Robots in Disguise Redesigns! (+ a special guest)
What up nerds! I have finally (after way to long) finished all of the redesigns for my RID rewrite!
Please note I JUST learned how to draw transformers and I don't think my style could be further from the show, so just keep that in mind and don't like bite my head off lol! Also when I say redesigns I MEAN IT like they are very different.
UPDATE: The rewrite is now up on my ao3 (which will be linked somewhere on here) so yay!
Uh BIG edit here for some reason I mixed up Denny and Russell's names so if you see the name Denny I meant Russell so so sorry about that!
But for now I present Strongarm, Grimlock, Windblade and Sideswipe plus his twin Sunstreaker!
Before I begin explaining some of my design decisions I want y'all to give a guess as to who my favorite/favorite design is, just like keep it in your head, or comment do whatever you wanna do, okay cool moving on
(You can skip to the design explanations if you want!) Now not all the MCs are getting redesigns cause not everyone NEEDS one, for example Bumblebee in my rewrite I'm just gonna say he looks the same as he did in TFP, Drift has his IDW design and Fix-it's design is fine he just needs a more desaturated orange. As for villains they honestly don't look TOO bad (minus Megatronus of course who looks awful) and I lowkey didn't wanna draw animals so.... as for the humans (Adult Miko, Raf, and Jack as well as redesigns of Denny and Russell) will be done at some point idk when.
Strongarm: So for me Strongarm actually was THE MOST difficult out of everyone, like from her helm to her pedes to her colors everything was miserably difficult! Her frame was weirdly enough the easiest part, I took inspo from TFA Megatron (which Strongarm would NOT be happy to hear about lol) and inspiration for her helm shape from Elita-1 in the 2024 TFO movie as well as G1 Prowl. I kinda mashed them together and eventually I came up with a design, but honestly my thought process with her was just: Make her bulkier to match her alt mode, go with a dark shade of blue for her paint, and DON'T put in to much detail cause to me Strongarm just doesn't seem the type to be super into detailing and stuff (which you can see in my notes for her page). So yeah Strongarm, I'm happy with how she came out even if she absolutely took the longest by a pretty big margin.
Grimlock: Omg I had so much fun doing Grimlock BECAUSE I've known since I started drafting this rewrite that I wanted him to be alt, and I hear you saying "Would Cybertron even have that kinda thing?" and quite frankly I don't know, BUT THEY ARE NOW! So Grimlock was also pretty difficult to design, I knew I wanted to veer more towards his old/comic look since idk what it is about his design in the show but I just don't vibe with it 100%, like it's not awful but it just doesn't sit with me, so I took inspiration from multiple TFA designs (it's the style I find I can actually kinda replicate sorry yall) as well as just some older Grimlock designs to get what I wound up with. Now please note I tried to make him yellow but wound up hating it and going back to a more militaristic shade of green with yellow accents for most of his vents. As for his tattoos I wanted to incorporate the Dinobot symbol all over the place for lore reasons and I wanted to make sure the tattoos weren't to "human" if that makes sense? Like Cybertronians don't have skulls or our animals therefore everything relating to that was out of the question, so I went more with stars and fire, since those exists everywhere you go and a LOT of bots are named after star stuff (human star stuff but still) so like maybe its a cultural thing you know? Similar deal with his makeup AND if you look close enough there are Cybertonian letters in its design (I'll do a silly doodle for the first person who can find them all). As for his piercings I went and had fun with it, how do they work? Probably an actual hole drilled in the metal if I had to give a reason. Anyways yeah Grimlock was super fun, I always have a blast designing alt characters since I am myself and I think the idea of aliens having like their own versions of punk and goth so cool!
Sideswipe: Here we have yet another character I hit with my alt beam, this is the last one (probably) I promise! But I have a reasonable explanation for this one! So Sideswipe's original characterization in the show (supposedly cause they don't do a very good job of showing it) is that he's a punk teen who's kinda troubled right, so I took that idea and gave it my own twist. Instead of that stupid spikey thing he had going on with his helm I have him his cute little helmet thing back with some horns which I obviously decked out in piercing's! I gave him some eyeliner (plus a little grey eyeshadow but I forgot to do it on the up close of his face sooo just like zoom in or something lol) and I wanted to give him something that mimicked a patch jacket but they don't wear clothes so I gave him some stickers and some caution tape, very DIY like a lot of punk stuff is for humans (my jacket has mostly patches I bought from local crafters or stuff I hand painted in fabric paint on old tee shirts and cut out to put on my jacket). I also want him to be scrawny compared to even Windblade again for lore reasons, plus I like the idea of his strengths being his agility and speed rather than strength and brute force. As for inspiration I think this one is the most obvious but I was inspired by his g1/comic designs as well as Jazz from TFA.
Sunstreaker: Our special guest! So Sunstreaker is literally a replica of Sideswipe except with different colors and I made his helm a little different, he has head fans and his horns are smaller/thinner. I honestly like Sunstreaker a tiny bit more that Sideswipe purely because of his head fans coming out better than I expected. Also I had this huge debate with myself about whether I wanted to give Sunstreaker piercings' and stuff like his brother since twins aren't always similar personality wise HOWEVER because of Sunstreaker's role in the story being pretty different I decided to go with plus I could totally see the two of them bonding over that kinda thing. Also this would be a good time to mention the crest things they and Strongarm have. So I thought it was really weird that EVERYONE in RID who wasn't an outright Decepticon had an Autobot symbol cause like... the Autobots are a war/military faction and they're not at war anymore so why would they really need that? So I was like well I still like the detail so what if I just gave them one unrelated to the Autobots, thusly each gets their own based off their family (which kinda adds onto it being a thing for bots who were sparked rather than coming from the Allspark but whatever I think it still works), I also thought giving Sunstreaker and Sideswipe a sun and moon was fitting lol.
Windblade: Last but certainly not least my girl Windblade! So here is where I'll confess she is by far my favorite, I've doodled her a bunch in my sketch book and I had a great time drawing her, she gave me pretty much zero trouble with her frame OR colors so yeah she's my fav (plus I'm super excited for her arc since in this if you didn't know from my other posts I'm aging her down to a teen like Sideswipe and Strongarm which MAYBE she was in the show since she and Sides had a thing but I honestly don't know)! As for her inspiration she is pretty much just her comic designs plus a stylized version of the G1 seekers specifically Starscream. So if you don't know I LOVE G1 Starscream's color pallet, it's so visually pleasing and despite him lowkey having Crayola colors it just works and because Starscream gets those colors back in the og RID even claiming they were his old colors I couldn't help myself and I used them for Windblade (slight spoiler for the rewrite but it doesn't matter since it's revealed like ten seconds in tbh)! So yeah she lowkey looks like Starscream's kid BUT SHE IS NOT I WANT TO MAKE THAT CLEAR SHE IS NOT HIS DAUGHTER cause that would make like zero sense. Also I completely forgot to draw her swords but she does have them, she a dual wielder cause duh and they glow. So yeah!
Anyways That is all folks! My lord was that a long ass ramble, the actual fic should be out soon as long as I don't like die or anything, and the link will be posted here on my tumblr, but if you wanna track it yourself I'm SunflowerAndStrawberrySpice332 yes I know longest name in the world I'm sorry. I'll also have the first chapter of my Knockout fic posted cause I made up a whole ass backstory for his Prime universe self cause I'm losing my mind or something idk yall.
So having said ALLLLLLL that I hope yall have a great day/night, get some sleep, drink water, eat food and stay safe! Peace out!
PS: An Optiratch fic is in the works AND Optiratch will be a part of my rewrite cause even if Optimus is dead his husband is alive (not alive and WELL but alive) and I'm literally obsessed with them
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