The Energon Pub

In regard to your art for Transformers, your first experience with the brand was around the time of “Super God Masterforce,” wasn’t it? I heard that you also provided the box art for the Mega Pretenders.
Yoshioka: I did do the line art for the Mega Pretenders. As for Masterforce itself, I didn’t have a lot to do with it. I just drew Thunderwing and Crossblades for release overseas. I think I did several rough sketches of Ginrai for a catalog. I also remember redrawing part of the instructions for Lightfoot, or something. (Laughter)
I’m not sure whether it ended up being put into use. I seem to recall that it didn’t.

When the series shifted to “Victory,” did your work continue to focus on art for the foreign market?
Yoshioka: I did a little bit of work for Victory. The first thing I drew for it was the Pretender shells of Dinoforce. I also built the diorama for the photo on Star Saber’s first box. That was the one they stopped production on right away.

So you built actual, three-dimensional dioramas?
Yoshioka: I made a lot of dioramas for package photos. For Star Saber’s, we cut acryl masking tape and shined light on it from below.

Hidetsugu Yoshioka wrote:As for Masterforce itself, I didn’t have a lot to do with it.

Hidetsugu Yoshioka wrote:I did a little bit of work for Victory.

From Twitter: Are there any stories or scenes from the Marvel comics that you’re fond of?
Yoshioka: Rather than any specific scenes, I liked how they’d lump guys like Bludgeon, Octopunch, and Stranglehold together, and make you wonder what they could possibly have in common. (Laughter)

From Facebook: “Would you ever consider working on Transformers comics for the Western market, such as titles published by IDW? I know we’d love to see your work published on our shores!”
…As you can see from this question, you do have a lot of global fans. When we announced this interview, we got a lot of people in foreign countries saying “I really want to ask Yoshioka-sensei a question!” or “I’m dying to get one of his illustrations!”
Yoshioka: Oh, I’d be honored. I don’t know how we’d communicate, though. (Laughter)

Was there something behind the story of Megatron’s friend falling to the humans?

Yoshioka: Nothing in particular. Just an ally who’d been killed.

So, pretty much a “hi then die” character, as we often saw in the comics.

Yoshioka: Yeah, that’s about it. Even if we had made one of the preexisting Decepticons die there, I doubt anyone would have felt too sad about it…

Really? I feel like that could have been very sad. Imagine if Ravage had died, or something.

Yoshioka: To me, that’s just the sort of characters the Decepticons are. They’re a band of thugs and scoundrels. (Laughter) In that sense, they’re the more human of the factions.

In comparison, Optimus Prime is almost too perfect. He’s kind of superior to humans.

Yoshioka: I didn’t really feel that way about him, personally. I view Optimus as a philanthropist. But people have different images of the character, and end up holding different opinions on him. When I’m drawing for fun, I never draw Optimus. It was the same way when I was doing the art for “Beast Wars” in TV Magazine. On my own, I’d only be drawing Dinobot. (Laughter)

Was there a reason you took a liking to Dinobot?

Yoshioka: He’s easy to draw. (Laughter) Easy to depict in poses and action scenes.