Great interview, thanks for the translation!

 

So laserbeak was his idea, nice touch and great that they listen to the TK guy's imputs but no wonder he wasn't in soundwave's first appearence in the show.

 

Man I love how all of these little steps in the Transformations were planned. Great interview, thanks again Sol Fury as always.

I just love Animated. Goddamn I miss it.

 

its always nice to read these things and to get to know how the toys started as ideas and then how they became what they are now

 

Neat interview. I will never look at "Animated" as being the "black sheep" in the line of Transformers shows ever again.    

But I am still sourcing my a$$ off for more vintage 80's and 90's stuff!  

Insightful as always.... thanks Sol and SydneyY!  


Now i need those two prototypes..pronto!  

 

Thanks SydneyY and Sol Fury. Another great interview translation.

 

I just unpacked my whole collection yesterday and still I think the animated designs are the most creative the series has seen. Not once did I ever think to my self "is this over yet" during transformation (i'm looking squarely at you Masterpiece Skywarp).
I feel design should follow his idea of uniqueness and simplicity with the toys. Heck I had more fun with the simple scouts from ROTF than anything larger... Great now I want an Animated Ejector...

 

Thanks for the translation. A great interview and clearly a great, great person to be associated with the brand. TakaraTomy earns much respect.

 

Thanks for the translation.

I love this guy, he seems well into his job and always gives some nice insight into the design process in his interviews.

 

Thanks Syd and Sol. Great interview. First I've really read with this guy.

I'd love to see the Allspark Almanac 2 have more info like this in it on the design relationship with Japan and their plans for the release of TFA over there, etc. Plus any photos of early designs of Hot Rod pre BB, etc. I totally feel your pain Protoman, but BB is my other fave. Can't wait to see how the Rodimus toy is designed though and what kind of transformation he'll have.

The part I loved best was finding out about the characterful transformations. I knew it was there on a subconcious level, ever since Vang's OP review, which made me actually buy that toy, it just looked so cool. Now I'm going to have to go back and transform my other TFA toys to find out/remember what theirs were. This really just makes me apreciate the TFA line all the more.

Funny, how he didn't do Starscream this time too. And thanks to him we got Lazerbeak and Ratbat, yea!

 

Going forward, I really hope they continue to maintain the consistency between characters, their appearances, and their personalities. I have always been a huge G1 fan, but had trouble getting interested in anything else until Animated came out--no other series kept the characters intact, so I felt very little connection.

 

The designs are what keep me buying these toys. Thank you so much to veryone involved in getting these interviews to the gen public!!!

 

Took the words right out of my mouth. On both accounts.

 

Glad you guys had a fun reading. That's all I care  

 

oops double post, second one today

 

OK I have to agree and slightly disagree here...Don't get mewrong HAsbro and Takaratomy do some stunning design work and come up with some great product, but some of the design work I had passed to me from HAsbro (UK)to work from at my old job was less than steller....tracings from a human torch comic in one instance that spings to mind.
We had some good stuf, but a lot of the time it was a tad on the roughside and we had to make it work (this wasn't a TF project BTW and the sculpting/modelmaking had been outsourced)

 

Thanks for doing it, it's cool to see/read these interview and I am grateful that you are doing this.  

-TF2

 

I have a pet theory that Takara-Tomy might make / design some toys that (may or may not) be sold under the "Transformers Generations" heading in the west.

But that they will be the lead on - so that might forexample include Japanese specific characters like Star Saber - or it might be Animated characters that as yet don't have toys - if the show prooves popular enough to warrant that.

I also think it's not impossible that once the Videogame toys are done with or tapered back they might introduce the leftovers of Animated under the Generations heading in North America - it's probably the best way to do it and it's also a good way of getting toys that otherwise have got forgotten about into Europe as repacks if Hasbro made things that never came out in Europe as repacks and sold them via 2nd string retailers (like they did with the Universe scouts) then they'd be ready and waiting to transfer them over to Europe.

It might help fill in all the huge gaps Europe has to put up with if they did that as I think the delays Europe suffers are so often down to the closeness of release schedules in movie periods.

Selling things that are no longer relevent in America after they are done with the molds seems more logical to me. or even reversing the release order completely on certain items so they were staggered more.

But then it looks like America has some big release gaps this year too. - it's just Hasbro USA actually tell people - rather than keep people guessing like Hasbro UK.

-------------

Oh and re the whole Tomy/Takara thing - I don't really appreciate Tomy killing off Takara Brands and replacing them with their own inferior or not closely related versions.

So Revoltech replaced Microman
& Tomy seem to been pushing Takara generic vehicle toys to one side too. unless I'm dreaming there seems less of the Takara brands being made since the merger.

I rather miss Microman - I just hope that a new Micronaut movie will kick start the brand again in the future - I think it needs relaunching with a rethink.

I didn't dislike Revoltech but I thought what characters got made and when was odd some TV shows got shed loads of characters very quickly - and other got dibbles of them like Transformers did.

 

[Additional thought as new post]

I was just thinking and as it's a different subject i thought I'd make a new post rather than make the above one to long.

If they were very pressured for time when designing Movie characters (either movie line) - is this part of the reason why they've gone back and tweaked the design of characters like Bumblebee, Sideswipe, & Ironhide to make them better.

For example it looks like the latest DX Sideswipe toy can actually stand up now. And the latest Movie DX Bumblebee has most of his signature features on a single toy.

It's a shame they didn't tweak Movie 2007 or Movie 2009 Voyager Megatron as yet as I feel both of them are not ideal (though both are better toys than the Leader ones I feel).

Perhaps they need to introduce a Movie 'Ultra' class (no electronics unless they are tiny and in the weapons only)... then they'd have chance to revisit Ratchet, Ironhide, Megatron and others with the benifit of past knowledge of what didn't work before.... this might also work with Human Alliance ones though I suppose.

I also wonder with Bumblebee and Sideswipe getting major tweaks - could they tweak or remake DX scale Jolt & 1970's Bumblebee as well ?

A Jolt with long whips & secure torso, and a 1970's Bumblebee with the best features of the latest Concept ones - such as missile launchers, cannon, clear windows, and transforming head would be terrific.

 

Good thinking. They could probably do that if they wanted.

My theory on the Generations/Universe line is it's not just a for the fans. I think it's probably a morale boost for the designers, and it's only right that they should have a say in what gets made. It's also important to keep the team together between projects, and I imagine that's what they work on while waiting for the latest batch of designs from Bay's art department.