Over the past 30 years, dozens of artists have contributed to the Transformers universe, and many of them possess wildly different and unique styles. Who do you like and who do you hate, and why?

Here are my favorites....:

Alex Milne- He definitely wins the 'most improved' award. In the span of 10 years, he went from this to this. He's never been a bad artist, but he's gotten amazingly good at facial expressions and stuff since MTMTE started. Plus his MTMTE Megatron design is my favorite Megatron design EVER.

Nick Roche- His art is very unique and expressive, managing to balance traditional and exaggerated, cartoony-style art.

Guido Guidi and Dan Khanna- I like their simple, G1 cartoon style art. Guido's work on the last 5 issues of RG1 has some of the best splash pages I've seen.

Don Figueroa (pre-Ongoing)- If Pat Lee hadn't been such a horrible businessman Don's art would've saved Dreamwave. His early IDW stuff like Stormbringer and Spotlight: Optimus Prime is some of IDW's best art IMO. That and it's cool how he actually engineered out the transformations of all his designs so they could easily be turned into toys.

Sarah Stone- Her art style is definitely something new and different, and I like it.

...and least favorites:

Andrew Wildman- He's not a bad artist but I think his Transformers are too fluid and organic-looking.

Pat Lee- Exhibit A and Exhibit B. 'Nuff said.

Livio Ramondelli aka F*cking Livio aka Livio Ramalamadingdong aka Chickenscratch Guy- WHY THE F*CK DOES IDW KEEP USING HIM?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Incredibly murky coloring mixed with horrible faces mixed with just in general not being good. His art worked for the Dead Universe and the flashback scenes in RID #34, but those are the only two good things I can say about him.

*rant mode disengaged* So, what does everyone else think?

 

Because, believe it or not, people have different tastes, and although he's far from perfect in the storytelling department, Livio is one of my favorite TF artists for tone and atmosphere. I love the coloring. Love it. I wish all the TF comics could capture more of that tone.

I guess my all-time favorite TF artist would be Geoff Senior. No one else has ever captured such a feeling of movement, energy and power, all while making characters seem individual and expressive. Roche in his finest moments gets some of that, but not to the same level for me.


Most of the TF artists over the years, I do not like much. Including a lot of the ones popular now. I don't really feel like singling out anyone, because they're all artists and bashing them doesn't really accomplish anything other than potentially hurt someone's feelings if an artist checks TF forums. So hey, keep on trucking, everyone.

 

Like I said, his art works sometimes. Really my problem with him is that there are so many better artists IDW could use (like Casey Coller) but IDW keeps going back to Livio.

 

That's how I feel about almost all IDW TF comics. And about 90% of the old Marvel comics, too, to be fair.

 

Hey look it's a "fuck Livio Ramondelli" thread. Edgy.

 

That's not exactly what I mean this to come across as...sorry?

 

Favorite - Alex Milne, Nick Roche, Casey Coller, E.J. Su, Andrew Griffith, Sarah Stone

Least Favorite - Pat Lee HANDS DOWN.

 

Favorite - Alex Milne, Sarah Stone

Least Favorite - Pat Lee. Dull surprise!

I mean, some other artists have flaws, but he's the only one where his expressions were so bad a large chunk of readers simply had no idea what was supposed to be conveyed leading to mass speculation of something happening offpage.

And of course, he got other, better artists to ghostart for him, and then didn't pay them.

 

It honestly makes you wonder if Pat Lee actually drew this, the piece that got Dreamwave the Transformers license to begin with:

 

Favourites are definitely Milne and Roche. It's almost baffling to me how I used to dislike some of their art. But their work on mtmte and Last Stand is just phenomenal. I'd definitely put Matt Frank and Sarah Stone up there as well. Matt's the best at expressions-- maybe even better than Roche who - arguably - tends to rely on some gaping mouths to get his expressions across. (I personally love them, but I have found times when they could have been used sparingly) Really I'm trying to offer some sort of criticism for the guy, but I can just barely.   And yeah, Sarah has the big anime head thing going on, but other than Starscream (who's clunky design doesn't really compliment the artstyle) it's worked out great. And again, it's really just a matter of style. Out of them all I think Milne rises on top. Not only does he complete his work with awesome detail and the greatest of designs, but he's still improving. A criticism I would have made towards him before mtmte is a lack of expression on his characters, but now you have scenes like Perceptor's utter bafflement in response to Brainstorm's attempt to harvest a 0.1% spark, Trailbreaker on his drunk quest for Megatron's engex, and so on. One criticism I've seen targeted at him is his proneness to same-face, which is absolutely true. But even now we can see him modeling faces and noses in ways to differentiate between the characters.

As for the worst?

Pat Lee, both art and person. Marshmellows are not anime!

Rojo may not be the worst artist ever, but he's one of the worst Transformers artists. I don't understand how he can draw something, and then look at his work like:



"Yeah, Prowl looks cool." Somehow Rojo is capable of making even the most awesome characters look lame with those weird round heads. I'm sure he's a fine artist for humans, but he is just not good with robots... or scale.

Then there's Rammondeli. Man. He is bad. What's bad about him? Is it the fact that he draws robots somehow even blockier than in G1? Is it because his proportions are almost always out of wack? Is it because he can't do more than one perspective? Is it because he's never drawn an expression in his life? Or maybe because he uses pictures for backgrounds without checking to see if people are clearly in them. OR the fact that people couldn't tell who the "mystery bot" in DC was, despite there being no intention to conceal Kup's identity.

Though I'll give him credit for the few times he pulled off something that looked pretty good. Optimus ripping Nova's arm off comes to mind, as well as that shot in Punishment of Starscream saving Prime. I'd be happier with him gone though.

 

Honestly who's ever doing the art for MTMTE. The faces have always looked very...strange

 

Honestly I kinda doubt he did on his own... or at least, if so, he spent way more effort on it than he did even the first issues of the ongoing.

 

My least favorites would have too be Dan Reed and Ulises Farinas. Dan Reed just drew everything too organic looking and his poses were so awkward and unnatural. Ulises Farinas did great work on the backgrounds but his Transformers were horrible, everyone looked stout, puffy, and had way too much going on in their designs.

 

Lots of great artists, but I think I'll pick Alex Milne for top spot. His work is a great balance of technical proficiency and strong expressiveness, without going too organic or cartoony or 'robotic'. Sarah Stone is another fave of mine for different reasons, as her style is loose and free and emotion/character-driven, not to mention great for using coloring to convey mood.

Bottom spot remains with Manny Galan of the Marvel G2 comics. Sad part there is I think he might have done a better job if he wasn't trying to emulate Derek Yaniger's strongly stylized work.

 

Best; EJ Su. I think his classical mecha reinterpretations of the G1 characters are the best designs in all of Transformers. Even with the weird tiny chins.

Nick Roche. I simply love the man's faces. They're brilliantly expressive and identifiably human, even while being all geometric shapes and flattened surfaces. Plus the cartoony, stylized bend of his work really works for me.

Worst; Livio Ramondelli. Linework like Frank Miller on his worst day combined with colors more murky that Arkham Asylum ASHOASE, equals  .

 

I'm going to guess Alvin Lee did most of the work here. It must suck for him being related to a talentless money-laundering asshole like Pat Lee.

 

On art, there's multiple aspects. There's just, 'how good does this image look on it's own?,' and then there's visual storytelling. How stuff flows, how movement is conveyed, how well it gives you a sense of place and setting, etc..

So there is a lot of room for individual preferences depending on the aspects which most draw you. Sometimes one runs into an artist who's individual images look good, but have poor visual storytelling, and sometimes one runs into the converse, where despite not being as good in some aspects, the artist gives you a solid impression of how they move, where they are, and so on.

 

Probably not. He used so many ghost artists

 

Favourite(s): Alex Milne and Sarah Stone.

Least: Pat Lee.

Everyone else fits in the middle, I actually quite like Ramondelli's art, I can see why it isn't to everyone's taste but I like it.

 

Le positives whose style I dig (I'm going IDW only cause of the variety)

Nick

Alex

Sarah

Robby Musso

Livio

Guido

Le negatives whose style I either dislike or actively hate

Ulises Farinas - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Chee

Scioli

Rojo