Definitely what the MPM was based off of. Bee never used those missiles iirc.

 

Come on just give us Megatron concept art already.

 

Ah yes, the stupid chest missles that unfortunately made the MPM even less impressive that it might have been (although paint would have gone a long way- I'm surprised how much the extra paint helped the OSKO).

 

Those chest missiles look really cool, I'm curious why they were left out of the final movie. I also recall hearing that Bumblebee had wrist missiles at one point (you can see the panels on his wrist in the promotional images, but not in the final CG model), and those didn't make it in either...unless he used them really quickly during a battle and I missed it.

 

Maybe these have been seen before. I don't remember it though.

 

Initial Bumblebee character CGI model concepts for the Bumblebee film:

Source:https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xzBk44

 

Oh hell no.

 

As ugly as those designs are, it's important to note that they're super rough concepts (literally done in three days), probably to get a feeling for how he could look. Or it could have even been to help pitch the idea to the studio executives, or something like that. It looks like the artist just crammed Beetle parts onto the Bay CG model (along with some other details, possibly to make him look different). And I don't blame him...he had a short amount of time to work on this. But there's no chance this was ever going to appear on screen.

About a year ago I did some design work for a local museum. They were creating a van outreach program. I wanted to create a mock-up of how the van could look, to help everyone visualize it. I didn't have time (or knowledge) to model an accurate CG van and decorate it, so I pulled stock pictures from Ford's website and photoshopped a logo and a new paint job onto it. It looked kind of shoddy (and not at all convincing as a real van), but it did the job and conveyed what it needed to. This sounds like the Transformers equivalent of that. Just a super rough concept to help everyone start visualizing the project.

I would actually like to see a proper Beetle Bay Bee. There are some fine fan-designs, so it can be done well.

 

The thing to note with concept art is that it is, by definition, merely conceptual. It's brainstorming on paper. People often forget this as we usually see concept art after the final model, so we're looking at it knowing the end point, but when this CGI model (as hideous and terrifying as it is lol) was first cooked up it was literally just in response to the request "make Bay Bumblebee a VW Beetle." They didn't know what that would really look like, and so produced this as a pitch. This concept art was probably crucial in refining that concept into the absolute bean of a boy we ended up getting, even if it largely amounted to a "what not to do" list.

 

That altmode looks very BugBite-inspired.

Looking at the botwork I think they did a very good job, very impressive, clearly very talented. It's just all wrong.

I'm glad Travis didn't settle for this.

 

Yeah, exactly.

Artists and studios tend to show off final/good-looking pieces of concept art. Like, Mandalorian would never show something like this during the end credits. Personally, I'd like to see more rough and janky pieces like this. I like seeing the evolution of stuff from the earliest stages to the final stages. I would like to go into concept art myself, so seeing all the different stages helps me get a feeling for the process.

 

Indeed, and considering that the weird "Beetle Bay Bee" concept character model was done when the studio was still conflicted on wherever or now the Bumblebee movie should be a prequel or a rebooted franchise..... I'm not exactly surprised; it's just a rough initial concept art that serves as more of a "proof of concept" than an actual final character model.

Speaking of these initial concept character models..... I wonder if the initial concept character model for Optimus Prime (In the Bumblebee movie) is kinda like that; Where it's more like Bayverse Optimus Prime but with flat-nose Peterbilt truck kibble instead, and serves as a rough "proof of concept" until further refinement and development to become the more "G1" styled final character model for the actual movie.

If that's the case, maybe that would explain why most of the Energon Igniters toys of Optimus Prime has robot modes that was reminiscent of the Bayverse incarnation, as opposed to the more "G1" styled robot mode in the final film...

 

At one point Optimus was just going to be a hologram, so it's possible they were going to just reuse the Evasion mode CG model from AOE (the rusty truck). The grill here looks similar to that.

 

I'm not surprised if that's the case, and as lazy as that was now with hindsight it does makes some sense.

I can see the studio went "Why bother making a brand new character model for Optimus Prime when he's just gonna show up as a hologram for less than a few minutes, anyway?" before Optimus Prime's role in the Bumblebee movie was retooled to give Optimus more screentime, causing the studio to went back for the drawing boards and further changing Optimus Prime's character model.

With added screen-time, a bigger role more prominently featured in the film (As well as finally decides on the Bumblebee movie been the start of a newly rebooted franchise), having a lazily slapped together robot mode model that's just "Bayverse Optimus but with flat-nose Peterbilt kibble" in the final film just won't cut it anymore.

 

I actually quite like this design, if they had decided to go the prequel route rather than reboot. This Bee would be starkly out of place in the Bee movie but it's a neat design that fits right in with other Bay bots

 

I feel like that design could be cleaned up quite a bit and made into a serviceable Bay Bee alt design. Maybe take the rear fenders that end up awkwardly on the edges of the feet and move them to the shin, replacing the diamond-shaped panels that typically form his legs whilst keeping them somewhere around the foot area. I feel like the design just needs tightening up with a lot of the more jagged, slapdash details tucked in and smoothed out so it's not such a stark contrast between the G1 elements and existing Bayverse body.

Though really it'd still pale in comparison to what we got, which is pretty much perfect. It's actually funny seeing this design as a bridge between what is ostensibly two versions of the same character, but Bumblebee in the solo movie is so distinct compared to his Bayverse version I can't mentally reconcile them. One is a cute, friendly, plucky little dude on big adventures, the other is an arrogant, psychotic maniac who's short-tempered and crude.

 

It would've been lazy anyways to reuse the AOE evasion design even for Bay universe standards. By that timeline, he should've been a mocked up 2007 design with a few Cybertronian parts. Not an earth truck on Cybertron. I'd imagine if they were going to reuse that design too they'd have to re-texture him from the ground up for his blue red color palette. Same could go for cleaning him up, as in getting rid of all the rusty parts. Let's not forget that the Energon Igniters also had a Blitzwing that supported a ROTF Megatron body and a Barricade that didn't appear at all in the film. So they could've just been aiming for a more BB esk streamlined style for that particular toyline.

 

A few weeks ago my hard-drive crashed, and I lost a fair amount of cool Transformers concept art. While re-downloading a bunch of Bumblebee art, I noticed something weird...there are almost no pieces of concept art for Bee's main Beetle design, whereas there are tons for the Jeep body. Have any of the artists ever given a reason for this? Are they not allowed to show the Beetle art for some reason? Surely there should be tons of artwork of that, considering that was his main design...

 

I wonder if Mark Yang is the artist who designed him as he is the one who designed the final iteration of Prime's design and hasn't released any art yet. It still mentions "coming soon" on his site.

 

Huh, that very well could be the case. I wonder if sending him an email and reminding him of that would do any good? Might give that a try myself...