Floro Dery
Floro Dery was the design supervisor for the original cartoon. He was also responsible for simplifying many of the original designs down to the eventual animation models.
He has also taken credit for fully designing many of the elements of the series, including all the human characters and incidental robots. He has further claimed to have been the originator of the idea of a transforming planet,[1] despite early Japanese concept sketches which precede his involvement. Many of his claims have been met by skepticism among the online fandom thanks to his own contradicting interviews throughout the years.
Floro Dery is very fond of his 1986 movie designs, especially Hot Rod and Gnaw (though even Dery doesn't like Wheelie, and he designed the guy). In fact, if he hadn't drawn the movie characters more humanoid than their boxy predecessors, then "the Transformers by now would be a has been already like the Go-bots."[2] Sadly, though, nothing excites him anymore except the coming Armageddon.[3]
Participation in the modern fandom
Dery is somewhat infamous in the fandom for the outlandish and often very egocentric claims he has made in various interviews down the years. Although it can't be proven, stricly speaking, it is pretty much taken as fact that he has, for years, searched out Transformers forums and messageboards for mentions of him and his work, then post under various aliases to inflate his own legend and verbally attack fan and foe alike for daring to criticize him, or to suggest that someone other than Dery designed something in the show.
The first such instance occurred on alt.toys.transformers in 2002 [1], which was a fairly civil series of posts, even if the rampant egomania was clearly in evidence from the outset. Later, he basically repeated the same post to correct the long-standing misconception that Marvel artist John Romita had been responsible for designing the animation models. [2] Following Zobovor's interview with Dery, however, the civility level began to drop as more posts from "kuest144" were made claiming that any critics of Dery were "jealous" and that he was so envied that it had led to "harassment". Not to worry, though - Marvel had specially set it up so he could work at home to avoid encountering these vicious haters! It was at this point that Rik Bakke pointed out that the screename was the same as one of Dery's homepage accounts. [3] A quick perusal of the Google Groups archive quickly reveals that every other post made by kuest144 relates to Floro Dery, or is to a filipino newsgroup.
Perhaps the most infamous case was that of "Ote," a poster who briefly appeared on The Allspark to decry any critics of Dery's as "racists." Sadly, no archives of this hilarous series of interactions has been preserved, but "Ote" was firmly silenced when everyone pointed out that one of the most popular Transformers artists around, Don Figueroa, is also filipino.
And then, of course, there's the possible case in evidence on this very wiki...
Trivia
- In the opening credits for Scramble City, Floro's first name was incorrectly spelled "Frolo".
External links
- The Art of Floro Dery
- Randy Valiente interviews Dery (in Tagalog)
- Comics Illustrations According to Floro Dery
