototype image of the toy, rather than the finished figure. Dery's modified version of the design, seen in the commercials and early issues of the Marvel comic, retained many of the distinctly-different details from Kohara's model, such as the head and fusion cannon; Dery's second revision, for the cartoon,altered these elements to better match the toy.
