I'm back, baby! A week long vacation in New York City turned into two weeks thanks to The Great New York Blizzard of 2010! Yup, I got snowed in, all flights in and out of NYC canceled for a day and a half and then I couldn't get on another flight until yesterday. Hence my rather long break from blogging. In any even, I'm back and eager to upload more Ron Friedman material, Ark Addendums, reviews of comics and War of the Worlds and all that other good stuff. Oh, and a long-time contributor to the blog may be back in force soon, so keep your fingers crossed.
Today is Tuesday, and that means an Ark Addendum. I was in the middle of a series on the
Predacons, but I thought I'd interrupt it to bring out some a-listers. Today we're covering Chip Chase and Carly, last name unknown. Carly's heads have previously shown up, but I didn't have a full body model for her until recently. This model, btw, is courtesy of
'lexmc via kjeevahh,' who won the Transformers Bible from the Ron Friedman auctions and was kind enough to share this image with me.
I've previously included models for Chip, though the models that I won as a part of the Friedman material were different and, I believe, more finalized than what was published in The Ark. This is one of those pages that I deeply wish I could go back and insert into The Ark, but alas I suspect that that train has sailed.
Thanks for these, Jim. Some interesting notes: Carly was inspired by a pretty Philippina girl that Floro Dery met at a bus stop (and Spike was inspired by an office co-worker).
ReplyDeleteI also remember an interview with Earl Kress, who created Carly as a character, and I think he mentioned her name was Carly Braslowski (spelling uncertain). That interview was on the Rhino DVD box from years back, and I'm not certain I remember this correctly.
Could you dig up that interview? I'd love more clarity around that.
ReplyDeleteI rewatched the Earl Kress interview on Rhino, and there was nothing in there like that. (He mentions listening to Carly Simon, but that's about as close as we get to a last name.)
ReplyDeleteIf this isn't worthy of a comment I don't know what is- thank you for sharing. It's too bad Chip & Carly aren't on speaking terms...
ReplyDeleteFloro Dery used Gregg Davidson, a storyboard artist, as model for Spike.
ReplyDeleteThat was insensitive of Carly to not want to hang around the kid in the wheelchair. Different time and all I guess...
ReplyDeleteJeff, I just looked Gregg up on LinkedIn (not stalking, just curious if I could find a picture) and there certainly seems to be a resemblance. Cool! I knew it was an office co-worker, but that's about it.
ReplyDeleteJim, I'm sorry, I know I've gotten it from somewhere, it wasn't in writing because I have no idea how to spell it, it sounded like Braslowski or Brovlowsky. But I can't remember where I got it from. I'll ask a friend of mine if he remembers.
We'll have to call her Carly Witwicky for the time being...
I just knew there had to be another model sheet for Chip. :)
ReplyDeleteThe one in the Ark looked quite off, as if rushed.
Another one who looked off like Chip is dr. Arkeville.
Hans: if you get that interview, let me know.
ReplyDeleteJeff: neat! Do you have a source for that info?
Hans (redux): could you send a link for that LinkedIn picture?
D.M.: I'm not surprised about that. Arkeville and Chip were from the same source, and I knew that they were rough, but I thought it better to include them rough than leave them out all together.
Jim, I suppose this is the link (you have to copy-paste), it's very long though so I hope this works:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=14453411&authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=Wn3M&locale=en_US&srchid=0ce349b3-a124-4fb6-9274-1aaf6787e88e-0&srchindex=3&srchtotal=9&pvs=ps&pohelp=&goback=.fps_*1_Gregg_Davidson_*1_*1_*1_*1_*51_*1_Y_*1_*1_*1_false_1_R_true_G,N,CC,I,PC,ED,L,FG,TE,FA,SE,P,CS,F,DR_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2
I spoke with my friend Raymond today about Carly, too. He spoke to Earl Kress at a convention around 2004, and Earl has said to him that he wrote a complete Carly profile for the Transformers series bible, with surname, and the express mention that Carly is three years older than Spike. He doesn't remember if Earl mentioned the name, but said Braslowski did sound familiar to him... for what it's worth.
Raymond also saw this complete series bible when it was shown to him by voice director Wally Burr at Botcon in 2004. Maybe someone could contact him or Earl Kress?
It also seems Marvel comics wrote separate profiles for Spike, Carly and Daniel, with the intention of putting them in the Universe books (which is weird, because Daniel only appeared in "adaptations" from the movie, and Carly didn't appear in the comics at all). Marvel nixed the idea, but there seemed to be a butting of heads somewhere because Marvel came up with a different surname than the one created by Earl Kress.
Hey, Jim!
ReplyDeleteI saw the link that my pal Hans spoke to me about earlier today, so here I am. :-)
For the record, I never spoke to Earl Kress, I spoke with Wally Burr at BotCon 2004. What I was talking about with Hans is that I seem to remember a video interview, with I think was Earl Kress. In the interview it was said that full profiles were written for all the characters of season 1 and 2, especially the recurring ones. These are supposed to include details like Carly's surname and her age being 18, while spike was only 15 or 16.
At BotCon 2004 Wally Burr had with him only a portion of the bible from the Transformers series. This "portion" still consisted of at least 6 boxes of scripts, notices and letters from Hasbro and original design and character sheets. I had for instance a profile sheet in my hands of Ratbat, stating that the cassette spy was an Autobot! From what Burr and his assistant told me, they practically saved all the hardcopies that they used on the original shows. Not just Transformers, but Robotix, Jem and G.I. Joe as well. (One box was on the G.I. Joe movie, with the original script and several pages of the storyboard, including a letter from Hasbro that they wanted the nude scene with Zarana skinnydipping removed/toned down from the movie)
There have also been rumors that Marvel Comics was planning on doing a Transformers Universe 2.0 that included the human characters from the movie, Spike, Carly (who ended up deleted from the movie) and Daniel. I seem to remember that some people claimed that the last name of Carly that was supposed to be given here, was not the same as the one that was submitted for the bible. Neither surname was ever used, of course. So it's difficult to see if that's true or not. Of course a large portion of the Movie Universe Profiles (including those that ended up in the TF Universe #4) were based on the early proposal "Secret of Cybertron" written by Flint Dille as well as the "Matrix Forever" script written by Ron Friedman. This is another explaination why the profiles don't completly match up against what we know that became the 1986 movie. That's why the Profiles state that for instance the Quintessons are Unicron's subjects or that Galavatron's power only exist while Unicron lives, eventhough the movie never reflects this.
A while back I also spoke with someone who used to work as an intern with Marvel Comics. He swears to the fact that Marvel used have an archive at that time on Transformers, that included unused scripts and outline proposals for the TV show that were never used. Someone might want to look into that as well.
Oh, while I'm at it...
ReplyDeleteI am looking for an interview with Flint Dille that was printed in a Sci-Fi/movie Magazine somewhere in the mid 90's. The story was about how he worked on one of the Fievel movies and the heat he got for the fact that the end result didn't come anywhere near of what people were promised of what the story would be.
In this interview Dille started to talk about Transformers the movie and about details of his "Secret of Cybertron" story, including about how it was about Cybertron having a living core and that Optimus Prime death was about sacrificing himself by merging with the core of Cybertron to fight off "The Entity" that later became Unicron. (Optimus Prime was always supposed to die in the movie, but each story submitted had different stories for this).
I lost this interview years ago, and would love to have a copy of this again. Unfortunately, I don't know from which magazine it came. To my knowledge it's the only time he ever talked about that script in depth. These days when people ask him about it, he says he can't remember the details of that script anymore. But even in the interview on the G1 DVD box set from Rhino he confirms the existence of this script.
If anyone might know where to find this interview, it might answer a lot of questions about the lose ends of TF:TM.
There's another rare thing that should be looked for... the original pilot, "A Robot's Best Friend is His Dog". Unfortunately, the writer of that one doesn't have it nor does remember what it was about. However, the designs (which I was told are more kid friendly) made for it are still around somewhere.
ReplyDeleteWow, I go searching for Carly's character model, and I find this. Cool. =)
ReplyDeleteIf anyone can find Carly's character bio with surname and age, as well as the alternate proposed surnames for the Movie and Marvel's Universe 2.0, that'd be much appreciated.