Twoducks

I finally catch up to episode 17. I'm really liking this series and the second arc looks very promising.

Good news. And the better news is that the VF-0D will follow soon after that (I hope).

Same here. Those pics look great. Yamato only needs to add dark pink and yellow tampos.

Same here Wish there were more hand drawn animation production today with the same level The Castle of Cagliostro had. When CGI started I went "wow", now it's just "meh" and good 2D animation is "OMFG!!!".

I really like CM's take on the Legioss and specially the Tread. I *might* get a Toynami/Aoshima Legioss some day but their Tread so far falls short compared to the CM on looks (IMO of course)..

Your point? There were other simpler designs options available. My point? Other designs would look close; add in the "alien looking things" aspect the movie wanted to push and you get a bayformer. Does the alternator/pretender/whatever aesthetic look "alien"? Nope. At most they look like what "aliens" looked in 20 year old cartoons (now those designs are familiar). Were they going for a clearly "alien looking things" for the movie? Yep. Easiest way to make familiar square designs look alien: sharp and jagged lines. Recognizable and alien at the same time. You make it sound like it was a challenge. Picking out square/simple robots from a wallpaper made by comic book professionals faster than a photoshoped car wreck made on purpose isn’t really something to boast about. Talk about “missing the point”, as you say. If you group a bunch of figures together you get a “WTF?” first impression until your head makes something familiar out of them. It may take milliseconds or one second, two or three, but the fact is that brains can’t process so many different things individually at once. That’s my point. Complex shapes that are familiar will be recognized the same way as simpler designs are. Our brain will remember and simplify the distinct characteristics they have, thus making familiar=simple. The more familiar the bay designs become over time the easier it’ll be to eye them out. That is my second point. Do you recognize the bayformers made out to look on purpose like a car wreck? Yes, you just said it. Would you be able to do so two years ago, when no one was familiar with the designs? Since you are familiar with robotic/sci-fi designs: eventually yes… but it would take a LOT more effort than it does now. Show the G1 drawings to someone who doesn’t care a rat’s ass about robots or similar geeky stuff like we do. Can they pick out the individual robots as fast as you? Nope, because they aren’t familiarized with them as much as you. They’ll eventually pick them out because they are familiar with human shapes (what the TF resemble even with all their square lines). Since the movie isn’t a constant barrage of images made on purpose to look like car wreck clutter but a slow progression until the final battle, the brain doesn’t have a meltdown; it slowly gets familiarized with the shapes. Bay’s camera does the meltdown (the same way über familiar humans will look wonky in “Bay action time”).

And yet the more practical designs fall out of grace to overcomplicated stuff. Just look at architectural designs. They keep moving from symmetrical lines to asymmetrical complications and back again. The current fad or tendency or “artsy take” influences how we perceive. If we are used to complex stuff then complex stuff seems normal. An industrial engineer will have fewer problems discerning bayformer designs than someone that only makes pizzas. Actually, yes. It would be a waste of time typing all those numbers but if they are constantly needed, then people would remember more digits. They would be exercising their memory and thus would remember more digits the same way remembering ten digits makes remembering less than ten numbers easier. Then why can I easily pick out all the characters from the photoshop even with all the manipulation? Easy: because I’m familiar with the designs. As simple as the lines are, if you group a bunch on different stuff together you will fist see them as a whole because that's how human perception works (that's why we can see the G1 tunes in the fist place, because we group the little 2D individual lines together in our heads). Movies and tv are just tricks of perception. Just some google and greytones and you get: Do you perceive all the individual TF as individual characters AT ONCE? No, right? You pick them out one by one after your brain processes the information the same way I do when I see the bayformer clutter (and I don’t need a clear image in my head of every screw and bolt to recognize them). The fist you’ll see are Megs and Prime because they are bigger and their shapes are more centred. And the time that it takes to make out a familiar complicated bayformer design and a familiar normal tf design is the same or just milliseconds apart. Yes I know, that's way a point out that if you make believable the alternator toys you get something close to bay's stuff. My point is that both designs aren’t so far apart.

Today’s art and design fundamentals did not appeal to broad numbers of people when they were fist created for the specific reason that they were new. New means different and most people don't like changes at first. Art history is full of this (when someone did something new or different, acceptance wasn’t always there at first). The theatres are packed and the biggest complaints are about Bay wonky camera, so the designs aren’t being rejected. I'm sure that the designs will look more familiar/clear/whatever over time. If the best prove that the designs aren't recognizable enough is just a crappy photoshop made on purpose to look like clutter, then I'm sure they do the job just fine. If I photoshop a bunch of G1 characters together in a cluttery way and show them to someone who hasn't seen a boxy robot in his life, he will find them just as much a car wreck and unclear. Alternator designs look good... for 6" toys and cute stop motion videos: Anything bigger than that would look like a giant cosplayer or something from Power Rangers. You take the alternators, break up the car parts into smaller elements that can sit closer to the body (thus more freedom of movement), use some sharp and jagged lines to make them more uncommon looking (read “alien”) and you get the bayformers. So really, they are not that far away. On haters: The whiny hater fanboys will have to grow up or choke on their hate: the movie is raking in the dough with a lot of happy movie goers (who don't get their panties on a knot over a crappy old cartoon), so we'll see more “bayformers”. Moreover, since Hollywood likes to copy what sells, "car wreck robot designs" will be popping up in future big robot movies like leather wearing super heroes did before that. The childhood raping has just begun. I say rape them good.

Awesome!! Someday I'll start mine... someday...

And just you wait until you get further down the road. You’re in for some BIG ass battles (and some gruesome sights) Hell yeah!

I really liked the designs and I knew that seeing them transform would be worth the ticket. In story terms I was expecting something at least better than the kiddy G1 (not very difficult, I know). What I got was what I was expecting and MORE. The CG was great, really great. Some scenes were too chaotic but I was actually expecting less screen time for the bots. Frenzy is my favourite! All the humans dancing around didn’t make the movie a fleshy snore fest; they actually made me enjoy the movie more (and so many shots from human perspective really helped make the transformers come off as huge creatures that really need a disguise to go unnoticed). And the best surprise was that the movie was funny; even with some hug plot wholes and a simple story (“they are bad and we are good”), the movie was very enjoyable to watch. As epic as it was (it could still be far more epic though), the jokes where well placed and didn’t retract much from the seriousness of some of the events ( ); no need for constant emo crap like in Spiderman 3 (I find that the fatal flaw in all the overdramatic movie franchise is the lack of wise cracks from Spidey from time to time like in the comic). For me, the fact that it takes place in the real world and in the present makes it more enjoyable than 300 or Pirates. Seeing giant robots turning into stuff was always one of my dreams and this movie delivered them. I’ll probably see it again in a week or two in english; The spanish dub, while at least not making them sound like pokemon, had very similar voices for all the autobots.

What's my cat doing in your house!

"kiddy 8-12 year old target audience that has grown watching similar style shows on Saturday mornings that are full of commercials designed to make them want to buy the products of companies that pay good money to be in a show that kids watch while adults sleep happily" weed.

Awesome Strike you have there!

There was a pic of it with the legs extended in one page of that thread. This thing will be very cheap, right? Because at first I though it was a bootleg Classics SS The moulded red parts would look less cheap if they were painted.

Looks like the first link wont load up all the parts. So here it is in youtube instead: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 My favourite one was also the JarJar one

http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=...113259bc3e6001d

Hey, this time the truck WILL be a monkey! I raped my own childhood when I rewatched most of what I liked as a kid (TF included). Whatever they do with their license can't top that

Don't think this deserves a new thread so I'll post it here (maybe SW geeks will get a kick out of these ): Steampunk Star Wars Desktops http://ericpoulton.blogspot.com/2007/03/st...s-desktops.html

Another Nora scheme lover here. The only thing that would turn me off is the yellow lines being all stickers (hope this isn't the case and they tampoo as much as posible).

Think they'll add a new race? It would be the easiest way to make SC2 different from SC1. The zerg animations look great. They now look like real swarms.

Delicious eye candy. The only "secret" left now is non-protoform Megatron (or did that get canned?) Careful there, with posts like these you’ll end up drowning on your own venom one of these days.

Well I'm vastly more interested in seeing those designs move and transform than a bunch of boxy stuff an amateur 3D animator could pull off.

... Wow... I want one NOW

THS 02 Convoy. Best Prime IMO: More posable than the MP and has a lot more accesories. Truck mode is a bit lacking but the toy is soooo small it looks cute (and with the traler you hardly notice). http://s9.invisionfree.com/Geewun_Redux/in...7&st=0&