Tim Bradley is a freelance designer, illustrator and author who worked full time for Hasbro in 1998 as well as freelancing for them in 2004. Tim worked on various Hasbro properties (Transformers, Star Wars, Jurassic Park), including Beast Wars, Beast Machines and Transformers Cybertron. He recently agreed answer a few questions regarding not only his work as a toy designer, but also as an illustrator and published author. Click to read our exclusive interview with Tim Bradley
Interesting, especially the design process dynamic between Hasbro and Takara at that time. That guy sure loves dinosaurs.
interesting little read...and he created TM2 jawbreaker, who is one of my favorite molds from BW...so thats cool...and i totally love the BW mutants too...and i liked his all dinosaur TF concept too...love them dinos....
JP4 is going into Production? Dear god. Please say they changed the idea from the one with the Anthro, gun-toting raptors. Also, the dude admits to designing Backstop. Big deal. He designed Leobreaker. Now that was a POS. He also designed the Jurassic Park Chaos effect stuff? This guy kicks ass.
This is fascinating. On the one hand, he seems so down to earth and nerdy in all the best ways. And he's a big dino-dork, which I can totally get behind. On the other hand, he designed all of my least favorite TFs. That list was a who's who of TFs that I hate hate hated. But i can respect his aesthetic. Reading the interview, I get where those designs were coming from. But I still didn't like them as Transformers. Except Poison Bite. That toy rocked. -LB
Sounds like his specialty was designing the beast/dino modes for a lot of the toys, except where explicitly stated. That said, I wouldn't blame him too much in that "LOL HE MADE BACKSTOP!" way. Backstop was a pretty nice looking rhino, regardless of what one thinks of the transformation. Besides, he was a designer on Cybertron/BW10th Megatron, which cancels out at least five mediocre/crappy toys by itself. Hmm, I bet if he has a collection of TF toys, he displays most of them in beast mode.
Heh, on the one hand, the guy created the mutants and some of the most loathed Beast Machines figures ever, but on the other, he's responsible for nearly everything from the Jungle Planet, BM Blackarachnia, Jawbreaker, 10th Megatron and Primal, and the JP Chaos Effect line. Guy gets a thumbs-up in my book! This made me really curious to find out exactly who designed the post-G1 TF molds. This list didn't cover any of my favorites, so the daddy of various Fuzors, Scarem, Wreckloose, and many others continues to remain unknown.
Designing the Beast Mutants is what makes him cool to me. I so wish I had picked the other three along with Poison Bite
So one person designed the alternate mode -then another person designs the robot mode? It seems like a weird way to do it. I don't know that I would admit to working on Animorphs though.
Looking at the list, I loved most of those characters beast modes and hated their bot modes (Jawbreaker especially)
