Matt Draws Robots

Windblade again, whom I chose to show being sworn in as elected ruler of Cybertron (which happened in the comics a couple of years ago)

Tracks, in a moment of self-reflection

As for all the OTHER characters Kaye played, such as Prime Hardshell, Robots In Disguise Hammerstrike and Slashmark, and Animated Warpath and Highbrow and... and... Well, I could only fit so many characters in, and what immediately jumped to mind was Grimlock eating his cards and Lugnut narrowing his eye at his, so I just ran with them. In retrospect, I might've done one representative from each continuity if I'd thought it through a bit more. Ah well! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ahsoka Tano in her Transformers: Crossovers Jedi-starfighter/robot form. I figured her signature light-sabers-held-in-reverse pose wouldn't work well with her giant backpack of spaceship parts.

I really like the concept behind this convention; it's a sampler of local geek/pop-culture cons coming up in the year, with a bunch of associated vendors too. I know I have trouble keeping up with all the stuff happening in the area, so I'm looking forward to meeting folks and getting a feel for the year to come!

Optimus Prime & Megatron playing mecha-soccer (for the customer's son)

Any prints of it left over from the show will be available on MattDrawsRobots.com. Also, all the pieces currently on that site will be available to buy at the show as well (no shipping!).

Megatron's crashed head/ship thing in the last few episodes of Beast Machines was to me one of the most striking visuals of the series (especially after it became a part of the technorganic landscape). I realized that I could use it in a play on one of my favorite movie posters, but then who should stand in for the characters? I love spotlighting Transformers who never showed up in the main media, so I pulled from those in the BM line who existed only as toys at the time. Scavenger drones seemed a natural fit for the angry mob, and I thought the sky needed a few Spy Streaks. The sole toy-only Maximal who wasn't identified as male was Geckobot, whose packaging bio contained no pronouns. So there was my Maggie! Snarl's bio calls him a "component of the Maximal command", so I put him in place of the President. And I picked Night Viper to be Snake Plissken because I mean, clearly.

Ever since I saw this movie, I've thought about how its premise could be adapted with Transformers. They've got computer brains! What if someone's memories stopped being written to hard disk, and they only had a few minutes' worth of storage in RAM? Running with more elements of the plot, I figured Hubcap would be a perfect stand-in for the main character's questionable helper. I'd originally conceived of that main character being Nightbeat, what with the mystery-solving angle and all. But when it occurred to me that I could afflict amnesia on Rewind, of all 'bots, I couldn't resist it. (Plus he has a canonical "spouse", so even better! My apologies, Domey fans.)

Researching propaganda posters for this piece, I came across this image portraying Mao as the rightful successor of the progression of communist thought and leadership from Marx and Engels through Lenin and Stalin: It occurred to me that there were enough Decepticon leaders in the original Marvel comic series to fill out a similar lineage. (In fact, I even had to be a little stingy, focusing just on the Earthbound succession so for example Thunderwing was left out, and not even getting into the Marvel UK material.) Seeing their oddball mugs lined up emphasizes something I love about that series: how motley a crew the 'Con commanders are, with unexpected characters like Ratbat and Bludgeon getting their turns between the likes of Megatron and Scorponok. The slogan I threw in came not from the comics nor even the G1 universe at all, but from the Transformers: Animated cartoon. It was a rallying cry Megatron had shouted once, a takeoff of the Autobots' "transform and roll out." I wish it had been used more in the fiction since then, and this seemed like a good opportunity to dust it off. Putting this in the fictional context, I realized that it actually made some sense for Bludgeon to present himself in this light between the events of the Generation 1 and Generation 2 comics, when he had taken the Decepticons into exile to regather their strength and build the Warworld. He was a new leader who had simply stepped into the power vacuum after Scorponok's death, having only briefly served under that commander at the tail end of the Decepticons' Earth-based operation. In contrast, most of the 'Con army at that point had either followed Scorponok from Cybertron to Nebulos to Earth, or been on Earth under Megatron, Shockwave, and then Ratbat before Scorponok took over that group too. Bludgeon's prior service had been under Thunderwing on Cybertron, and the other troops from that cohort were likely already used to the idea of him as a leader due to his command of the Mayhem Attack Squad. So for all the rest, playing himself up as the proper continuation of their prior leadership and the manifestation of their high ambitions would've been wise when the 'Cons were probably feeling restless and chagrined after their defeat by and self-imposed isolation from the Autobots.

Leadfoot

Everything that's available for purchase in my store will also be at the show. Hope to see you there!

Megatron

  Any prints of them left over from the show will be available on MattDrawsRobots.com.