And to someone with face blindness the same as their original.

 

It would be nice if they kept the aesthetics as close as possible to the first movie.

I found this on IG, it's a good balance between the old and new

 

I like the weird looking mechs of Zone of the Enders 2..

Vic Viper, Jehuty, Anubis, etc..

 

My personal faves from other people are
This Megatron


This Optimus


This Bumblebee
and This Soundwave

 

I have no problems with bayverse designs, only with the movies.

 

I have a couple of reboot ideas.
although I'm not sure if they'd belong here,
or be better suited in "Fan Fiction"
Might not be to everyone's liking
(like tim shinn's designs up there with the faces)
but You might at least find them interesting

 

Y'know, I got to thinking about something…regarding the more bio-mechanical/techno-organic/"alien" look of the existing Movie designs in comparison to something more traditional, like Nizzi's statues or Figueroa's Ongoing redesigns.

What if we got a reboot where Cybertronian society started out with physical appearances like this…

…and, as the result of untold millions of years of civil war, have been reduced physically to the point where they'd end up looking something like this?

What got me thinking about this was two other sci-fi franchises: Star Wars, specifically two points - how the narrative passage of time between the Prequels and the Original Trilogy took the galaxy from the sleek, elegant-looking Starfighters of Episode I to the beater patch-job X- and Y-Wings of Episode IV, as well as what ultimately happened to Anakin Skywalker; and, somewhat related to that latter point, RoboCop, what with how Alex Murphy went from a whole, nimble, agile human being to a clunky, walking meat locker barely capable of sitting down in a chair.

The idea here is that Cybertronians were once biologically at a point of having physical forms that had the elegance of natural (relatively-speaking) evolution - but because they've been at war with each other for so long, both factions became shorter and shorter on what would pass for adequate supplies and resources either for proper medical procedures or toward maintaining battlefront strength (not to mention the possible environmental effects the damage and destruction caused by so long and widespread a war would probably have, even on a bio-mechanical world). One solution would be to patch up your soldiers with enough built-in hardware to hopefully get them through another go-round - taking care of two birds with one stone, right? However, as the war KEEPS going on, attachments, implants, etc. - as well as the exoskeletal structuring necessary to offer them some added protection - become tougher to fabricate without making them cruder and more awkward…particularly when considering the need for them to still be able to transform.

Now, there is the little problem of what happens when they arrive on Earth and, y'know, assume the forms of Earth-based vehicles. But I think the original G1 cartoon and Marvel comic hold the key there: whatever they're using for a headquarters would have to be equipped with technology and tools sufficient to remove, re-create and re-attach their outer armor based on local scans. In other words, it'd have to be another surgical process, especially if it's to include (if necessary) cockpit/driver-passenger space for any humans to complete the illusion of an Earth vehicle.

 

The thing tho, it would be hard to pull to make any facial or physical characteristic 100% recognizable for someone with any sort of facial blindness since Transformers are beings not made of human flesh.

With humans, genders, facial and physical characteristics and traits are easily more recognizable so we take what our eyes and brain process and make a conclusion from there. But other times where these may not be applicable, we use cues.

Cybertronian females would not have any flowing hair on their heads except if you use metallic braids in place of hair in much the same way as it was used on the Dreads in DoTM or even Quintessa’s in TLK.

For the most part, most Cybertronian females would have a helmet-like construct on their heads in place of hair, as do all the rest of Cybertronians. Actually that was my head canon that instead of hair, Cybertronians have a helmet-like structure on their heads as their crowning glory.

So going back to cues...


Pretty much the only way I could tell this is a female is from the small nose, full feminine lips, a narrow chin. That’s pretty much the closest approximation we can get to recognize it as a female or a feminine character in the absence of long flowing hair, makeup and eyelashes.

Also, the body that I used for this face could be androgynestic enough. The only cue is a more prominent protruding chests in place of breasts so it is not as blatant as the Transformers Prime Arcee in that regard. Other cues are the narrow waist, the long narrow thighs and legs.

So all in all, in the absence of more obvious human physical traits and features, humans rely on cues to make sense and process information that they see. In any event, Cybertronians are alien organisms so their physical and facial features may not entirely conform to human standards and they probably don’t need to.

What we really just need for Cybertronians, at least in the live action movies, are good designs that can give easily recognizable cues that audiences can see and relate to being the closest approximation to what we see/view them to be.

We could always use bay’s convention for fembots like this:



Some people like this design. Personally, I don’t dig it. It’s not really an attractive design.

But this



This Is probably the closest we can have to a Cybertronian Wonder Woman, again, in the absence of more obvious female human facial and physical features. Since the 2007 live action movie, this is approximately how I’ve pictured Arcee or any of the female Cybertronians to look like in live action. OR, in place of the helmet, we could put metal braids on this Arcee and see how it may look. But then again, Arcee since she was first introduced has her iconic look. If there were to be a metallic braided female Cybertronians (bots or cons), I’d rather have them as other different characters.

 

This one is for Windblade. Only make the face metallic

 

I think Tracks could be based on the original concept art of Crosshairs.

 

I think the reboot designs need to be blocky, to a certain degree. Cars and trucks are essentially large blocks on wheels, those parts have to go somewhere. I want Transformers that-

1. Actually transform (should have been obvious)
2. Have a design that can transform into something without resorting to massive CG cheating. The less parts need to shrink or disappear, the better.

Here's a chart

 

Actually that's my point COLOUR!!!
All those designs use the exact same metal tones and very basic shapes that are difficult to tell apart. There is a reason while every film production has makeup artists- why they have on site makeup stations, why most of the bayverse Autobots had painted sections breaking up the face! Trust me, you do not want to see an entire film where no one wears makeup.

I get you like the G1 easy one tone face but it's very difficult to read on screen.

 

I actually prefer the aligned aesthetic and some G1 influences but I agree with you regarding bay’s use of the same metal tones. So I can see now how it can be confusing.

 

I don't in care with the designs or a little, but as much have influences from the source material.

 

Why should robots even HAVE clear-cut gender the way we're used to it, or humanoid faces, or... Any of the things being talked about? All of that stuff is either biological adaptation specialized to us dumb hairless monkeys, or cultural/mental adaptation also specialized to... Us dumb monkeys. And other animals, I guess.

Unless Cybertronians reproduce the way we do, and have some plausible reason to perform the bodily functions we do to necessitate the features we have, both physiologically and culturally, odds are good they'd lack those features for the most part, and look down on us as kinda gross and primitive for having them.

"Faces? Why the fuck? We don't shove nasty mush into our craniums, dipshit, why the fuck would we have nasty orifices on our faces for chewing shit up into paste? Why would we have noses when we can draw particulates into our vents and process and analyze them three times more effectively than your species can?"

Eyes are sorta the exception, but they still don't like ours, and sometimes they don't even look like eyes. And they're not always where we're used to or as many as we're used to.

"Gender? Oh mode of sociological and internal/external self perception that divides our species up! Yeaaaaah we have that! Wait, what? Yours is based on.....? Yours is based on your role in doing WHAT? That's fucking disgusting your whole species is nasty. On Cybertron gender is based on whether you're primarily cool or warm colors, and which you prefer in a prospective conjunx endura. No, it's not shallow. See, the colors aren't random, they signify things about the 'bot in question's underlying personal- Oh Primus fuck, nevermind, I don't know why I'm bothering."

(They decide to destroy earth when they find out how gross we are and how we make more humans)

 

What should the reboot designs look like? Iconic.

We've had a million different iterations and styles. Usually in an effort to appear "fresh" and "current", which often robs the mythos of its own self. But, this is the live action movie domain. The medium that will introduce another new generation to everything that has come before. Don't try to be arbitrarily different from every single thing that came before. Instead of thinking "this ain't your papa's Prime", think "this will be the defining Optimus Prime, the Primest of Primes". An equivalent to Christopher Reeves' Superman. A definite version, timeless, instead of timely.

 

Yeah I believe that too. When we first sat to watch the first movie we all jizzed our pants when Optimus transformed for the first time. We got turned down when we put 2+2 together later and checked how he looked, but the expectation....seeing the best prime ever was there. Thats what they should actually do this time.

 

How I want live action Transformers to look is basically this.

They should be easily recognizable as the characters they're intended to be. Not slavish G1 designs, they can be updated to some extent. IDW Bumblebee or even the upcomming Cyberverse design are good examples of how to update a character without making it so he can no longer be recognized as Bumblebee.

They can keep the more human looking movie faces because I think it allows them to be more realistically expressive when the face is broken up like that. However no more head designs that look nothing like the character or for some inexplicable reason look like giant metal insects.

The face is the only part of the robot that should be broken up like that. The rest of the robot should be more solid. Two reasons the robots should be more solid.

1. The broken up overly complex transformations do not look real. When you look at a toy the panel lines for most other Transformers are lines that would normally be in the vehicle anyway. Doors, trunk, hood, ect. There aren't a whole lot of lines that aren't suppose to be there, that would give it away that it's a robot. However with movie toys typically they have a whole lot of lines over parts that should be smooth because the transformations are so overly complex that it's literally impossible to have a smooth realistic looking vehicle mode. When the transformations are that complex it causes the vehicle mode to look broken, with scratches that shouldn't be there like it was in a wreck and poorly reassembled. The movies clearly have the broken parts magically seal themselves. This is not realistic, the cartoons where the robots actually appear solid look more realistic than these.

2. They're in a WAR, they're constantly fighting each other. A solid looking robot looks like it can take a few hits and keep on fighting. These crappy looking robots with all their gaps and exposed internals look like you could throw any hard object at them and instantly kill them. It's not believable that their armor is so impenetrable when they hardly have any armor at all. It's like how some video games expect you to believe that less cloths on a female character some how adds protection. Realistically any gap in your armor is a weak spot that if an enemy hits will cause damage. Movie Transformers have so many freaking gaps they might as well be walking around naked. They remind me of episode 1 C-3P0. They need to look more solid to actually be able to realistically survive the damage they take. With these designs, it looks more like every Transformer should be dead by now cause you hit them once with anything at any point it should kill them. Where the heck is their armor.

If you really want the movie designs to be as realistic as possible... Have Hasbro make the toys first. Make them Alternator style so that the vehicles actually have an interior. This would prove that the designs could actually exist and function in the real world without cheating in some way. Then the animators could render those exact designs full scale and you'd end up with the most realistic looking Transformers we've ever had rather than designs that basically just look like really expensive cartoons.

 

The concept art for those Prime 1 statues would be my go-to. They're realistic enough to where they look alien and would look convincing on screen while at the same time being immediately recognizable. Also I love that Megatron's tread-cape, that's a really nice touch that makes him look menacing.

 

So much yes in every way. I dont even know what it is, but that Optimus is perfection to me. It hits every single right spot.

I like the Megatron design a bit less but its still really good, and the tank treads as a dotm sentinel style double cape is pretty cool. I really liked the fact that Megatron didn't have an earth alt mode in the first two movies due to his disgust towards humans. I hope that carries over to the reboot, but make his cybertronian alt mode still recognizably a tank.