SPeak Art

A long time ago in this artist discord server I'm in we had a little prompt challenge to design a Route 1 Mammal Pokémon. Stretched the rules a bit making mine a 3 stage but I knew I wanted to do an Opossum inspired one because they're among the coolest small mammals I can think of. That prompt was years ago but I still think about the designs from time to time and have done things like made sprites or thought up Mega Evolutions. Now though, after discovering the fakemon subreddit, I feel like sharing em again.

So I designed these little furry freaks: Roampossum, Shlepsupial and Dildeldozen. Not very fleshed out in terms of gimmicks or abilities, moveslists or dex-entries, though I do think Dildeldozen should have an ability boosting "Beat Up"s hit count since its got the little babies adding some gnashing bites.

Think I should start knocking out more of my AU's "Earth-Strandee" autobots because I keep staring at the full scale chart and wanting to share but not wanting to do so without all the designs being accessible elsewhere. But since this will take a while I might as well share the ones who's designs that have most of their part placement or shapes planned out.

First up is the Chief Medical Officer Ratchet. Love his cranky-ol-coot persona in TFA and MTMTE but he's never been a bot I've thought heavily about personality-wise and so I think his current design might be lacking on characterful details. I am very fond of this Sprinter 316 altmode and the Danish ambulance green/black colorscheme, as I think there are all too many red and white autobots but the cute compact van shape still appeals to me more than some boxy US ambulances. Definitely a design I'll have to look back over because even if It looks good to me I think it doesn't speak much to who/what Ratchet is

Next up is Ironhide, who for years I knew that a bulky, obnoxious SUV would be the perfect altmode for, perfectly briding that Bayverse Pickup and the G1 Van. Not a friendly looking vehicle, but fitting for a tough bot like him. Since his head and arms rising from the bottom of the hood, he'll always face backwards from whereever the car was facing and be ready to stand and fight anyone behind him. Stacked with rivets in the armor, having silly tire-biceps to pump up, and rocking a Movie scarred optic sells his look as this rough and tumble autobot, so I'm very satisfied with where his design is going.

Finally we have Bulkhead, a bot of many talents but who's chief one aboard the Ark is Engineer. He's another big intimidating autobot, even bigger than Ironhide, but who's far more chill and content and much less violent and moody. Design is pretty much a G1-ified TFA look, and admitedly he needs another pass so that he makes more sense, but I am just too endeared by having him be this big boxy bot (I'm a person who actually loves his Legacy figure so maybe I'm just sick). A old swiss army vehicle like the Mowag Duro is probably the best real life design I can use for him that justifies him being so big, and even then I think I'm starting to feel that anti-mass-shifting bias push me towards significant redesigning.

Starting from the easiest to explain, Roadbuster was the product of seeing the Kalyani M4 armored vehicle and thinking "Holy shit that'd be a good Roadbuster", followed by me bullshitting up a design. The kinks with his part placement aren't fully ironed out yet but the most fun part for me was visualizing a transformation. With the wheels on his elbows and knees, he can almost hit a ballistic pushup from the ground to get straight to shooting, which I think fits well with such a tough wardog guy. Seaspray meanwhile I had to HUNT to find a vehicle mode that fit him; I desperately wanted to keep the hovercraft look but most real world equivelants are just way too big. Eventually this ancient british craft showed up that was close enough to what I'd want...and it just happened to be the G1 inspiration too so I had to softly weep. Changing up the transformation scheme was the best I could do, going more HftD with the torso and wearing the big flotation portion like puffy sleeves on his arms.

Whirl, as one of my favorite characters, has been drawn and redesigned by me alot. The russian helicopter I picked for him was chosen so that his chest and shoulders could wear interesting rounded shape, because in the past I've gone overly sci fi with him and given him angular sharp vtol traits. I still got to emphasize the gangly almost scary MTMTE design I love with the tail portion splitting for the arms, giving him some very intimidating weapons. The only other notable trait I'll emphasize is that his head is supposed to be the Mi-24V's flight instruments and cockpit controls, which means that should he have a passenger he can make things really scary really fast.

Steeljaw is the team pet, and while I could bring up his sad backstory details the main focus is his design, which as a quadbike means he's got some surprising size and heft for a minibot (not that it matters on a team with such freakishly large bots. The articulating handlebar ears and front wheels compressing while the back ones sit as hips are my favorite design choices.

Closing with the triple changers...yeah they don't triple change. I think Springer has enough going on in terms of character and design that he doesn't really "Need" his gimmick to set him apart from other autobots, and I think that the Osprey really is a wacky enough vehicle that he can get away with it. He wears the VTOL with some heroic proportions, and having the blades reconfigure to be almost batman arm spikes was very fun Broadside is the least fleshed out of the bunch but partially because with his vehicle mode hes just very panel heavy and therefor not so fun to draw. I think details like his armada jetfire fold-down chest and the landing gear down his arms are fine, but he's certainly gonna need some reworks to be interesting to me. Which sucks because he's the most neglected bot on this list and I wanna give him a real chance to shine.

Finally, head of Autobot Spec. Ops and essentially the right hand of Optimus Prime; Jazz. High expectations going into designing Jazz, because he's a transformer who's been all but perfected designwise. RTS Jazz might be my favorite looking tf figure period and does basically everything right in terms of looks and feel, and his look in Animated, FOC and IDW really can't be ignored either (and dare I also give praise to RotB Mirage who's Jazz in all but name?). I feel as though with the current design direction he calls back to all 3 to a decent extent, with some Ingredient X thrown in with a certain anime character's influence

I think something I've neglected in the past regarding designing figures for my AU is transformation, specifically how a character moves during it. Some are very stand out, like G1 Optimus or Movie Starscream, but its not something I dwell too long on for transformers...with the sole exception of Sato- i mean Jazz. I played FOC an unhealthy amount growing up and Jazz's transformation ways always incredibly eye catching and showed off character. With that I KNEW I had to include a rotation at the hip so that his transformation could be lively, the legs spin kicking around to almost look like breakdancing. Past the swinging legs, Main goal was just to give him as much aura as I could while still looking like Jazz. Raised collar, big smile, and I wanted the legs to gradually bulk out towards the bottom almost like loose fitting pants (More visible in the sketch than the "final" design, 10 years of this and I still can't help but drastically undersize thighs hips and waists on transformers) All this built around a Porche 918 Spyder SRS, cause G1 callbacks aside the contour lines on the hood and air intakes on the sides make drawing it more engaging than most modern cars.

Completed this "Draw A Character You Like" Sheet after like 5 days of work and 5 months of it sitting on my ipad untouched. The Perona might be my new favorite artwork I've produced but I'm happy with how all of them turned out as this is kind of my comeback to drawing after half a year of barely any output!

Arcee was interesting just because as a "female robot" some feminine shapes are common place, but not something I think should be too exagerated (no disrespect to artists or viewers who enjoy their goonbait, personally the only Double D transformer I'm looking Shockwave). I did find some artwork Makotron did with some wheels in her chest cute, but past that and being a lankier bot with smaller feet I didn't care to do some wasp waist or sculpted asscheek nonsense. More important than her physique is getting those shoulder blocks and round noggin, the former of which I might rework to further refine the backpack but otherwise is nice.

Prowl is an interesting transformers character because while I'm WAY more attached to the (admittedly blander) TFA ninja bot than the prick-prowl most apparent in idw, I also am a bigger fan of the more conventional police colors and want to avoid having a normal motorcycle for any normal cybertronain's altmode for the mass-shifting reasons I mentioned in my last post.

The solution? as a New Yorker for all my life I've seen these little goofy motorized tricycles used by NYPD (always parked around looking silly instead of actually going on a road). And I thought that this vehicle mode means he'd actually be just big enough to feel like a normal bot (and might actually get taller than Bumblebee) and incorperate a more typical colorscheme for him So Prowl gets to bring some of the prick's aura while serving a role on the team as his more reserved and introverted TFA incarnation. Its fun trying to get door wings and puffy ninja pants out of the very iregular shape

Will admit though, my mass shifting hangups kinda look silly when I then use a vehicle like this where, ya know, theres basically NO MASS in the thing and its a box with wheels and an engine. Sure theres plenty of kibble but; where is the rest of the transformers anatomy going? Lets just assume out of sight out of mind..