so I was browsing that old Floro Dery blog that has some of his Transformers concept art a few things I was wondering about, and perhaps you could help me.
COMICS and ILLUSTRATIONS according to FLORO DERY

*Some of the images seem to be modern "cover versions" of his older concept ideas.
Is there any verified dates for any of the TF concept art he has on his blog (and I will post some here too for ref), or even any written record of any kind of his movie ideas, designs and concepts.

*Cybertron in the image below turns into a robot "Univorsum" - any idea when Dery first came up with this idea, I would assume as part of the ideas for the TF animated movie, putting the idea before the Cybertron cartoon with Primus turning into a planet (also Furman had the idea, so who borrowed from who???)

Also, I would love a toy based on this planet-former to accompany Primus and Unicron, it looks way better than the lame Terran Planet-Former they did in that G.I. Joe / TF Crossover Comic.





*The Autobot City concept design for the TF movie calls it "Fortress Maximus" but is not connected to the toy we all know, or the later Headmasters cartoon character.

So who came up with the name?
Floro Dery?
The Max toy designer?
Denny 'O Neil (Jim Shooter remarked on his blog that Denny contributed some of the roman-sounding names to TF)?
Budiansky?
Someone else?
The writers of the TF animated movie script? (Dery's pic mentions not liking the look in the script of Autobot City)

 

I very much doubt Furman borrowed from Dery as far as Primus (or anything, really) goes. There was so little contact between the Marvel UK team and even Marvel US or Hasbro at the time, much less anyone affiliated with Sunbow. Thus, the competing origin mythologies. Other than the original bible -- and I'm not sure they even had complete access to that -- they seemed to have a pretty free hand and created stuff blind.

 

Recommended reading:
Floro Dery - Transformers Wiki

 

In regard to "Fortress Maximus," that was a name Hasbro had in reserve for a while before it finally got used on the Headmasters character. It was originally going to be applied to Omega Supreme, then to Metroplex/Autobot City (and is used in the Marvel comic adaptation of the film), so it would have been conceived quite early, probably by Budiansky or someone else at Hasbro.

 

This is the first time I've ever seen this "Univorsum". Got to say it's a really cool looking design. I don't believe that's meant to be Cybertron though. Based on Floro Dery's description, it sounds more like an early concept for Unicron: "He derives his power from an enormous black hole in his body, and through an opening he devours planets, stars and other galaxies". Dery did design a robot mode for Cybertron, but it wasn't going to be Primus. In an early script for the movie, Optimus Prime was supposed to merge with Cybertron in order to battle Unicron. Furman likely just came up with a similar idea to give Cybertron a robot mode, and came up with the concept of Primus on his own.

 

Perhaps so. I mixed up that image with this one here which I meant to upload.



Title of image file from Floro's blog is "cybertron and its robot mode"

Unvorsum does look like a Unicron concept in theme and the more rounded flowing look to him.

Uni, Latin for "one, a single"
Versum, Latin - "turned in the direction of, towards"
closest to"cron" from Unicron in Latin is Creo
Creo "to bring forth, produce, make, create, beget, give origin to"

So Unvorsum + Unicron is a single force, being and/or origin that has a direction or purpose.
To go one step further taking the word "origin" becomes "ori" and "aurum" associated with "Gold" and "the Mouth"

-
A single force or origin that is turned in a direction with a mouth who is gold -
My words there, putting the bits together, sounds familiar right.....

In the ancient world, Gold was associated with many things, often used to make statues of various Gods/Goddesses etc. And while gold has various colors or shades depending on its make up, it is also very heavy, which again reminds me of Unicron, he should probably go on a diet, he is a bit of a glutton.
**

Another image that is interesting to see next to this cybertron planet-former is this image called Unvorsum Imperial Guard



That first image (shown again here below) does have that circle in his belly, suggesting Unicron's mouth in planet eating mode. He also has horn/devil/goat like shapes on his head.
In the below image he is swirling and flowing with soft edgess and claws, he looks more beastial than robot, showing his influence as a literal Devil.

It's also interesting that if you compare this Unvorsum pic with the Cybertron planet former, one has an innie bellie button (unicron, likely his mouth in planet mode) and one has an "outie" suggesting again a duality of complementary nature of two different forces or opposites. The cybertron bot is all hard and mechanical, while Uncorsum looks ferocious but softer and more organic looking - like a wild animal.

The final Unicron we got in the movie does look like a blending of the contrasting elements in the designs. But man I would like to know more from Dery's own words.

"Unvorsum
The Universal Galactic Robot"



So whatever Dery's intentions and various concept ideas and tangents were along the way to Unicron, he did make a transforming cybertrom concept which is pretty awesome in my book, again I would love a toy to go with the others.





It is also interesting to note that Unicron got his own mini-con in the form of a moon in the above image. I'm guessing the comical face is a gag, but also a point of reference/memory that if it had been developed further would have had a diff final design etc.



If we look at these two images (above) next to each other, the transforming cybertron is right next to autobot city (presumably on earth) and hangs in the air un-naturally close and in a threatening way (if an actual planet or moon got that close it would cause global catastrophes even if it didn't transform)

In the image on the right, we can see the more familiar Unicron attacking the Decepticon Hall of Heroes, again in a position where is close, and clearly a threat.
So it does look like the various concepts eventually became Unicron to my eyes, and that the cybertron being the robot/threat/planetformer was scrapped and unicron became this unknown exterior threat, rather then the interior threat of the home planet of the TF transforming and consuming things. I guess all TFs on cyberton would be dead / floating off into space when it transformed, so that might have been a plot point to cause trouble.

I've never watched the Cybertron cartoon, how did they handle that when Primus transformed? Did everybody stay indoors or get off planet Cybertron?
I watched some of those youtube videos, but the limited expressionless animation of them staring at nothing does my head in.

I wonder how the movie might have gone (not in the script I know so would not have happened) but man WHAT IF... the second half of the movie had two planet-formers battling it out, the autobots and decepticons temporarily teaming up with Cybertron itself to defeat the evil Unicron? I'd watch that any day.
More interesting that the the anti-climax of driving out of Unicron's eye, as great as that was visually.

PHEW!
Enough of my speculative ill-informed rambling, now let's sit back, relax, have a nice glass of Turnip Juice as the sun goes down..........wait that's not a sun, and that's NOT a moon..

Can you please link to anywhere that may have those script references you mention?
I've never heard about the bit with Prime merging with Cyberton.
I did not mean to imply that Dery had any relation to Primus, I've read all of Furmans' stories, and his notes about his Primus stories and ideas.
Other than both being planet-formers, Primus and Dery's cyber-planet-former are totally different ideas and designs, themes etc. Plus Furman made Primus a non-physical being later, then a rock/mineral/meteor or whatever that trapped his sentience, that later became primus/cybertron/vector sigma, and then the later incorporation of matrix elements (post movie) which at first had nothing to do with Vector Sigma or Cybertron itself.

I didn't mean to suggest that, just thinking out loud.
Unvorsum, Cyber-Dery-former and Primus are clearly diff characters/concepts.

"MOST OF THE INFORMATIONS POSTED HERE ARE JUST TRASH"

Thanks, I have read the very (strangely short) limited info on TF wiki and Wikipedia and the weird stuff from interviews where he goes all "Bob Kane" and claims to have invented everything ever.

None of it really addresses anything I was asking specifically in this thread, which is why I started it, hoping to find others who know far more than I do.
Thanks for suggesting it, I use TFwiki all the time and it is awesome.  

Thanks, that is interesting. That puts it more likely down to Budiansky (not know for using roman names) and Denny O Neil (the Batman writer who has a fetish using roman words/names) However, does not rule out anyone at Hasbro (im sure they were real concerned about toy names rather than money....LOL).
to be fair, "fortress" is a very common word, and something you could easily use for say TF, G.I, Joe, Mask, He-Man etc, and "Maximus" is again a pretty simple/common thing to tack on the end of it.
So it could have come from anyone, but it would be nice to know.

 

Those are some beautiful designs.

 

Like you say, so many of these images appear to be recently-drawn pieces rather than actual archival artworks, which, when added to Dery's hyperbolic claims, makes it hard to genuinely know what concepts actually originated back in the day and/or had any direct relation to the movie and its various drafts, versus what he created recently.

 

It was mentioned in an interview with Flint Dille... I don't remember exactly, but I believe in the podcast he did with Moonbase2.

They remained on the planet at first (both indoors and out as recall), but eventually they thought the planet was starting to break up, so they evacuated. That's when they realized the planet was actually transforming.

 

Yeah, that is why (hopefully) I want to find out whatever info is out there regarding and dates of his original TF movie ideas, and it would great to find any dates for these images, they were auctioned for sale, so that might be a clue there, but only dates back to the sale of the images, not when they were created. I was hoping maybe someone who already knows might post here, but guess not.

Yeah, he does mention these images are like redos remasters of earlier ideas, but I doubt he would invent a whole other planet bot just for the fuck of it. Then again, if the rumors about him are true, it might be exactly the sort of thing he would do. But Unicron still came way before primus any other planet-former any way you look at it.
I am surprised there is not a bit more info the TFwiki, there is two short paragraphs, then more total text about rumors and stuff that most people don't care about (rather than a quick laugh) than actually relevant info.

EDIT: Okay, over on this page at TFwiki it mentions that earlier move script that had two planetformer brother setting up for a potential fight.
so it would seem that Dery'c concepts were for two diff planetformer character (from the earlier script), but as it changed my guess is recycled the stuff he wanted from both characters into one character when it became just Unicron vs Everybody.
The Secret of Cybertron - Transformers Wiki

Now I gotta go look up ant versions of the script publicly available for reading....

 

Moving to TF Comic forum, perhaps readers there have more info, otherwise, this could be all you'll find here.

 

Well I hoped they would, it was either get off planet or shell out some mad magnetic moon boots money for everybody so they didn't comically float off into space. That scenario (and the floating away one) should really be in some internet fan parody flash video.
Thanks very much for the link, I'll listen to that podcast today.

And thanks to everyone so far for your comments!

Fair enough, but you do know this is NOT a thread about TF comics, but concept art for the 86 movie right?

 

It's extremely unlikely that anything Dery did was influenced by "The Secret of Cybertron," since by all accounts that was thrown together in a week, turned in, and immediately binned by Tom Griffin and Joe Bacal. It was not so much a legitimate "draft" of the film but an alternate story invented by Dille and Jay Bacal; the finished film is, on the other hand, very much the same story as Ron Friedman's original draft, just heavily reworked.

 

No one said it was a draft of the script of what became the finished movie, but that doesn't make it any less legitimate. It was still an early script intended for the movie. Doesn't matter that it was immediately binned. But the reason I brought it up was to point out there had been a couple ideas to transform Cybertron itself into a robot mode at the time, albeit not Primus as that idea originated with Furman.

 

I just listened to that podcast today (linked in earlier post on this page) that confirmed that some version of the story (written down or not) had two planetformers in the film, and bit about the matrix itself being the thing that triggers the transformation of Cyberton, but I assume that Chris already knew that, seeing as how he was on the podcast with Tom Dille.