Seibertron.com Energon Pub Forums

Just wondering - almost all official toys have a huge amount of surface detail on them, and of course there's a lot of artistic input into how everything which isn't a structural necessity will look. Does anyone know if this is something that the Hasbro/Tomy designers have specific people for, or do the structural/transformation designers also handle all the fine detail work for a given design?

In the fan community, too, and particularly with OC-character artists and kitbashers - are there some people with specialties in that particular area? Or is it just considered one of any number of artistic skills which most artists would pick up? (And OK, I realize kitbashers often tend to use pre-greebled parts, but do some of them create their own?)

I suppose, if nothing else, I'm looking for ideas on how to go from a detail-free design (flat surfaces) to a set of details which suits a particular character. Is it just a case of looking up existing stuff conceptually suited to the character and then picking parts and ideas off there? For someone who doesn't have those art-maps as instinct or subconsciously churning away, what's the best way to explain or teach it?

Very interesting set of questions. I know that HasTak starts out their designs flat-surfaced for their prototypes and such at first, and then in later prototypes and versions of the model they add more detailing and the colors. Though, I'm not an expert on how HasTak do it, but I know from experience how I prefer to do it, and what I look for in figures.

Detailing on a specific figure being designed really depends on what theme/role/alt mode the character might have. If it's a character with a tank sort of mode for example, lots of hatches and storage areas are things I generally add. And things like planes, jets, and other flying vehicles, I generally prefer smoother designs of the armor, as well as more streamlined details over bulky ones.

Now as far as details that fit the character, that is an interesting observation for sure. I find that characters who are meant to be tougher or scarier generally benefit from more lines and technical detail. Things such as longer necks with more wiry details work well on weaker or creepier characters, while more tubes and pistons look very nice on bulkier and more tanky characters. And with smaller characters, I find that less is better when it comes to detail. In my mind, larger characters look even larger if they have much more panel and technical detail than smaller characters.

Those are just a few of my thoughts. Hope it was at least a little interesting.

Absolutely. It's that leap between flat surfaces and "what should I put here" that gets me. Even with ideas for specific parts - hatches, pipes etc - there a lot of detail which is not anything in particular but has a lot of geometrical components - circles and cylinders, lines parallel to edges, random squares and triangles, protruding bits of geometry, beveling, etc.

Even in larger components; look at the Optimal Optimus toy from Beast Wars, for instance. It has two enormous flat cylinders in the robot shoulders which are not specifically part of any mode; they're just there to look cool. Or more decorative; the more recent Titans Return Powermaster Prime has a giant light gray chest piece which doesn't have any utility; again, it's just there to look awesome and interesting.

Or something like Fortress Maximus - in almost all his incarnations, he has one chest-half sticking up higher than the other. There's no real reason he couldn't have been symmetric, but someone made the choice to design two different parts which transform two different ways and look fairly different, too.

I guess I'm just interested in what kinds of mindsets and processes are used to come up with those kinds of ideas. I can design underlying transformations all day long, but I get stuck when it comes to making the various modes look like anything other than low-poly models unless they use a pre-existing altmode - and even then, the robot parts still look like they were made out of cardboard boxes and tubes.

Surface work is an art unto itself. I have designed some Transformers in the past, but the only one so far that has been completed has been my Rosanna. In that toy, she turns into an early 2000s style MP3 player, so I found that adding a lot of grippy rubber-looking parts to it fit the era nicely without adding too much obtrusive detail to the robot mode.

Also, another thing I learned while designing her was using previously established robot detail to my advantage for the alt mode design. Best example for this was using the details on the front crotch panel as pause/play, rewind, and fast forward buttons in her alt mode. After using those as buttons, the rest of the design was influenced by those details, so I ended up making it looking like an older style MP3 player.

Using existing references is certainly a great way to find some starting points. I was thinking about when you have altmodes which aren't anything Earth-based (or similar). Is it just a matter of looking at existing detailing on Cybertronian modes, or other spaceship/'futuristic' toys, or are there sort of standard types of details which work for most things?

I'll admit that I'm definitely better with some kind of framework or starting point to go on, rather than having to make up what is, as you say, effectively chunks of art from scratch.

If you're gonna add detail to an existing part I can think of a few things you'll need.

1: A butt-tonne (technical measurement) of scrap toy and model parts. Obviously the parts in question depend on what you're making, but case in point, the people behind Star Wars used parts from old Airfix kits and their sprues to detail up the spaceship props. Airfix/scale model stuff is especially nifty if you're doing more realistic mech details as, well, they're vehicle parts. So if you're adding engine styled detailing to a figure, try scrounging some bits of engine/exhaust from some aircraft kits. Likewise, Gundam/Japanese mecha model parts are really useful for detail work, especially the generic detail parts that Bandai and Kotobukiya make (including booster nozzles, radomes etc).

2: Scratchbuilding materials. Wire, guitar wire, brass/copper/aluminium rod, plastic tubing and styrene sheet (also known as plasticard) are essential for any serious amount of detail work. You'll need a menagerie of tools to work with them of course, but mostly fairly basic stuff (rulers, marked cutting mats, scalpels and modelling saws etc).

3: A panel line scriber. If you want to add panel lines on flat detail, this is ESSENTIAL. It's tricky to use and requires practice (I still suck at it) but if you want to do straight, precise lines to detail up existing pieces you NEED one.

There's probably countless other stuff as well but those are what I consider the basics of mech detail.

Hope that helps!

Geminii wrote:Using existing references is certainly a great way to find some starting points. I was thinking about when you have altmodes which aren't anything Earth-based (or similar). Is it just a matter of looking at existing detailing on Cybertronian modes, or other spaceship/'futuristic' toys, or are there sort of standard types of details which work for most things?

I'll admit that I'm definitely better with some kind of framework or starting point to go on, rather than having to make up what is, as you say, effectively chunks of art from scratch.

If it's an alt mode that is not earthen in origin, it all really depends on how you want it to look in character. And taking inspiration from many sources really helps. If you want to have an old and scary sort of looking spaceship or something, sometimes it's good to look at alien spaceship designs others have made or even look at unrelated things like pirate ships to get some stylistic inspiration. Or even look at earth vehicles to draw inspiration from in detail and shape even if the alt mode is totally different in functionality.

For robot mode details, sometimes it's good to look at historical designs of armor or uniforms to get a feel of how the design should be shaped. Sometimes you might start with an alt mode and build the robot design off of the parts present, or even design the robot first and figure out how an alt mode might look, and then maybe modify the robot mode accordingly.