A few behind the scenes bits and bobs for that latest video...

The bombs dropped by the seekers at the beginning were just generically drawn grey missiles. I decided the natural option to recreate that was to use G1 Starscream's missile pod:


Rollermus Prime. I was surprised how close this came to actually working! The repair drone unscrews from the trailer bed and sits on Roller's lower half, and if the designers had put their screw holes in a slightly different place the two parts could even have properly connected:


Blink and you miss it. The action is so fast that it goes by unnoticed, but the colours of Prime and Megatron's arms are swapped in the original toon version of this shot.


Some sneaky logo sponsorship!


Another toon goof, the kind of thing you only notice when you go through frame by frame!


Lastly, as Spike shouts "Belt him in the burners, Skyfire!" in the original toon Sparkplug is seen behind him mouthing silent words. I fixed this so his mouth only moves when he actually speaks.

 

You may also have noticed Prime performing some impossible crouching moves in that latest vid. To recreate the toon scenes I had to patch together different body-part photographs.




Megatron of course is a lot more articulated, so he could pull off almost all the required moves. But I still had to edit some frames to get the right dynamism, for example as he runs to attack Prime his forearm/right leg have been enlarged and distorted to imitate the cel art:





And Prime's limbs were similarly distorted for his dramatic swing:

 

Next video is coming soon... It's going to be a little longer than usual, and since the first half is finished I decided to experiment with a preview of it on my Patreon page to try and attract more supporters. Search Masterpiece ReAnimated on Patreon if you're interested!

 

Full preview now up on Patreon, public premier to follow soon!



So, as usual, some behind the scenes stuff from the making of the latest video that can only really go in this thread...

In the original toon, as Brawn holds the melting bar, there's a section at the bottom of the screen where the glowing colour has been missed off. You can actually see the drawn outline of where it should continue. It was easy enough to fix that for my version (since the entire effect needed to be remade to match my photos of Brawny holding his prop). There's also quite a bit of silent mouthing from toon Brawn, perhaps due to a cut line of dialogue, which I've simplified into just an open/close of Brawny's mouth...




Sometimes I'll build a physical prop of a cel drawn item, if it's going to be handled and seen from multiple angles. This was just one shot of a gun emplacement, as the camera pans across, so not something I wanted to build, but still felt that the 2D drawing wasn't up to scratch. So I remade it using the original art as a base but giving it a more premium finish...



This making-of gif shows the added layers...


Depth correction. Blink and you miss it, but the seekers pass behind this Cybertronian structure while Skyfire stays in front of it. Another easy fix...




The colours of the Cybertronian seekers change during the chase. I opted to maintain one blue and one black, as this was the most common depiction during the original scene.



Skyfire is seen right behind them one moment, in the shadow of a huge Cybertron building, yet cut to a close up of him firing and suddenly he's in open space. Fixed with a reuse of the backdrop frames from the other shot...




Another instance of a cel drawn element looking out of place. So I've given the door hatch some extra detailing...




This shot is also a good example of how I often neaten up perspective and add depth to backgrounds...

 

Looks greats. What is the runtime?

 

Just shy of 5 minutes, my longest video so far!

 

Have you ever done movie scenes

 

No I prefer to stick with the tv show, since for me the Movie is already some of the best animation G1 ever had, whereas I feel the tv series has, er, room for improvement  

 

Great teaser! I'm really looking forward to the full piece!  

 

Well, if you support the patreon page, you'll get to see it much earlier.  

 

Agreed
It’d still be cool to see mp Hot Rod and the gang all animated and stuff
Or maybe the scene of the death of Optimus Prime

 

Thanks! Not too long to wait!

Or there is that  

Maybe, no plans at the moment but we'll see!

 

K

 

Oh, another little behind-the-scenes glimpse. I had to recreate this shot of Spike riding in Wheeljack:



MP Wheeljack's alt mode interior is so clearly packed with robot parts, simply plonking Spike in there wouldn't quite work:



Luckily I already had a 1/24 scale Lancia kit (bought back in the days when I was scratch-building custom G1 Masterpiece Autobot cars at Binaltech scale), so I photographed the view you get looking into the interior of the car:



Which I could then use as a background behind Spike, who in turn is behind MP Wheeljack:



If you compare the photos you can see how I've had to warp the MP layer so that it's the right shape to cover the original cel drawing of the car (and to widen the window so that more of Spike can be seen).

 

Nice behind-the-scenes info! I love your attention to detail on things like this, and the way you create solutions from combining different resources.

 

Wow. You should teach a class online on how to do this.

 

My pictures that I do are somewhat inspired by your work
@OptimusTimelord

 

Thanks, in my experience it's the attention to little details that help sell the finished thing to the viewers eye.

But do I want everyone else to be doing it too?! ;-)

Nice to hear that I'm inspiring others