You may or may not know that I’ve been doing some calendars which feature pictures from Transformers fans. But here’s the thing, I’ve been doing these calendars for FIVE (!) years now. Looking around TFW the first 2016 calendar doesn't have it’s own thread, and the first 2 years are hosted on Photobucket which I don’t use anymore. This means clear images of them aren’t that easy to find. I thought it’d be nice to have all five calendars archived in one place… here! So, without further ado let me take you on a tale of high adventure…

 

It all started with an innocuous post from @Rodentus prime in the UK Toy Discussion Thread (UKTD) waaaay back in the mists of time (late 2015) where he suggested that with all the wonderfully creative pictures in the UKTD that I could make a calendar out of them. Thus as a way to celebrate that thread I asked for people to throw picture submissions at me (of their favourite image of the year) which were chosen with a (now ongoing) formula of awesomeness, humour, explosions, nepotism and bribery. Late as it was the 2016 calendar was put together in a huge hurry and was envisioned as an A5 booklet which opened up into an A4 spread. The whole thing was done in pixels at 300 DPI because my PC at the time would probably die at really high resolutions.

I looked at those 'print your own calendar' type deals on the internet and in photo printing shops, but none of them allowed me the flexibility to even put in a background. They were limited to one large picture a page, and text for special dates only... which would be an awfully rubbish calendar. I ended up asking a printers (who claim they can print anything) about it and they said yes to all my criteria. I guess they could print anything... and we were away. I set about designing the calendar to be a bit more graphically involved than the average calendar. I used a few G1 art cues, but for speed defaulted to Art Deco for everything else like the fonts choice. The cover was a nice image of Unique Toys Ordin, who was one of my favourite purchases of the year, with a quote by @stevil33 which started a tradition of sticking a quote from the UKTD on the cover. The interior pages were heavily based upon the G1 box theme from 1987 (the Digital Sunburst) which is my favourite box theme from the 80’s. I created Autobot and Decepticon versions making 2 different backgrounds which alternated for variety. I also hit upon the novel idea of including a flickbook animation (breakdancing Combiner Wars Ultra Magnus) in the bottom right box, which would never be used for an actual date. Finally as the UKTD mascot, it would be a crime for the calendar not to feature Shitbot, who appears multiple times. You can read a brief history of Shitbot here;

The UK Toy Discussion

Also with this first calendar? The page count lead to two pages being blank. So in order to take up the blank space, this calendar has an annual organiser in the back pages. IIRC the printers made this themselves based off the elements I had given them.

Picture contributors for the 2016 Calendar included @Maz, stevil33, @incapable hulk, @IronicHide (who created Shitbot), myself, @Sixo, @scubaboy31, @Napalm, @RobotoChan, @dee', @TigerBlade and a December montage of all the TFW avatars of UKTD regulars by Stevil33!

This first year only 33 calendars were made!

 

IIRC the next year I didn’t know if I was going to do another calendar, after all the 2016 Calendar was supposed to be a one off kind of thing. However around September 2016 I started work on the 2017 calendar… with more time to work on it I gave it a LOT more thought. Instead of an A5 booklet calendar, why not just make an A4 calendar? That way I’d have a bigger space for the front and back cover and it would give me much more design freedom AND be a lot easier to assemble and print! Win win as far as I was concerned. It's a little annoying as now the 2016 calendar is the odd one out but hey. It's a learning curve. This was still done as pixels at 300 DPI reusing elements from the previous calendar as well as creating all new content.

The Front and Back cover starred the UKTD’s very own Shitbot, who I envisioned as having an Action Master release. The front cover featured a whole fakenews Action Master card with ALL NEW boxart by @IronicHide and a (by now) traditional quote, this time by @Knightdramon. This front of the Action Master card was virtually all drawn up from scratch in Photoshop. The back cover was (naturally) Action Master Shitbots card back, which was a modified Action Master Bumblebee card back. For Shitbot I modfied the Power Plans, and created new Instructions and Tech Specs for him. I’m particularly proud of the Tech Spec which carries on the story of Shitbot from mid 80's G1 to 1990 late G1. Sharp eyed readers may notice that the card is laying on none other than @Sixo's famous carpet, which I had managed to obtain a photo of. Because of the Action Master theme I created two new background pages (Autobot/Decepticon) based on… you guessed it, Action Masters. It doesn’t strictly follow the Action Master Theme, if you look closely a lot of the colours/shading is actually inverted, but it just happened to work better that way IMO. I stripped out the Art Deco element of the previous calendar and started going full guns at using recreating Transformers packaging by using similar fonts etc. By tightening up the layout I was able to make the flick book animation box twice as big (easing that eye strain) and this year it featured the convention exclusive Scorpinator I picked up at TFN from @CZ Hazard.

A bit of background on the bonus page, that year lots of people took one of @Maz's super clear pictures of Delta Magnus and stuck him in all sorts of different scenarios. It was such a fun random thing to happen I took all the Delta Magnus pictures I could find and stuck them in the bonus page, which also had a big ‘Where’s Delta Magnus’ picture in the middle. Seriously, he’s in there somewhere.

Picture contributors for the 2017 Calendar included @RobotoChan, @stevil33, Sixo, @Sponge, Maz, myself, @scubaboy31, @mcluskyism, @Dryl, @incapable hulk, @Napalm, @kgorman79 (starting his domination of the month of December)

This year 60 calendars were made. I also started the tradition of numbering the calendars, each one is numbered out of 60, for instance I myself kept 8/60 and 18/60.

 

Now I had to put a LOT of effort into the 2017 calendar. It was heads and shoulders superior to the 2016 calendar technically and (dare I say it) artistically and I wanted to maintain that upward curve for 2018. But how could I top that? It needed a lot of thought. That year a whole new ‘thing’ cropped up on social media, of criticising group pictures which were missing a particular character. This was epitomised by ‘Where’s Dirge’? in MP Seeker group pictures, which was baffling because MP Dirge (at the time) had not been released! Thus the 2018 calendar theme was ‘Where’s Dirge?’

The layout of the calendar remained largely the same as the previous year, with a few layout tweaks (implemented after lessons learned from the previous year which was the first time at A4) and with 2 more new backgrounds added in the form of Autobot/Decepticon versions of the 1989 Micromaster box theme. The flick book animation was the re envisioning of the iconic 'if you're gonna ride Danno, ride in style' scene from TFTM… except haha, Daniel's ded.

I went a bit crazy on extras this year, which included 3 extra pages of a Tech Spec card game which you could cut out for yourself. These cards were undersized from the set I had made for Bob Budiansky to sign at TFN, (which is a story all of it’s own, which you can read here!)

Fan Art: - tikgnat's Tech Spec Card Game (or 'The Evolution of a thing')

Shitbot hardly featured in the 2018 calendar, and that seemed like a crime so for another extra I included a Shitbot card (with ‘boxart’ by @IronicHide) made at the same undersized size as the bonus page cards. (It was unfortunate though that the backs of the cards were printed offset, which was something you'd never notice unless you actually cut the cards out and it wasn't something I'd noticed until it was too late!) Seems like a lot of extras eh?

Well, it turned out there was ONE more extra (I had kept secret), indeed this extra was the thing that (I believe) pushed the calendar well above the 2017 calendar… the first ever Calendar PRIZE DRAW! As it was a secret most people only found out about the competition when they got the calendar, as the front cover revealed the competition and showed the rules! Basically throughout the calendar there was a fiendishly hidden 13 letter code, which would spell out a phrase that would be immediately familiar to regular UKTD members. I set a time limit (two or three weeks after I’d sent out the calendars IIRC) and people had that time to try and crack the code in order to be entered into a prize draw for a mystery 'not shit' prize... The front and back cover text had clues hidden in the text about how to crack the code, cryptic references like a 'big clue' and how time was important. The crack about me being a bad Chinese practically gave the game away I thought. It’s incredibly fiendish and I did explain the full solution here

Fan Art: - UKTD Thread 2018 Calendar thread!

Needless to say it was probably too difficult because only 6 people actually worked it out! But 6 people made life easy for me because all I had to do was assign names to numbers and roll a dice…

Yeah, that’s right. The prize was non other than a MISB Encore Sky Lynx! Won by none other than @scubaboy31. Madness. I may have been told off by my wife for giving away such an awesome prize…

Picture contributors for the 2018 Calendar included @PAPY OPTI, myself (the weakest contribution if I’m honest), @incapable hulk, @OptimusTimelord, Scubaboy31, @Maz, @Dreago, @jame5y, @Sixo, @Avon, @Napalm, @kgorman79 and the back cover Dirge photo by Maz.

This year 65 calendars were printed.

 

September 2018 began the biggest overhaul of the calendar so far, but people probably wouldn’t notice anything. This is because I moved from creating the calendar in pixels and made the move to Vectors. This meant that (in theory) all text and line elements would be pin sharp and I could work all images as 600 DPI instead of 300 DPI. It’s just a technical thing, but I was very proud when I’d rebuilt all the elements of the calendar. It was a pretty big job! 2019 also marks a milestone, where I’d opened up picture contributions to not just the UKTD, but the wider TF fandom in general, this was because I was spending some time on Twitter as well.

It was immediately apparent that Shitbot once again was front and centre, with the cover homaging Marvel UK no.113 by the mighty Geoff Senior. As an extra tickle I recreated a Berni Inn Funtime coupon (Berni Inn was a UK chain of restaurants that used to give free comics with kids meals, and no.113 was one of those free comics). The new background pages were based on 1992’s European late G1 (or as some people erroneously refer to as G1.5… bleh) circuit board box theme. This presented a problem where the four different backgrounds would only get 3 pages each… it’s the worlds most stupid problem but it’s always irked me that some themes had 1 Autobot page and 2 Decepticon pages, and other themes had 2 Autobot pages and 1 Decepticon page… Yeah. The very epitome of first world problems.

That year at TFN I had picked up this vintage jigsaw puzzle/3D model of Ultra Magnus. I was so taken with it I decided the bonus page would be a cut out and build your own Shitbot. I set about making the kit you could cut out and build from a single sheet and decided to drag in @scubaboy31 to provide the art that would go on the model and he casually threw down the gauntlet… why not make it transform? Pffft I said. But the seeds were laid and that’s EXACTLY what I did… the bonus page for the 2019 calendar was a fully transformable build your own Shitbot! Scubaboy had also outdone himself with the details and in jokes included on Shitbot, including internal detailing (with a Headmaster meter, 'The Girl Who Loved Powerglide' heart, a pot of Spicy Seafood Cup Noodles) and a reference to his Action Master tech spec… If you recall Shitbot was gifted a part of Vector Sigma, Rectal Sigma but had lost it. But look! It's stuck at the bottom of Shitbot’s foot! The back cover was a both an instruction manual on how to build the Shitbot kit and also a big homage to the 1980’s Minibot card, so much so I made a ‘1985’ Shitbot Tech Spec, whose text was based off the old ‘Marvel Universe’ entry which was done by @IronicHide and Scubaboy31 years before. The Shitbot 'mould' has since been added to with his repaint Hubcrap, a clear plastic version and special 'Lucky Draw' chrome edition. Don't believe me? I have all 4.



The final extra for 2019 was a calendar exclusive FULL size Shitbot card, because for TFN 2018 I had produced full size cards. According to Scubaboy this card came about because he mentioned to me that you wouldn’t use the undersize card from last year with the full size cards (which had become available that year) and what a shame that would be. The flickbook animation was Starsc… uuuh ‘Blitzwing’s’ iconic transformation from the Bumblebee movie... which although was awesome a) infringes upon Paramount and b) kinda felt a bit... lazy. Lastly, I included (an easier version) of the Where’s Dirge code hidden in the calendar. Can you work it out?

Picture contributors for the 2019 Calendar included @Napalm, @Yankee0, @Sixo, @incapable hulk, @Avon, Cybertronwar (from Twitter), @Brum Bot, @RobotoChan, @Maz, Scubaboy31, myself and @kgorman79.

This year 60 calendars were printed.

Hmm, I only just noticed... there's no cover quote! Nor was there a cover quote on the 2018 cover either!











.

 

Which brings us to THIS years calendar! This was an odd one, because of reasons I started this one late, sometime in November IIRC and the whole thing was a massive rush. However, once I’d started the urge to make it as good as possible kicked in and to be honest? I reckon I did a blinder (my he's so modest).

For the cover I again homaged an old Marvel UK cover, with Shitbot replacing Rodimus Prime from Marvel UK no.150, which is only another part of my revisionist history… It also marked the return of the not particularly missed (not even by me) cover quote, with this years from Santiago Jones off Twitter. This year in order to get the background pages numbers make sense (it really bugged me from 2019) I created TWO sets of new backgrounds, 1984’s sunburst and 1991’s Gold box reissue. This meant that for the first time EVER every page has a different background! Cooor. Only took me five years to achieve that. This year I also decided to ask @OptimusTimelord if I could use one of his gifs for the little flickbook part of the calendar. This was because

a) I was so late
b) because I hadn’t actually done any animated Gifs
c) using a gif from a movie the previous year had felt like a cop out
d) OptimusTimelords gifs ARE AMAZING.

This year there a few extra bits, one was a reproduction of my A3 G1 Boxart poster, which itself is a reproduction (KO) of an old vintage 80’s poster. The other extra page was a 3D version of my ‘toot toot motherfucker’ picture which itself was inspired by something @Llama G0d said over on twitter (is it the same guy? I assume it is). I also included a pair of 3D anaglyph glasses so you can actually view that picture in 3D. Seriously, it does work. I also included the now traditional here’s Dirge code again, spelling out a new phrase. Hey, I put the work in 2 years ago, I’m getting my moneys worth! The final extra was a giveaway that I didn’t exactly shout from the rooftops (which is what happens when you’re in a rush) which was a Siege Ratchet (not released in the UK) that I had picked up from Hong Kong. Rather than a hideous code that would have people tearing their hair out I simply ran a draw from everyone who had bought a calendar… and the lucky winner was @simond!

The back cover completes my revisionist History (to date)… because if you look closely at this 1985 catalog poster in the Minibot section who is there but Shitbot and his repaint Hubcrap? Were they around in 1985? I guess so. There are a few other historical edits in there but you have to look really hard to see them…

Even though this calendar was probably done in the shortest amount of time (shorter than the first calendar in fact) with the last submission handed in literally the day before it all went to print, I think it’s actually turned out to be the most… complete package to date. It could be because I'd put more pictures into the dates than before, (for instance Chinese New Year is a swimming Rat) or the fact every background is (finally) different, I dunno. How weird.

This calendar is also the most kid friendly calendar since the 2016 Calendar. Shitbot has featured somewhere in the 2017, 2018 and 2019 calendars and since 2019 my kids now have a calendar of their own... which proudly reads 'SHITBOT SPEAKS OUT' on the cover... uuuh whups. Sorry Mum. So aside from his tiny mention on the back cover there are NO SWEARS in the 2020 calendar... Well, except the 'Toot Toot Mother Fucker' reference in the back page text, but that got dubbed to 'CRUSHER' pre watershed ITV style.

Picture contributors for the 2020 Calendar included @incapable hulk, @Maz, @Imperator, @nice sideburns, @JackKnife, myself, @scubaboy31, @Brooticus, @Napalm, @TigerBlade (making his triumphant return in his first picture since the first calendar!), @Sixo and @kgorman79 (he’s not budging from December is he?)

Sadly this was also the first year to not feature a picture from Robotochan, his departure from the fandom is sorely missed.

This year 45 Calendars were printed, a significant drop on last year. Why? Possible because I’d offended loads of people on that hellsite Twitter earlier in the year, or more likely because the accelerated production schedule of the 2020 calendar meant a lot of people missed notifications about it… whups.

 

Phew!

And that's it, a history of 5 years of my fan art calendar. Remember, these calendars started as an appreciation of the TF fandom in general and are only possible because of the pictures people submit every year, without those contributors there would be no calendar!

All of you who have contributed, take a bow and I hope to see you again in the coming years! Although, I think maybe I'll start the 2021 process a little bit earlier...

 

A lovely retrospective



5 MORE YEARS!

5 MORE YEARS!

 

This is truly epic

 

Exemplary work and a lovely look back over the last 5 years you are an asset to the fandom, here's to another 5 years!

   

 

You already know what i think of your work on these...... IT'S AMAZING!  

Always honoured to be asked to contribute. Even if for the first one it was only a tiny contribution  

 

Great stuff! I missed a lot of this (my own fault for not being a UKTD regular I guess) so it's nice to see a lot of cool pics for the first time. Hope this tradition continues for many years to come!

 

Yeah, we're half a decade in already! And I see you built Shitbot! I do wonder how many people were actually brave (and foolhardy?) enough to spend 2 hours or so making him.

Cheers buddy! Individually they don't feel it, but 5 calendars means 5 years and that length of time doesn't lie. Scary.

Cheers man!

I don't think I actually knew you (properly) or even @Sixo that first year. But now you're stuck with me, muhuhahaha.

I hope so too, and cheers again for letting me use your gif!. If you want that animated slot from now on, it's all yours!

 

Wonderful, just wonderful. It's fantastic to seem them back to back like that, and all the memories!

All the best
Maz

 

thanks kit, appreciate all of hard work of putting these together.

and thanks to all those that helped kit and have their pictures included.

the pictures on here are one of my favourite parts.

here is to another 5 years