On the other hand, the Asimos would be less suspicious. Who'd see them coming?!

 

I dunno... I ROBOT did a fairly decent job in the 'bot department.

 

BW CGI robots are much less detailed than Bay Movie CGI robots. I know which I enjoyed more.

More realistic, Less realistic, More detailed, Less detailed, etc.... none of them always equate to the other and none of them ever equates to "better" because "better" is subjective based on what the beholder prefers and what criteria they use. For instance: the BW/Bay comparison, you might shoot back Bay-formers are still more "visually interesting" but in my opinion that still leads to a less entertaining experience. I could even say I find BW models more visually interesting because I can see WTF they're supposed to be and not just an overdetailed pile of parts that just confuses my visual processing.

And all this has nothing to do with the topic of the thread anymore.

 

I have one last question for those who where there at the panel. Out of all the figures revealed, which one are you looking forward to the most? and why?

 

They did, but they found other ways to create visual interest. The older model robots, while distinctly humanioid, were given no human features to make them more distinct from the new Apple inspired robots. The newer robots had semi transperent casings so you could still see their interals at times and the designers used color to create either a friendly or agressive tone.

All that makes it visually interesting.

Geez man, calm down. Yes, all these things are subjective but there are certain elements of design that CAN make GOOD (interesting, new, fresh) design and BAD (boring, old, unoriginal) design.

In what you quoted, I was talking about the difference between the agressive, skeletal looking T-800 and the blocky, friendly but emotionless Asmo. I wasn't even talking about Transformer movie designs vs anything else. Just want Stan Winston did vs a real robot and why it wasn't a blocky design.

Detail is not the only way to be visualy interesting (the goal of all design) and it can be done wrong. Look at the marketing art for movie one. They didn't use lighting effects that much, making a flat looking image that, although it gave us a detailed look at all the robot, made it too busy to determine where things began and ended. In the movies proper, with all the effects done, things became much clearer. Most of the time, you can't see the details, but you get the overall design that the concept artists made (the little details are added in CGI).

The BW models were still visually interesting because the designers worked hard to break up the human silhouette. A big factor of design is to give everything a unique silhouette, allowing you to tell who the character is based just on that. By breaking up the human form the way they did, they allowed for visually interesting characters.

The movie designs did that too. Demolishor and the Arcees. They had very unique designs AND they weren't that busy. You can easily strip away all the details added in and you STILL get a strong, unique design that stays with you. The Twins, being squat, asyemetrical (but symetrical to each other) stood out a great deal from the other tall, slender designs. Devastator, whoes CGI design contained more moving parts than any other, was a design that gave the impression of power, violence and single minded focus.

Look at Wall-E. All the robots in that movie had visually interesting designs as they were all unique, followed a similar design overview and allowed for unique shapes.

I agree this is all subjective, but that doesn't change the fact that (returning to my original point) Asmo, while "real" is borning to look at. You might as well have a guy in cardboard boxes. A design easily overlooked and forgotten.

And I don't know if this has "nothing" to do with the topic of the thread. We are discussing the principals of design and isn't that what the tread is about, design?

 

I'm probably most looking forward to Tracks, Jazz and Scourge. Because they are the "classics" we're getting that I already wanted.

Calm down? Where is there any un-calm manner in my post? Because it's long? It's a fraction of your reply. Because I bolded 3 words? No, that's just emphasis on a couple key points. Text communication on the web is hard to imply and infer emotional content, so please don't make negative personal comments based on what might easily be your misinterpretations.

The title of the thread is Botcon 2010 Hasbro Designers Panel Coverage. As you say, you're talking about the designs of T2 & Asimo. I do not believe Hasbro had anything to do with either, and they certainly didn't talk about them at Botcon 2010.

 

I'm sorry, but your choice of bolded text created the impression that you were, for a lack of a better word, being a snot. "Well, that's your stupid little opinion but MY OPINION, which is obviously much better than yours..." The first thing you see when you look at it is the words "my opinion." Beyond that, its your language. It is condensending and, when combined with your bolding, is angry. *shrugs* Again, I'm sorry, but that's how it comes across. If that isn't your intention, then maybe think more about it. It doesn't matter what you mean if you can't express it right.

And size of the post doesn't relate to the emotion. A two word post can carry as much anger as a 1,000 word one. I didn't think your post was long. I don't even think my post was long. I articulated my opinion but still kept it brief.

And we are talking about what works and doesn't work for robot design work. Just because we aren't immediately discussing things that came up at Botcon doesn't mean its off topic. Now, if the conversation had turned into, say, a discussion on the anatomy of badgers, I'd agree with you. That has nothing to do with the original topic.

If you don't want to be part of the discussion about general robotic design (which does relate back to the orignal topic), talk about something else. Reply to another question, like you did above. Don't reply to a topic you feel is off topic then tell everyone else to stop discussing it. Resteer the conversation.

Your response to me (and this one) is clearly off topic and I hope this is the last one. Your response isn't even in response to the bulk of my post, just the first and last paragraph, so I can't help but wonder if you even read it all.

Now, I made the choice to respond, hoping to explain 1-why I felt your post warrented a calm down and 2-that though the discussion you joined isn't part of the overall thread discussion, it still relates back and you can chose to not be part of it.

 

Tracks? I smell Hasbro and Takara be repainting him red into Road Rage!

 

I was kinda pissed that they didnt show any of this new stuff at TFcon yesterday. All we were shown was stuff we'd known about for months. :S