Another Tuesday, another edition of The Ark Addendum. This week I bring you: City of Steel! This always struck me as one of the sillier episodes of the original series, wherein Megatron attempts to turn New York into New Cybertron. That said, the whole King King thing at the end was pretty cool.
To me, the real stand-out part of the episode, design wise, was the Prime Gator. Unfortunately, I haven't come across that model. The backgrounds and the Energo-Scalpel are still pretty neat, though.
Hope you enjoy!
Beautiful visuals...In All Hail Megatron I actually used that episode as reference for the Decepticon HQ in NY :)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, all the model sheets you got for the Ark books are copies? Or did you got even some original artwork?
All copies. Some of them are early generation copies, high quality. Others are quite washed-out and require significant restoration.
ReplyDeleteIf I'd known you were using this episode for reference, I'd have gotten you the models earlier!
Correct me if I'm wrong, that exterior shot of Decepticon underground base wasnt used, right?
ReplyDeleteDon't recall seeing it in the episode...
I admire the artwork there, but "City of Steel" is one of the worst episodes of the original TF series. It features terrible animation, terrible characterizations, looney logic and awful set-pieces - and this is from the guy who finds "Kremzeek" to be the comedic gem of the series!
ReplyDeleteBut thanks for posting the art!
"It features terrible animation"
ReplyDeleteI disagree.
Considering it was done by Akom, it's good.
I mean, just look at their season 3 work. THAT's terrible.
D.M., I'd just like to mention that "City of Steel" has more animation mistakes than any other Transformers episode, including the third season's "Carnage in C-Minor" or any installment of "Five Faces of Darkness."
ReplyDeleteFood for thought.
I concur with Zobovor. Akom's animation certainly was never stellar and they had some decent episodes here and there, but I never thought "City of Steel" or "The Autobot Run" were worth writing home about. Plus, this fact just coincided with plots I found lacking, even when I saw them in '85.
ReplyDeleteNo big deal, with the sheer volume of episodes in Season Two there's bound to be some clunkers, but we still get a wealth of memorable ones too!
I'd say these are very clearly Floro Dery drawings :)
ReplyDeleteLove the continuation of style between the buildings on Cybertron and "New Cybertron".
"D.M., I'd just like to mention that "City of Steel" has more animation mistakes than any other Transformers episode, including the third season's "Carnage in C-Minor" or any installment of "Five Faces of Darkness."
ReplyDeleteFood for thought."
If there are indeed more errors, they're far, far less obvious than in Carnage.
Either way, it is nice to see these model sheets. While the episode may seem a bit lacking now, one could imagine it re-written as being somewhat more epic.
ReplyDelete"Either way, it is nice to see these model sheets. While the episode may seem a bit lacking now, one could imagine it re-written as being somewhat more epic."
ReplyDeleteIndeed. :)
This is awesome! Keep posting more of this stuff!
ReplyDeleteMan, It's a shame you don't have the Prime-gator.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I gotta admit, that is some beautiful background design work!
I am a big fan of how you have done your layouts here, on these free pages, I really feel like I could go to a print shop and work with someone to have this published as an actual book addendum.
Any chance of you re-releasing the very first art you put up on this blog in this format?
Very glad you're enjoying them, NuclearConvoy. I have more material for Chaos, so I could probably put them into an Ark Addendum style presentation.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the episode certainly was silly, I thought the background designs of Cybertron/New York City were gorgeous.
ReplyDelete