I thought Wingblade was a green repaint of Cybertron Wingsaber???

I do love this design. Please don't spam it everywhere ad nauseam too.

 

No one really likes the bayverse designs is what I mean

 

Wingblade, Wing Blade. what's really in a name. if it makes people happy I'll edit the comment.

 

Bayformers don't do it for me, too busy.
Organic Beast modes/Beast Wars season 1, I love transmetals, even the beast machines beasts mostly look good but fur on TFs just looks so wrong to me.
Rodimus and Arcee, they don't look like they can transform, they look like people with a few random parts slung on, Rodimus' whole design is a personal hate of mine.
A lot of the cartoon looks really don't do it for me, the over simplified G1 style in the show don't make good toys, on the show with a few exceptions they were passable and I the get needs of simplification for animation but as toys just no.

 

I think he’s asking if you mean Windblade.

I wasn’t intending for it to be Live Action hate. I think the thread is going pretty well at the moment and is mostly well thought out discussion.

 

I'll just be forthcoming and drop the facetiousness.

Her name is Windblade.

 

Wow. yeah.... so... turns out I had gotten the name mixed up for a while now. I guess with the wings and her swords WingBlade got stuck in my head.

 

Not true.

 

Agreed. I don't have an issue with facial hair on characters but it definitely interferes with a very unique facial feature. It's actually part of a larger issue I have with the Cyberverse designs, the fact that all the characters have faces definitely removes some iconic design elements. And if shows like the Mandalorian are anything to go by, having expressive facial designs are not a complete requisite and serve an interesting challenge when masks and coverings are introduced.

Also in general I don't think I've been particularly impressed with Cyberverse's designs or aesthetics. Mainly because none of the evergreen designs are particularly interesting or original looking. While the design process in Animated involved expanding upon a specific vision for each character, such as having Shockwave's design based on a dark hooded, antlered monster hiding in plain sight, whereas Soundwave is given a punk-rock aesthetic with the tron-like vehicle decals and the kamina sunglasses. Cyberverse just takes the evergreen designs (which are more or less just G1 with some minor changes like Shockwave's spider-tank mode) and puts them into an aesthetic where everyone is more or less the same height and build save for a few minor exceptions.

Aside from the Cyberverse designs I'm also not much of a fan of Windblade's design. There are elements to it that I like, like the colour scheme and the face paint, but the helmet design is really too close to human hair to fit in with the rest of the design aesthetic. And that's coming from someone who likes seeing blended and various aesthetics in a single media. Her body design also doesn't look that great imo. Aside from the wings there are no visual jet parts on her, which wouldn't be a bad thing if not for the fact nothing particularly interesting is being done with her aesthetic either. I tried redesigning Windblade to improve her design recently and the best solution I could come up with is making the head less bugeisha and the body more bugeisha. I think her head could either be supplanted with a Seeker like helm, or by giving her a Sunstreaker-styled helmet and maybe a classic chevron.

Also Nightscream. He's not the worst idea for a character like him, but for that show's general aesthetic it didn't translate nearly as well as what I can tell the designer was going for.

 

I like a good deal of them, like Ironhide and Sideswipe, the more monstrous Decepticons, and stuff that's plain weird like that razor-thin bot from ROTF. I finally completed my Studio Series Devastator, and it's kinda my favorite thing right now.

As for the topic at hand, Beast Machines Maximals are an easy target, but as much as I like the show, they've always bothered me. I think a big part of it is that they're relatively simple shapes with patterns "printed" on them for detail. The robot faces creep me out for reasons I have more trouble explaining.

RID15 eyes also creep me out... They always seem to have this angry/murderous/evil look to them, no matter what the rest of the face is doing.

 

Yeah limited amount of people me included likes them designs, some good some bad some whatever, but i never hear anyone talk about the inspiration,ideas alot of those designs had, like your throwing away so many tf generations because of the movies scripts or inaccurate designs... Not everything needs to be perfect or accurate.

 

Did you draw your Windblade design? Sounds interesting.

Uncanny Valley is probably the reason you don’t like the Beast Machines faces. There are some interesting articles on it. It might also be what makes the Prime/RiD15 faces so strange looking.

Also, both of you make some really good points in your explanations.

 

It's not good since I'm not that good at art, but yeah this is what I came up while experimenting with potential design alternatives for her,

 

Oh I forgot I saw this on your art thread before. Yeah I liked that redesign. Your art is pretty good in my opinion. The story was also neat.

 

Barricade in War for Cybertron is so boring. I get that it's just a Prowl retool, but the new face mold is almost offensively bland and generic, with a permanent expression of mild disinterest. Did Barricade really need to look like every G1 character ever?

 

That's NOT Barricade. That is purple Smokescreen.

THIS is Barricade.


THIS is Barricade.


THIS is Barricade.

That THING is not Barricade. These are.

 

Beast Wars and Beast Machines also showed you don't need a full human face to convey emotion. Characters like Tarantulas, Depth Charge, Jetstorm, even the diagnostic drone showed a wide range of expressions, from fear to rage to anger to joy. Yes, most of these are villains, but when Optimus Prime keeps selling to children year after year, I think it's obvious you can do a lot without a full face.

It's kinda strange that the Beast Era remains unrivaled when it comes to CG face animation in Transformers cartoons.

 

That's depressingly true.