The Energon Pub

Sabrblade wrote:

Moonshot wrote:Is there a site that has all or a lot of those Sunbow character model sheets u just showed?

Yes. They can be found here. A fan named D.M has gone to great, painstaking lengths of tracking down the correct, finalized character models used by Toei and digitally recreating their official colorings using Toei's color palettes for each model. He has also recreated early, non-final colorings for preliminary models that help to show the evolutionary development of the models and their colorings, from non-final to final.

o.supreme wrote:I may be mistaken, but most of the models seem to come from "The Ark" character design books published by IDW ( Jim Sorenson and Bill Foster). Those were all just B&W sketches however, not sure who went to all the trouble to digitally color them

Many of the models used in the Ark books were early, non-final ones with certain details that differed from the final models. In the years since those books' publishing, many more discoveries have been made:

In the years since The Ark series books were published, multiple model sheet collections and production bibles have surfaced through auction sites, social media and fan archive blogs, revealing that the majority of the models from the original cartoon that Bob Budiansky and Jim Sorenson had in their collective possession at the time of publishing, were not final. The bulk of the season 2 character models (as well as a few others) published in the books were older models that had received several revisions before making it into the cartoon, meaning that some of the details that can be found on these models had either been removed or redesigned afterwards, hence why some of them don't match up with what can be seen on-screen.

Several of the season 3 model sheets that appear in the books—such as the ones for the Predacons, Pipes, Swerve and Sky Lynx—all received entirely new models by Toei, different from what was originally drawn up, with Sky Lynx and the Predacons drawn from angles that are much more stylistic when compared to the standard ¾ angles used in past seasons, and feature large black shadows underneath their rear-view models, which also hadn't been used until this point. Also among the drastic changes in the art style are the "boxier" hand designs used on the Predacons, which would be utilized more frequently in the subsequent Japanese cartoons like The Headmasters, instead of the rounded hands that were more common in Floro Dery's work for seasons 1 and 2.

Also discovered years after the book series was published, were models for The Transformers: The Movie that were either not known about or fully understood at the time of publishing, such as the unique head design that appears alongside Rodimus Prime's models in the books. For years, the fandom assumed the boxy Rodimus model used in the books was the model used in the film and season 3, but it was actually scrapped in favor of the sleeker design used for Hot Rod's final model. Rather than designing an entirely new model sheet for Rodimus that fit the slender aesthetic they wanted, all that was designed was a new head with the animators simply instructed to draw a larger version of Hot Rod's body with Rodimus's head slapped on top. Because of this, no official robot mode model exists for Rodimus, just a head design.

The Junkions Junkyard and Scrapheap were also given entirely new models by Toei for the movie, that had parts matching the other non-Wreck-Gar Junkions, giving them a collective "mix and match"-type design, rather than the two stand-alone designs drawn by Floro Dery. The problem with the Junkion models though, is that the only known trace of the final Toei Junkion models as of 2022, is a small section in the back of the Transformers Generations guidebooks. That being said, Dery's original designs for these two Junkions did still appear in season 3 of the cartoon, due to AKOM animating the two episodes they appeared in.

Munkky wrote:I have Bulkhead now, when he was first announced I didn't like the G1 redesign and would've preferred something closer to Bulkhead's design in the Prime cartoon, but having him in hand, he's OK. It's still Bulkhead, I don't mind the box torso any more, and he looks decent in a few different poses. The vehicle mode is also nice, I was surprised by hw tightly everything compacts and how small it is compared to other Voyagers, but he still looks fine among other vehicles. So overall I'm satisfied, not a bad first toy for a new line.

I've cancelled my Arcee pre-order in case Hasbro Pulse UK pulls the same crap with Deluxe pre-orders that they did with Bulkhead, out of nowhere moving the shipping date up to the point where it becomes too late to change the shipping address. I'll see if I ca pre-order Arcee again after I've moved into my new place. That being said, I may buy fewer toys from Pulse UK going forward, because their courier of choice, Yodel, are absolutely awful, easily the worst courier service I've ever dealt with.

Emerje wrote:

Sentinel_Primal wrote:Honestly, I'd hope that removing the battle damage would have added paint to the cannon to make it the solid color. As is, feels like they ran out of paint budget and are just covering for it by saying it's them listening to fans

I think you might be in the minority, people tend to prefer the clear canon. Though you do bring up a good point, they're going to presumably save a lot of money on this release by removing paint apps. It'd be nice if they put the paint into something else like the missing paint from his belt buckle.

Emerje

Moonshot wrote:On the discussion about RED Soundwave and such; I can easily believe some designer or whomever just Googled G1 Soundwave, saw the incorrectly coloured Sunbow model, and just went with that.

Sabrblade wrote:Even back when Warden & Friends first succeeded Archer & Friends in 2014, they made several "Archive Oops" with their toy releases, such as when they colored Thrilling 30 Jhiaxus orange like his RID'01 toy instead of his proper yellow, red, silver, and green G2 colors, or when the AOE Strafe Evolution 2-pack used packaging art from G1 Technobot Strafe instead of G1 Dinobot Swoop (whom AOE Strafe was supposed to be an updated version of in all but name). These "Google Oops" and "TFWiki Oops" are just the latest versions of that.

Heck, me and several others on TFWiki just recently created an article for this very concept: Circular reporting.

Sentinel_Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Even back when Warden & Friends first succeeded Archer & Friends in 2014, they made several "Archive Oops" with their toy releases, such as when they colored Thrilling 30 Jhiaxus orange like his RID'01 toy instead of his proper yellow, red, silver, and green G2 colors, or when the AOE Strafe Evolution 2-pack used packaging art from G1 Technobot Strafe instead of G1 Dinobot Swoop (whom AOE Strafe was supposed to be an updated version of in all but name). These "Google Oops" and "TFWiki Oops" are just the latest versions of that.

Heck, me and several others on TFWiki just recently created an article for this very concept: Circular reporting.

Is THAT what happened?? Cause that makes a lot more sense than I thought which was they just randomly went "what if he was ORANGE" and made the T30 figure. Well, on the plus side, according to leaks, the new one won't have that issue, but I think it'd be kinda funny if we got a Gen Selects version that was orange

william-james88 wrote:

Sentinel_Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Even back when Warden & Friends first succeeded Archer & Friends in 2014, they made several "Archive Oops" with their toy releases, such as when they colored Thrilling 30 Jhiaxus orange like his RID'01 toy instead of his proper yellow, red, silver, and green G2 colors, or when the AOE Strafe Evolution 2-pack used packaging art from G1 Technobot Strafe instead of G1 Dinobot Swoop (whom AOE Strafe was supposed to be an updated version of in all but name). These "Google Oops" and "TFWiki Oops" are just the latest versions of that.

Heck, me and several others on TFWiki just recently created an article for this very concept: Circular reporting.

Is THAT what happened?? Cause that makes a lot more sense than I thought which was they just randomly went "what if he was ORANGE" and made the T30 figure. Well, on the plus side, according to leaks, the new one won't have that issue, but I think it'd be kinda funny if we got a Gen Selects version that was orange

I thought it was an homage to that toy, combining several Jihaxus elements into one.

Sabrblade wrote:

william-james88 wrote:

Sentinel_Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Even back when Warden & Friends first succeeded Archer & Friends in 2014, they made several "Archive Oops" with their toy releases, such as when they colored Thrilling 30 Jhiaxus orange like his RID'01 toy instead of his proper yellow, red, silver, and green G2 colors, or when the AOE Strafe Evolution 2-pack used packaging art from G1 Technobot Strafe instead of G1 Dinobot Swoop (whom AOE Strafe was supposed to be an updated version of in all but name). These "Google Oops" and "TFWiki Oops" are just the latest versions of that.

Heck, me and several others on TFWiki just recently created an article for this very concept: Circular reporting.

Is THAT what happened?? Cause that makes a lot more sense than I thought which was they just randomly went "what if he was ORANGE" and made the T30 figure. Well, on the plus side, according to leaks, the new one won't have that issue, but I think it'd be kinda funny if we got a Gen Selects version that was orange

I thought it was an homage to that toy, combining several Jihaxus elements into one.

Apparently, they went into their archives, looked up the only toy at the time to ever be named "Jhiaxus", and based his deco on that toy's deco thinking that those were his colors, not knowing the RID'01 toy was just some random name reuse a la many other name reuses from that era.

Nemesis Primal wrote:A TFW user found Bulkhead at a Target in NY, the hunt is on!

Nemesis Primal wrote:hunt is on!

Emerje wrote:My hunt starts with wave 2. Wave 1 is almost always the one that gets overstocked everywhere and most likely to get a good discount on Amazon. Only figure I might buy immediately at full price on sight in a store is Laser Prime.

Emerje

DeathReviews wrote:I guess if you're a fan this would be a dream come true. But to my eye, this core Iguanicus looks... pass worthy.

-Kanrabat- wrote:

DeathReviews wrote:I guess if you're a fan this would be a dream come true. But to my eye, this core Iguanicus looks... pass worthy.

The vehicle is completely daff, but the bot looks bad-ass.
I wonder if the core figure would fit in the G1 pretender shell?

DeathReviews wrote:I guess if you're a fan this would be a dream come true. But to my eye, this core Iguanicus looks... pass worthy.

sol magnus wrote:

DeathReviews wrote:I guess if you're a fan this would be a dream come true. But to my eye, this core Iguanicus looks... pass worthy.

Iguanus.