Animated Rodimus Prime, Blackout, Spittor and Strika Images

This guy really gives me the creeps. To me he seems like a fanatic, his tight lips, his lean 'bony' facial features, his eyes are located deep within the eye sockets and they convey a focussed protruding gaze. Although his exterior has an ice-cold demeanour, his eyes betray a lust for violence akin to his G1-hateplague-infected counterpart. I somehow see this Rodimus dismembering Decepticons and enjoying it. His zombie like appearance screamed amateur psychological profiling to me, so here goes:

Rodimus Prime graduated cum laude Autobot academy together with Sentinal Prime, Optimus Prime and A1, they were considered to be a Golden Generation. However Rodimus Prime was clearly the best of the best one day he’d be Ultra Rodimus for sure. On his fast track to the top Rodimus Prime accepted any mission to further his status within Autobot hierarchy. (This in sharp contrast to Sentinel Prime who preferred to further his career mainly through orthodox bureaucratic adventures) Deep Space contained the most opportunities and risks which suited the ambitions and convictions of Rodimus Prime perfectly.
At first Rodimus entirely lived up to expectations and subdued substantial amounts of Decepticon territory, but slowly and steadily his vigour and glare began to dim. The Decepticons effectively fought the Autobots to a stalemate in the border territories, wherein neither side could ever achieve decisive victory. Gradually Rodimus learned to live with the reality of war which became increasingly tedious and horrific.
His situation echoed the G1 Rodimus but without access to the matrix or Optimus Prime to save the day. Rodimus became preoccupied (obsessed) with hunting down and killing Decepticons across the universe for the sake of a Glorious Autobot Empire. (maybe he even had to abandon and kill fellow Autobots for the greater Autobot goal)
Rodimus missions increasingly resembled a covert (clandestine) operations, accordingly he was slowly succumbing to surrounding madness especially with insane adversaries a la G1 Galvatron who would constantly force his hand and play mind games. In a situation like this a bot either adjusts or is destroyed. The fog of endless machinewars probably numbed his senses, the Autobot ideals became a distant memory and decisive violence his only remedy.
By now Rodimus was an Autobot mirror-image of Galvatron equally hot tempered, equally powerful, equally brilliant and equally feared among his comrades and adversaries. He earned the name ‘Hot Rod(imus)’ for his explosive tantrums. Still Rodimus was wise enough to realize his condition, he knew he’d never fit in regular Autobot society again so he accepted his fate; engaging shadowy enemies with equal shadowy tactics in far flung sectors in Autobot space until he learned the Decipticons were rallying on a distant planet.

If this is the case for Rodimus Prime it’ll be the total opposite of Animated Season 2 where a bunch of rogue inexperienced Autobots fought and defeated Decepticons and met with scepticism of Autobot high Command. Maybe this time around they’ll meet the ‘true’ Autobot fighting machine in Rodimus Prime and c.s. who’ll have the same disdainful attitude towards Optimus Prime and his crew but for the total opposite reasons.
Whereas Sentinel judged Optimus out of line, maybe Rodimus will judge Optimus to soft for allowing the Decepticons to act at their leisure. I can’t wait to see season tree and these guys in action.

Wow.... Animated Rodimus Kurtz.

Nice backstory, man. It's a very unique and intriguing interpretation of the character.

Glad I'm not the only one who finds Rodimus extremely creepy looking.

Soooo... Strika & Bulkhead was couple of lovers back then on energon farm.

Other bots & fembots insult her for being big fat ugly, but only Bulkhead there to cheer her up, and keep the bullies away from her. But ever since Bulkhead left her, and join the maintenance crew, she went back to previous condition, bullied by her fellows, even to worst level. But then, there comes the heroic & humanitarian Longarm Prime (thanks to Vangelus) and recruits her to the Autobot military, unknowingly also slowly convinces her to be a Decepticon, based on her hatred for her fellow Autobots who keep bullying her for her size, even going as far as revealing himself as Shockwave in front of Strika, and eventually, she pledged her undying allegiance to Megatron & the Decepticons cause, unnoticed by other Autobots. The rest of the story, I dunno...

And hey, both of you have the 'Thunder' prefix in your names!

I demand that you continue, good sir. Post it here, turn it into a fanfic, whatever. This wins SO HARD.

How come Rodimus isn't apart of the Elite Guard?

Maybe the Autobot insignia is just a placeholder.

indeed. the homage to previous version of the same characters from different universes is pretty cool.

The colored versions look fantastic. I could see Spittor having a third mode.

I think his flames fill in the part of the wings on a normal Elite Gaurd insignia.

Hmm, not really sure what to think of this. on one hand, I'm glad they liked my Spittor sketch enough that it inspired theirs.

but on the other hand, it's like they took my idea without telling me. changed it enough so they dont have to pay me. and only acknowledges it when people pointed out the similarities..

your idea?

My guess is that he isn't an Elite Guard member at all.

well, they changed it enough, I guess. but this was my Pre-Earth BW Spittor from the first Mini-series.




and a Quote from the main page:

But isn't it true that any work you did for Dreamwave or IDW (who are/were technically licensees of Hasbro) automatically became property of Hasbro? If this is true then it would not be a big deal for CN to use anything appearing in one of the comics you've drawn, since you technically got paid for your work thru the Comic company.

Or maybe i don't fully understand how it works...

Well, was that actually published in any of the books?

The pic was featured in the tpb.

The design is very clearly a reworking of Don's original. Hasbro probably has ownership of anything featured in the comics. I dunno, I'm not a lawyer.

From a creator's perspective though, I'd be a little put-off by this if I were in Don's situation. SOMEone got paid for this design, and Don DID provide the framework that they used.

Regardless of who owns what, it's poor form to borrow so heavily without a direct acknowledgement. Maybe action figures should have credits on them like the first page of a comic.

Image comics came into being SPECIFICALLY because creators were tired of creating characters just to have them swallowed up by the companies they worked for. Just because you understand the situation, that doesn't make it any easier to swallow.

And if you all recall, the initial formation of Image created such imbalance in the comics industry that the whole bottom fell out. It took a decade for EVERYONE to recover.

I'm not saying that that's what will come of this, but when someone is one of the premiere creative names associated with your property, conventional wisdom says that you should dip into your billion dollar bin and show them some love every chance you get.

I'm going to assume that the guys up the chain probably didn't even realize the connection. Hopefully when they figure it out they'll show some class.

So every time they homage one of the G1 character models they should give credit to Floro Dery?

Re-imagining designs is something Transformers does pretty often.

It's not like Derrick is claiming he came up with he design all on his own.

And Floro Dery shouldn't even get credit, because the most of the 1984 character models were simplified versions of Shōhei Kohara's work, which in turn were based upon the toy designs of Takara's Diaclone and Microman/Microchange design teams.

Damn, and I thought Strika Looked butch before.

I agree with Don that it really does suck.

I don't think there's much that can be done about it, tho.

--Moony

I've wanted to see this for a long time, everyone deserves credit for their work.

Hasbro's official answer is that industry design is such a collaborative effort, it would be unfair to give some people a credit and leave the five million other people who are involved on some tertiary levels out.

Keep in mind that credits in comic books also didn't come overnight. Check an issue from the 1940s against a 1960s issue against a modern-day issue. Huge difference in terms of credits.

For some reason I can hear Adam West being the va for Rodimus !!

I don't get why one company doing work as a license holder of a franchise would have to pay an employee of another company who is doing work for the same property for inspiration. I'm not saying your wrong or anything. I am honestly admitting to being uniformed about your role in hasbro and transformers at this moment.

I can only guess at some point you were doing or are still doing concept or design work for hasbro? Are you not anymore? Is Hasbro using some of your MANY designs from the great comics you did while working on there property? Isn't that there right?

i am so frickin happy they are makin blackout an animated character!!! i cant waite 4 his toy now!!! he lokks awesome 2!!!

Oooooh, nice to see Strika done Animated style. And Blackout looks pretty awesome.