Has anyone seen any documentary (Mr. Rogers neighborhood even!) on how transformers are produced?, especially the post-design production parts. I'd love to learn how they are put together on the assembly line, are they all hand assembled? are they robot assembled? Maybe the Discovery channel? pbs or TLC?
These are all hand assembled. And hopefully not by children. I have felt that a documentary on such a subject is necessary. For instance, if you did it right, you could start the film by showing botcon and people clamoring over the exclusive figures which are repaints / remolds of other figures. Then flash back to how the figure was created from start to finish. Show the idea process, the mold making process in China, the back and forth, and the final assembly and how long it takes to make 1000+ of these figures. Would be interesting indeed and change a lot of people's mind on these toys. There is not a "robot" that puts together your animated bumblebee. That would be far more complex than building the toy in the first place.
when a mommy transformer and a daddy transformer love each other very much, Aaron Archer comes along and has sex with them
bleh. That is gross, man, gross.. Actually, these elves in this big tree bake....oh, wrong documentary. They are made in Santa's sweatshop by 6 yr old orphans.
I would have thought automated assembly would be faster, more accurate, and able to work 24/7. Maybe not cheaper, though...
I'd just like to see the concept and design stages of Transformers. Computers and some heavy duty CAD programs must be used. Some group of experts (for lack of a better descriptor) must evaluate the prototypes. I think these steps alone would make an awesome DVD.
Once it's set up, possibly. But considering all the different pieces that have to go together, the robots would have to be programmed with a lot of highly precise motions, and that's for each Transformer mould designed. Seems a lot more efficient to just pay a few people who can see what they're doing. And yeah, I have to say, I'd love to see some kind of presentation on the process myself. We see little snippets here and there occasionally, but a mini-doc on the whole process, maybe start-to-finish of a single Transformer, from concept design to packaging, would be brilliant.
Glad to hear I'm not the only one who'd appreciate a behind-the-scenes Tf show. Maybe I'll snoop around hasbro.com and find an email address to suggest this to. Or...maybe tfw2005 should send a film crew to tour their factory.!!!!! ...admins...are you listening?
Probably not entirely anymore, because I remember that in a somewhat recent Transformers featurette, possibly on the TF movie DVDs, when they talk about Hasbro you can see a guy working on the movie Optimus leader toy in a CAD program. EDIT: there: Searching a bit on google identified the CAD software Hasbro uses as Pro/ENGINEER. You can also see some pieces being created by a CNC milling machine in the previous shot. That being said, thanks to the various interviews and presentations we have we do know a whole lot of the design process is made on paper. I suspect CAD is for the final design phases, and probably in combination with a few hand-sculpted parts.
I would assume that CAD is used for designing more technical and functioning components, that need to be precise. Things like gear mechanisms, joints and gimmicks would be a nightmare to work out by hand, and the work it'd take to achieve the fine detail you'd need would be far more prohibitive than just programming it in CAD and milling it. On the other hand, surface work and detailing would probably best done by hand; this is particularly true of organic-style alt-modes obviously, but just as sensible for other things too.
I'd love to see a documentary from design to toy shelves. Everything from coming up with the idea, designing the figure, legal limitations, cost limitations, creating the molds, mass production etc. It would be very cool to see.
Well, the thing that approaches it the most currently is the botcon panels and Hasbro visit, which are pretty informative if simple.
I kind of find it sad that people have to put these together under the pretense of somewhat slave labor in China. But I assume the people building Hasbro toys have it better than the people in the knock off factories. Who knows though
Epic win. But yeah, I think it's machines that make the toys. I guess there's SOME human labor, but not much.