Oh, terrific. A new Transformers blog. Just what the world needs. Yawn.
Backing up a bit. I'm a huge fan of Transformers, and have been ever since I first saw a commercial for them back in 1984. It blew my eight year old mind. In the two plus decades since, my interest has only grown. From
Simon Furman to
Marty Isenberg, from
Beast Wars to the
2007 motion picture, from
Alpha Trion to
Omega Supreme, I love the whole tapestry.
The designs in particular have always appealed to me. I stumbled across images of the character models of the G1 Decepticons back in the 90s and fell in love. The clean lines, the front and back views, the head turns . . . I found them immensly beautiful. I learned what they were and who drew them and began the slow process of tracking them down. Some of them were relatively easy. Fans like Doug Dlin had photocopies of the Japanese laser disks and were willing to share them. Guide books published in the 80s, mostly in Japan, sometimes had additional models. But I wanted more. Hasbro, unfortunately, had not archived this material. As luck would have it though, several professionals who had worked on the series, like the amazingly classy
Bob Budiansky and
Paul Davids, had saved much of the material they had worked with so many years before. Eventually I stockpiled a vast collection, probably the largest in the world.
In 2006, I approached
Chris Ryall, editor in chief of
IDW Publishing with the idea of publishing a book of character models. Being a man of refinement and taste, he of course agreed. By May of 2007,
The Ark (V1) was a reality. I had to limit the scope, so I focused on the American television series, all four seasons. Sales were strong and the fan (and, gratifyingly, professional) reaction was quite positive. We moved ahead with
The Ark (V2), focusing on Japanese character designs. If anything, the response was even better.
Which brings me to today. I've still got a ton of models that I have yet to find an appropriate venue for. So, what's a Transformers fan with a surfeit of material to do? I thought that a blog might be a good place to share some of the material that didn't make it into volume 1 and 2.
Here is my first offering. These models are for the alien prisoners in the G1 cartoon episode
Chaos, written by the aforementioned Paul Davids. Early drafts of the script had Kup interacting with organic alien prisoners. Though the script was changed to involve robot prisoners, character models were developed for the organic prisoners.
11/20/2008 addendum - Monzo over at the Transformers Wiki pointed out that these models actually did make their way into the show, in the episode Starscream's Ghost. Cheers, Monzo!
There you have it! I love feedback, so be sure to let me know if you've enjoyed these models. Watch this space for more to come. Oh, and I'm always looking for more models. If you have any that you haven't seen in on of my books or on this blog, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Cheers!
One of the fun parts of BotCon this year was catching up with all the folks I've met over my career. One such person is Paul Davids, writer extraordinaire, who provided many models that grace the pages of this blog and indeed The Complete Ark. (Check out his webpage at www.pauldavids.com).
