Interesting talk from a Hasbro designer, Emiliano Santalucia, from TF Nation (found on allspark.com).
CW Skylynx was designed by hasbro initially but like with Gen Arcee, Hasui redesigned it to look more G1:
The panel then moved on to the Combiner Wars line, for which Emiliano produced a piece of battle scene artwork used by Hasbro when pitching the line internally, showing many characters planned for the line. He noted that he hadn’t been able to show this art at another recent convention appearance, as it included Alpha Trion, who was originally planned for Combiner Wars!
Emiliano did the initial designs for Sky Lynx, which he noted were changed quite significantly by Takara’s Shogo Hasui, and that he subsequently used Hasui’s style as inspiration in many later designs. The original design for Sky Lynx was sleeker and more stylised, compared to the final toy’s more G1-style look, and the Sky Reign torso mode was shown with the toy’s wings spread wide.
Emiliano also worked on the Victorion release. Due to the relatively short turnaround time, work on the figure’s new parts was split between many designers – Emiliano worked on the new heads, Marcelo Matere designed the new chest pieces, and others still worked on the weapons. Of the heads, only Victorion’s changed significantly for the final toy – the original design, with a faceplate and no eye visor has been seen on some IDW comic covers.