Beast Wars Prequel Theft of the Golden Disk Has Been Released

http://transformersclub.com/

Courtesy of the all too awesome Transformers Collectors' Club and the Uber Talented Trent Troop. I watched it, thought it was great, and will be watching it again to look for more easter eggs.

Very nice can't wait to watch it!

Edit: Ok saw it and it was nice to see it for free and I enjoyed hearing David Kaye as Megatron again that was very cool. I wish we could had Dinobot to speak a line or two but oh well I'm happy with this.

I'm thankful it's not only for members of the Club, otherwise I'd never be able to see it! But since it's free for everybody to watch, I am now pinching it from my Temporary Internet Files.

BTW, apparantly this is a prequel to the comic that came with the Dawn Of Future's Past boxset. Is there anywhere on the 'net that I can download scans of that comic? Specifically files that can be read by CDisplay?

EDIT: Just finished pinching it - quite good, though I gotta ask, what was Tarantulas' alt mode in the comic I mentioned above? Cause the pic that I've seen doesn't quite match up with what the model was based on.

Not bad at all. Starting out I thought they had the worst David Kaye impression I've ever heard, until I realized it was actually Cryotek talking.

Cryotek sounds more than a little bit like the Grinch.

So is Cryotek's Cybertronian form based off of Energon Shockblast?

Nice! I wish Dinobot would have said a few things as well, being my fav from Beast Wars, oh well.

Megatron betraying Cryotek was a nice touch for his well known selfish ambition.

*200th post* YEEEESSSSS! lol

There were some parts where I couldn't really tell what was going on,
but overall I thought it was good.

Good to hear kaye's Megatron again, and nice music at the end.

I watched it, don't particularly get it. I know the apparent importance of the disk and all but meh.. I dunno.

Editing was terrible, but the video itself was ok.

Lame!!!

it needed the other bw characters to say something, i'm pretty sure that Waspinator, terrorsaur and dinobot would of said something.

LoL! I had the same issue. Some of the action was very confusing to me.

Cryoteck's cybertronian mode is E-Shockblast? HOLY CRAP. I want that figure MADE. XD

Very nice! I have to admit that there were times where it was too dark to notice what was going on... like my colors in the Megatron book, har har har! XD!!

Not bad at all, and for a Club freebie, it was great.

Love that it fits well into continuity, after a fashion.

that was pretty neat, although at times it was too dark to really figure out what was going on. I'd love it if people dissect this for meanings/easter eggs/etc. it was interesting that it was done in a mid-90's animation style, so it looked perfect for a bw prequel. anyone notice that megatron transmitted over frequency X-9, ravage's number?

The x-9 reference was about the only thing I caught, easter-egg wise.

I'm STILL not crazy about the BW guys having vehicular modes on Cybertron, but Cryotek's new body was cool, and I LOVE that he had the Beast Machine's Navi (yes, he's the "Diagnostic Drone" but to me he's a Navi) as his pet instead of Cro. Trarantualas' body was a good choice he always looked better in his half-bike Metals body anyhow.

Over all I felt it was long on well-intended but poorly-executed action and artsy-direction, but kinda short on substance. With a grand total of 10 minutes of run time, I could lived without all the dueling.

More dialogue woulda helped, I think a half-way decent Dinobot/Waspinator/whoever impression woulda been better than not having anyone but Megatron and the fan-characters talk (Though Dirge is real, just Japanese, and I guess Tranantulas cackled a bit)

Still, for a fan-production, very good, the animation and modelling approaches the level of early-mainframe, which even 10 years on is pretty impressive for an independent project.

Glad to have seen it, will definitely add it to my TF video archive.
D/L

At transformerscon last year, there was a guy who did a PERFECT Tarantulas. They should really have been farming the live script readings to get the voices for this.

How Long you think will Mainframe make a Movie of this for tv ?!

Haven't watched it all yet (I've skimmed a few bit of Part 2--Part 1 wouldn't load on YouTube). One "easter egg" I've found so far is at 1:27 in Part 2. I'm assuming that's Dinobot with Megatron (looks like him--but as I said, I haven't seen all of it or read the comic). It looks like Dinobot sticks a bomb or something on top of the shelves/drawers right after Megatron pulled something out. Dinobot hits it with his fist and it activates--if you look at it closely, they based its design on the "Energon Stars" from Transformers: Energon.

I'm sure there's plenty more where that came from though.

Thank you for that well-though, eloquent reply.

Pretty good. A little more complicated than needed, losts of extras.

I liked the Cryotek angle. Makes me think megs is even smarter the way the caper went down.

I think terrorsaur, Scorponok and tarantualas were gret mold choices... With them making buckets of pointless scout repaints it seems like they could make all 3 of these in universe or classics or something. Even if they named them other wacky crap it would be a toy for the shelf and a fandom want.

It was a good work by the guys who did this... very cool! Too bad this wasn't ready for botcon 2 years ago when the BWs was the thing. I am not sure if this was fan-made or what.

Ahh the glory of opinions of opinions about opinions.

Not bad, not what I was expecting as it could of used more sound effects that sounded a bit cleaner then what was used....but it was reallly nice to hear david kaye as BW's megs and I was shocked to hear my voice acting co-hort in crime, Brad was involved in this....I need to keep up more often.

If the embedded videos on the Transformers fanclub won't work (don't see why they wouldn't, but...), here are the direct youtube links.

Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIJVSjIuNYg

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDRYFCO7fpo

You can also hit the fullscreen option from the youtube pages, which should make things a little easier to figure out.

Among the Easter Eggs I noticed were statues of Antagony and the Pretender Monster Icepick's outer shell.

So uhh... anyones knows who's the mold used for Tarantulus?

Cool.

Makes me want to play with my old Beast Wars... all six of them.

Umm ... a lil more respect, please?

Cybertron Ransack, the motorcycle.

Not a bad fit and we have not seen his mold 'reused' as target repaints yet.

Depends on your definition of Fan-Made.

We are fans, yes. But this is a fanclub release, and is thus in the same category as the fanclub newsletter comics, The New World, Wreckers Volume IV and the Botcon stories.

-Trent

That was really cool! I enjoyed it!

Right, I understand that it was commissioned by the fan club, I wasn't sure *when* they commissioned it.

It would have been nice to see at botcon when this was the theme. While it is a great accomplishment and really cool and I am glad to see it, I am just wondering if this was decided to be made because of the success of the Botcon story and based on the botcon story or was this being made independent of it and then Picked up?

What? People put a lot of work into that. If you can't say anything constructive, don't say anything at all.

I liked it, except for the part with dinobot/guardian faceoff (went a little to long).

Very nice work, Trent! How long did it take?

To me, it kind of had an Ocean's 11 vibe to it, with the heist and music.

I thought it was pretty terrible overall. the writing was especially boring. the voice actors other than David Kaye were all rather lame.

I have no real complaints with the CG and animation, can't really expect mainframe-level stuff here. the only thing that irked me was the closeup of cryotek's mouth when he was talking, where it was shown he was talking with his lips alone. his teeth weren't moving at all.

Yay, glad this is available to everyone. I'll probably watch it when I get home...not enough time here at school to do it.

Same here...

The golden disk was sent into space by NASA on the Voyager space probe.

It has the history and information about the human race planet earth, and all that crap.

G1 Megatron encoded a message on the disk telling decepticons of the future plans on what to do should he lose the great war.

So take G1 Megatron's plans, a History of earth and a timetraveling spaceship you can return to ancient earth and be a god and re-make history and the TF race by your whims.

This was Cryoteks plan and Megatron took it and ran.

BW started because maximal High command sent an alert that Megs was escaping with the golden disk and Primal and crew a science vessel were the only ones close enough to respond.

This short relies a LOT on prior knowledge of the BW universe. I don't know if it would have been better for Cryotek to actually discuss the plan or if it was needed depending on the target audience.

It was alright, but Terrorsaur, Scorponok and Terantulas' bodies are wrong. Terrorsaur has a modified Cyber jet body, Scorp is E Scorp with A Smokescreen crane, and Terantulas is a cybertron version of his normal body.

Animation was alright, and Cryotech was interesting. Kinda lost me at his final speech.

That animation IS Mainframe quality. It's on par with early ReBoot episodes, which has a sort of poetic appropriateness, given that it's a Beasties prequel.

And it's head and shoulders above Energon and Cybertron.

above energon, I'll give you that. but not cybertron. no way in hell is it above cybertron.

*Long time reader, first time poster*

I thoroughly enjoyed it even if it was a bit confusing at times. Maybe could have been a bit longer. I liked the g1 theme in the credits.

OK, being a BW fan myself I found that pretty lame. Lots of dead silence when dialogue was crucial and horrible, horrible music. I mean, no offense, but this is not the music of Beast Wars I know. It sounded like cheap video game fluff. Anyway, It was nice to see, if only because it was so silly.

I was in preproduction for it as a pretty much scene-by-scene recreation of my original fan video, only with updated toy-related models. When the first couple of BC toy images leaked, we got with the fan club, the majority of the old work was scrapped, and everything went forward from there. So essentially it was a new project for the club that replaced an independant production.

We were working on this at the same time as the comic was being made. Time constraints prevented the creation of non-toy based models for Scorponok, Tarantulas and Terrorsaur to match the designs used in the comic.

About a total of seven months of work spaced out between staff-changes and massive computer failures.

Awesome! I actually told the composer "I need something Oceans 11-y". I'm glad that came through.

We really didn't think that synth jungle drums and flutes was a good fit for a story set on Cybertron. I'm glad you were able to derive some enjoyment from the film, even if it didn't meet your initial expectations.

-Trent

Pretty good. I mean, it's not Shakespeare, but what is right? Overall I think the only major criticism that I have for it is that I think that there should have been less action and more dialogue. I realize that it would have been impossible to get some of the old BW actors on board, but I'll echo the sentiments that they should have pooled some of the fan talents out there to get some decent impressions.

In any case, I enjoyed it and I like the animation quality (it is very much like early mainframe) and I actually like the existing toy models used for Terrorsaur, Scorponok & Tarantulas rather than the comic books amalgamations.

dont like it!

I like it. It was done with the best intentions and it provides us with an outlook on the theft. My only real complaint is that it could have used more character interaction between the original BW Preds. It just unnatural to see Dinobot working with Megatron has his silent partner.

I thought that was absolutely fantastic.

I had no idea who most of the characters were having not read the comic and a agree that veting some fan voices would have been better to give more life to the BW cast, but hey. Great animation in the mainframe way, loved the ending theme and general concept itself.

Really look forward to anything else you guys put out. Any plans on doing stuff for the more recent and fuure botcons?...

I would agree with this. I hope they consider having future animations to go with the exclusive themes. Something like this on a DVD with the boxed set would have been great!