Transformers Legacy up for pre-order and The Art of Prime on sale now!

Hey, y'all! I know, I know, it's been far too long since I've blogged at you. With the birth of my son, James Magnus Sorenson, I've been incredibly busy playing superdad. Still, there's no shortage of Transformers related happenings in my life, so I figured I'd hop on here and whip out the old plug-o-matic.

First up, The Art of Prime is on sale now. This is a 208 page hardcover that explores the designs and design process of Prime. It's the emphasis on process that really helps the book stand out. Not only is the book incredibly pretty, thanks to the surfeit of stunning material that was created in the production of the show, but it's informative. In the character portion of the book, well over half of the volume, virtually every character has the thoughts of the designer. They walk through their thought process, what they were going for, what their influences were, what their challenges were.

The volume is also punctuated with extensive interviews with each of the art department heads. I had a blast talking to them and I think you'll find reading about how a CG cartoon is put together both interesting and informative.

You can find a nice review of the book on tformers.com,and an interview with me about the book over on seibertron.com.

Next up is a project that I'm particularly passionate about, Legacy: A Celebration of Transformers Package Art. Though Bill Forster and I announced it over a year ago, at BotCon 2012, we finally have a release target: spring of 2014. Amazon is taking pre-orders, and I'd jump on that bandwagon now. This is a 300 page oversized hardcover that will look amazing on anyone's coffee table.

The scope of the book is G1 and G2, US and Japan. Within those constraints, we've managed to track down originals or first generation photo-negatives of about 95% of the artwork. If that sounds impressive, it's because it is. Hasbro and Takara (via Part One) opened their archives, but even that only got us to about the 60% mark. Thanks to the generosity of fans, we've managed to gather up nearly everything. There are a few gaps here and there, but overall it's a staggering amount of artwork.

But that's not all! We realize that this artwork is already available online, albeit at a lower level of quality, and wanted to pack the book with extras. We managed to speak to a good eight of the original artists and get their insight into what it was like to make these pieces. We found quite a bit of unreleased artwork, art for toys that never came out. We found a bit of art in the same style used for other purposes, like catalogs and puzzles, and feature that as well. Finally, we include some art in the same style that was used for pre-Transformers toys (Microman, Diaclone and more) and some of the modern art in the same style as used by Fun Publications and eHobby.

Many fans have been eager to help make this project a success. While the end is in sight, Bill and I have a few more weeks to finalize things. Here's a list of everything we're missing. If you have the original art for this, or a transparency or first generation photo negative, drop us a line:

US G1:

US Astrotrain (Train Mode)
US Trypticon
US Piranacon

Action Masters:
    Bumblebee, Jackpot, Skyfall, Sprocket (bot), Prowl (both)
    Banzai-Tron, Starscream (both), Axer (Bike only)

US G2:
Autobot Cyber Jets,  Auto-Roller Roadblock, Gobots (2nd wave). I'd also like the watch artwork.  Unused G2 artwork from the tail-end of the line would also be very cool. (Greasepit, Laser Soundwave and Jazz, unused Go-Bots)
 
Japanese G1:
Dino cassettes: Graphy, Noise, Dial, Saur
Road King (*Can use a box scan of this, just need his chest)

Rocket Base

Europe:
Virtually all, but especially at least one of the battle murals from the back.  Pyro and Clench are personal favorites. I find the Rescue Force and the new Scrapper art pretty cool too.

Catalog and Puzzle:
There was a bit of catalog and puzzle artwork created in the same style around this time frame, I'd like to feature some in the book.

Diaclone / Microman:
Diaclone and Microman artwork is also of interest.  Omnibots, Bumper (that is to say, MC-04 Mini CAR Robo 02 Familia 1500XG), Kronoformers, Powerdashers would be high on the list of priorities. I'm also partial to Powered Convoy, and the blue Blaster Microman artwork. 

Other:
I'd like to get my hands on the micromaster combiner back-of-the-box artwork that's in a kind of cartoony style, especially from the Combiner boxes.  Oddities, like the Tyco sets, are also of interest.  Any unused package art, guys that never actually came out or alternate variants for guys who did, are of keen interst.

Upgrades:
There are also some that I have decent quality pics of but I'd like to upgrade, mostly from 87:

Galvatron
Throttlebots except Searchlight
Terrorcons except for Hun-Grrrr and Cutthroat
Strafe, Lightspeed, Afterburner, Japanese Computron,
Quickmix
AM Rollout, Krok, Treadshot, Optimus Prime (robot mode)
 
Laser Optimus Prime
G2 Sideswipe 
G2 Gobots (wave 1)
Windrazor

Hardspark, Hotspark, Wildspark, Six-Knight
Battle Patrol (Micromasters), Super Car Patrol (Micromasters)



If you have any of this material and want to help, please drop me a line.

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12/20 UPDATE: 

The level of enthusiasm has been fantastic. I've had a number of people come forward with offers to help, including a friend who has some (sadly low resolution) Action Master transparencies and a fan who has pledged some UK G2 material that will be very cool. Keep it coming and spread the word. If you have a good lead on anyone with originals or transparencies, let me know. Ebay sellers you've dealt with, local comic shops or galleries, whatever. This is the time to make it happen.

Pathfinder Card Game

Dungeons and Dragons has always been a staple of the nerd community.  Card games have also followed suit as a mainstay.  The mad scientist geniuses at Paizo have brought the two together in their new Pathfinder Adventure Card Game.

If you haven't played it, i highly recommend you check it out at some point.  This game is pretty simple.  Each player has a player deck.  The players work together as a team to overcome a scenario.  The scenarios are provided and the players must explore locations during each scenario to find the villain and defeat him, thus winning the scenario.  This sounds simple, but the act of the game is what makes it engaging.  Interestingly, it is playable both by one's self or in a group of up to 6 people.  But what nerd only plays a game without some tinkering of their own?

The idea struck me as I was driving home listening to the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack.  Oogie Boogie would make a great villain to fight in Pathfinder ACG.  The idea grew from there.  Using images I found on the internet as well as GIMP, I was able to fix my own cards that will be used for my own Nightmare Before Christmas themed Pathfinder ACG Adventure!

Below are just a few of the card's I've created thus far.  The rest will be added next Thursday (Nov. 14th) after the game as well as an adventure summary.  Enjoy!

G.I. Joe Field Manual Addendum - Cobra's Creatures

Howdy, y'all! I know it's been way too long since I've been back here. I've got a new son on the way--any day now!--and that's been taking up much of my time. Throw in a trip to the United Kingdom to visit my sister and participate in the incomparable Auto Assembly convention (wacky photos of which are up on Facebook, and if you're not my Facebook friend, what's holding you back?), and a dash of the three Transformers books that I've been working on and that adds up to a tremendously busy schedule.

(For the record, and it's shameless plug time, those books are:
   The Transformers 30th Anniversary Collection, out now, collecting representative stories from across the years and publishers and supplementing them with extra artwork and interviews.
   The Art of Prime, a gorgeous art book featuring the production artwork of Transformers Prime, without contest the best looking Transformers series ever, on sale in November.
   Legacy: The Box Art of The Transformers, due out in spring of 2014 after some delays to make sure we could get the format perfect.)

So, that's what I've been up to. I figured it's way past time for some more Joe models, so why not start with episode production number 600-01. Now, this isn't the first episode, even discounting the mini-series, but it seemed a decent place to start. Cobra's Creatures was a fun sci-fi romp that featured some cool animal models, pictured above.

Joe fans, please do let me know if you have requests. I've got so many incidentals, that if you've got a favorite episode, there's a good chance I'll have some cool material from it. Let me know in the comments and I'll do my best to make you happy.

G. I. Joe Field Manual Addendum - Lasers in the Night

By request, the next G.I. Joe Field Manual addendum features the incidental models I have for Lasers in the Night. Specifically, the poster was interested in Alice, a mechanic who appears briefly working on some Sky Strikers. Sadly, the model sheet sheds little light on the character. She isn't even labeled by name, merely dubbed 'female mechanic.' Still, I hope you enjoy another G.I. Joe greenshirt.

Of course, Amber is the true guest star of Lasers in the Night, and she gets a whole page to herself in the first G.I. Joe Field Manual. There was no shortage of models for her, including her in her standard outfit, her in a catsuit, her in a dress, her in a bathing suit, and her dressed for S.C.U.B.A. That last model featured her front AND her rather shapely rear.

(I'm not just being a pervert, I'm going somewhere with this.)

Amber's wetsuit model would pop up again later in the season. In Memories of Mara, Lady Jaye would show up wearing the exact same wetsuit. As in, the artist erased Amber's head and drew in Lady Jaye's. I remembered looking at it and saying to myself, "hey, that's not Lady Jaye's ass!" Since I already had three pages of Lady Jaye models in the first book (and two more in the second book), including one with her in a brand new wetsuit, I left it out. I didn't think it was necessary to have the same model in the book twice, just with two different heads. Not when there was a surfeit of Lady Jaye material. Still, in the interest of completionism, I present all four wetsuit models for Amber and Lady Jaye, side-by-side for ease of comparison.

G.I. Joe Field Manual Addendum - Aliens! Plus BotCon and the IDW VIP tour

Listen up, true believers! I'm super-stoked to be heading down to San Diego in a couple of days for BotCon and the IDW VIP Tour. It promises to be a Transformers-full weekend for me. I hope I get the chance to meet and catch up with a bunch of you. Bring your Field Manuals, Arks, Almanacs and whatever else you'd like me to sign.

Meanwhile, I figured I'd finish off G.I. Joe and the Golden Fleece with the alien artifacts from the episode. One bit that is probably new to most of you is that the smaller alien ship, the expeditionary ship that drops the golden coil, underwent a complete redesign. The original concept looked more like a flying screw. The redesign looks a little more conventional and matches up stylistically with the large mothership seen at the end of the episode.

Speaking of the golden coil, there was also a storyboard excerpt that was included in the design pack as a way to show the scale of the coil. I had to choose between including this image or including the unused expeditionary ship. I chose the expeditionary ship, it seemed more interesting, but in the interest of completeness I include this image as well. 

Hey, Joe-fans, what sort of extras would you like to see next? Any specific episode you'd like me to focus on? I don't have every episode, nor do I have every model from the episodes I do have, but I have a good amount. I'd love to hear from you to prioritize the Field Manual Addendums.

G.I. Joe Field Manual Addendum - Ancient Greece (pt 2)

Hola, amigos! It's nice to have a regular feature for the blog again. Last Tuesday I kicked off the inaugural G.I. Joe Field Manual Appendix, featuring some ancient Greeks from G.I. Joe and the Golden Fleece. This week I'll finish out these bygone Grecians. They're no sick kids, but they're fun. I still have a few more models from this episode, mostly focusing around the mysterious aliens whose tech sent our heroes (and villains) back in time.

G.I. Joe Field Manual Addendum - Ancient Greece

First off, mea culpa. It's been a dog's age since I updated this blog. Fortunately, Monzo's been stepping in with some cool Transformers gems from his vault, and I much appreciate that.

The truth is I've been very busy, both professionally and personally. I've got a son on the way this fall, and that's been chewing up time and mental energy, and I've got several books I'm working on.

Still,I feel remiss. I know that animation models are a big focus of this blog, and here I am sitting on a metric ass-ton of them for G.I. Joe and not sharing them. Well, that's all going to change. While I've more-or-less exhausted my horde of G1 TF models (took a few years but I did) for Joe I'm just getting started.

Which brings me to my point. The G.I. Joe Field Manual V2 is hitting stores now. It covers animation models for the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon season 2, the Sunbow commercials from 1987-1989, and the DiC cartoon. 208 pages chocked full of goodness, including the S2 bigwigs like Serpentor (four pages!), Hawk, Sgt. Slaughter, Lifeline, Leatherneck and Wetsuit, Dial-Tone, Doctor Mindbender, Zarana and more. Plus I sneak in some earlier characters with new outfits, including virtually the whole Cobra command staff in formal wear (Cobra Commander, Zartan, and Destro in tuxedos. The Baroness in a stunning evening gown!) and the DiC take on Duke and Snake-Eyes. Throw in tons of minor characters and you've got a pretty neat offering, I think. With all that just coming out, what better time could there be to start spelunking into my archives of Joe models?

The question becomes, what to start with? Last night I did another episode of the What's On Joe Mind podcast and Mike Irizzarry reminded me about how much fun some of the guys had at JoeCon looking at material cut from the Field Manual V2. In particular, on a two-page spread of ancient Greece, the guys thought it was HILARIOUS that I had a set of models labeled 'Sick Kids.' So, I share them with you now in the inaugural G.I. Joe Field Manual Addendum.

For those wondering, there are models for these ancient warriors, sheperds, and, yes, sick kids because an alien artifact sent some of the Joes and Cobras back in time in the episode G.I. Joe and the Golden Fleece. I've got another couple of pages of models to share from this episode too, plus tons more covering the entirety of the Joe Sunbow tv show. So, what say you, Joe fans. Should I next week continue with G.I. Joe and the Golden Fleece, or visit another episode? Any particular requests for what I should do next? Let me know, I aim to please. And pick yourself up a copy of the second G.I. Joe Field Manual if you haven't already.