Does anyone have any good advice or tricks on how to draw transformers? I haven’t drawn for awhile and wanted to get back into it after reading MTMTE but man some of the characters just have so many small details… I’ve heard blocking out basic shapes is good (but somewhat difficult for me). Anything is appreciated!  

 

Tracing is a very good way of practicing but if you do tracing you have to let people know that you are tracing and that you are not the original artist of the work. Tracing is really helpful but you have to be careful about how you use it.

 

If you're having trouble drawing basic shapes like cubes, spheres, cylinders etc. I highly recommend looking at Drawabox (Drawabox | A free, exercise based approach to learning the fundamentals of drawing). It's a free drawing course with structured lessons, homework, and critique via their Discord server. You don't need anything fancy, just a pen and printer paper! If you prefer books, the material in Drawabox is derived from a book aptly named How to Draw by Scott Robertson.

Figure drawing is absolutely foundational. If you have access to in person life drawing with a model, go to it! Otherwise, there are many websites and YouTube channels like Proko, Sketchdaily, and Posemaniacs that are good. This will build your understanding of proportion and gesture. For pose invention I recommend Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing From Life. He breaks the human body down into blocky forms. You can appreciate how this pairs well with Drawabox and wanting to draw Transformers!

Finally, for Transformers specifically, use your toys as reference! Being able to pick up, pose, and move around your reference is invaluable! Daniel Warren Johnson uses the Magic Square Optimus 2.0 on the Skybound Transformers comics. Since you said you like MTMTE, do master studies (copies) of panels you like.

Hope this gets you started! I got back into drawing myself back in 2020 and this is exactly what I used to get better.