It’s certainly no secret that I love Transformers. For some it’s the original cartoon that holds the fondest memories. While I won’t hesitate to say that the
G1 cartoon is
very dear to me, ultimately the toys are the hook for me. That being said, one of my fondest memories comes with my first Transformer: Thundercracker. When I got Thundercracker, as cool as I thought the toy was, I was mesmerized by the box art. I stared at that piece of artwork what seemed like half of an eternity. I just found my imagination taken to another place and time completely. I was in the midst of this huge galactic battle with these humongous robots! That one piece of artwork fueled my imagination like no other.
While not a piece of “fan art”, the reason I mention the 1984 box art scene is simply because of the profound impact it had on me as an artist. You see, I was five years old at the time. Little did I know that Transformers would have such a huge impact on my life. I had grown up as a teenager with comic books and trained as an artist; as an adult, I was in the midst of completing an undergraduate degree in studio art. Once I picked Transformers back up as a hobby again in 2000, one of the first things I found myself doing was creating my own Transformers artwork. I found myself inspired once again! I began writing a comic book script that I made thumbnails to, and I started designing my own characters. I started to feel a part of things much like when I was five.
The internet was very new for me at the time as well, especially living in a small, rural town. I quickly joined two Yahoo! Groups upon getting back into Transformers: CybCon and Radicons. I had never seen a custom Transformer before, so Radicons proved to be a new venture for me. However, at CybCon, I found that Greg Gaub had a Fan Art portion of his site. I found myself looking at
each piece, and it wasn’t long before I submitted my own. He later placed my work in his “gallery” with the other artists, and I thought it was one of the coolest things ever! Later, I found myself becoming good friends with Greg (and others) from CybCon, even helping design some box art for their exclusives!
As you can probably guess, things didn’t stop there for me. Also, one can surmise that Radicons had a huge impact on my artwork as well. As I became more and more active in this community, I continued to realize how much of an impact artwork has on myself and others. When I made the decision to lay down much of my illustrations to concentrate on customs, I always did so with the goal that I wanted to illustrate my creations.
One thing that has always saddened me some with the customs and fan art community, though, is how many seem to separate “customs” and “fan art” into two worlds. In my honest opinion, I’ve never liked the term “Fan Art” to denote illustrations because “Fan Art” really encompasses all that we do (I obviously prefer the term “Illustrations”). Perhaps that is where some of the divide has come from? Whatever the case may be, I’ve never liked the clear division, especially since many times I see one as a means to the other interchangeably.
What I hope you can see is that I really value both customs and illustrations equally. When I started to see Radicons really take off in the customs arena, I really wanted to see TFW2005.com’s art forum do the same. TFW2005.com has
always had a very healthy art forum, to the point that a few who were once very active currently work professionally illustrating Transformers to some capacity. As we reorganized and built up the Radicons Customs Gallery to where it is now, I discussed with REDLINE and other staffers about bringing “Fan Art” under our wing as well to give it the same amount of attention. It wasn’t long before that became a reality!
The Radicons Staff began working relentlessly on revamping and overhauling the existing gallery. We began with one album with a ton of art lumped all together, much like the customs gallery started out (except the art gallery actually already had more artwork in it). The Radicons Staff set out on a task to carefully and logically organize the gallery with an easy user interface. We were able to sort artwork by artist
and character as well as by generation. In short, we’ve went from an organizational nightmare to a nicely arranged gallery!
Not only do we host a gallery that is very organized, but we have a lot of very special treats for you as well! The ever-popular
Lil Formers comic strip is archived, along with some
TFW2005.com exclusive strips! The fan-acclaimed strip,
Macromasters, by
Radicon DON (or as most fans know him, Don Figueroa) showcases the work that eventually inspired the “official”
The War Within series! We have the original artwork, original colors, and the updated colors by
Radicon Quintesson #1. No other place has all of these hosted in one location!
Another fan-favorite, the
Transformers: Mosaic project, also gets some extra special attention! We know that many people really enjoy these, and I decided last summer to go through and archive them all.
REDLINE and I got to talking more and more about this idea, and before long we had a full project on our hands.
Nemesis Predaking and
autobotx23 jumped on as well, and we eventually found ourselves not only wanting to simply upload a gallery, but to organize and sequence it the best way for the readers. We even found ourselves plowing back through our all of our threads, digging up the credits for
each Transformers: Mosaic gallery entry! We all really wanted to make sure this gallery was done with the utmost level of care that each of the other galleries receive. So now,
not only do we have the complete run, but we have them
sub-categorized by generation as well as separating the special projects created under the
Transformers: Mosaic umbrella. All of this can’t be found
anywhere else!
We also have several albums hosting
TFW2005.com contest entries as well as
Botcon fan art contest entries! Over the years, TFW2005.com has been very active in supporting the fan art contests, like the one at Botcon each year, and even hosting our own! All we can say is keep staying tuned for more on this!
I hope that one sees how we’ve constructed the gallery, not only to continually try to archive previous works of artists, but also so as we continue to expand. This is where you come in! Start to drawing, coloring, rendering, or whatever it is you do best creating your Transformers illustrations! Send us your old work as well!
Whatever you have,
we’d love to host it!
The level of skill has no bearing here, for we want our gallery to be as diverse as possible! We continually update the front page of TFW2005.com and Radicons with new gallery entries. We’re proud to present the rebooted fan art gallery that
only Radicons could bring you! We sincerely hope that you can be just as inspired as I was when I was five years old . . . .
That's right folks, we'll finally begin updating the Art gallery again! If you have ANY questions about submitting your work (new and old, we do have a lot of catching up to do) simply click the Radicons Info drop-down link up at the top of your screen and click on the menu-option entitled "Fan Art Gallery Submissions Guidelines"
