The Energon Pub

Ive been reading some TF comics, alot of them in fact, for the past several months. I recently got into Ongoing, with art for the first miniseries done by don figueroa. We all know his art looks bad, face-wise for that reason. Pat lee drew the first two Dreamwave G1 miniseries, and towards the second series his art got worse, but it did inspire revoltechs optimus, starscream, megatron and hot rod toys. So, Who is your favorite artist?
Don Figueroa IDW ongoing Prime Art:

Don Figueroa DW ongoing Prime Art:

Pat lee Prime art:

My opinion is while Pat lee can draw good TF's, don blows it out of the water.

Don. Hands down.

I don't blame him for the weird faces, I think he was probably pushed in that direction.

Plus I can't stand Pat Lee's art. Especially the fish tanks he gave Prime's chest.

Don did some awesome job, but the skeleton faces and Wolverine-Hot Rod were weak. Overall, he was still one of the best artists.

Pat Lee: While at first his art seems cool, when somebody figures out where the lines of all shapes that make his transformers take, it quickly becomes a joke:

to be honest, when i first got into tf comics, i bought IDW's reprint of G1 volumes 1 and 2, and i thought lee's art was phenomenal (back in 2006 when i was 9), and then i bought war within volume 1. I didnt like dons art because i thought the colorist made everyones eyes so blotchy, but then i re-read it and oh, its not so bad, he definately draws better than pat lee. And i really started liking dons artwork when i got into DW's ongoing back in 2007. now, THAT was a REAL G1 series, not like the crap they feed us today with ongoing. not even a transformer until page 17 of ongoing #8. Plus, the art was alot better for that series. More G1-ish designs, real faces. I really wish don would draw the same way for ongoing, but at least guido guidi is gonna draw REAL TF's in #9 (i hope to god). Well thats my opinion.

Figueroa, by leaps and bounds. Even his current Ongoing style I actually think is superior to his DW work...mostly. (Then again, a lot of the coloring of DW's books seemed either dark or muddy by comparison, which may have something to do with it, too.)

I don't really have a problem with Movie-detailed faces incorporated into a G1-slanted book, but the issue I have with them here is that they're all identical; they've all got the same face. Even the faces of the actual Movie TFs are all different. If Don's being pushed in this direction, IMO he's not going far enough with it to make it work.

Other than that, Don's humans IMO have also improved dramatically since DW. I just hope that the foreseeable future IDW tries to stay away from any more issues like #8 that seem to focus solely on the humans.

Don Figueroa.

Don's work are great but I have to agree, he might have been pushed editorial wise to make them "Bayformers" style presentations.

His "Thunderwing" mini series though....hands down original awesomeness on it's own right. Even his final MTMTE at DW was also just as awesome (prefer it more in fact)

I believe Don does incredible work and is supremely talented. I understand that he was trying to make something new monumental...to redefine what a Transformer is, I just don't think that it worked, and that he might need to take a step back and look at it again.

I know he probably thinks it works on some levels, and that it challenges him, and the observer to think and look at TFs differently, I just don't think it works.

Pat Lee gets some credit for doing something to Transformers somehow. Oh yeah, he gets the credit for the ULTRA armor for Magnus being removable, right?

I love Don Figueroa, from Macromasters til now. Great stuff.

tigertracks 24 wrote:Pat Lee gets some credit for doing something to Transformers somehow. Oh yeah, he gets the credit for the ULTRA armor for Magnus being removable, right?

Yep, we should thank Pat for bringing Transformers back into comics and this. Such a simple idea yet so cool.

I have to say I like Don's art a little more than Pat Lee's, but both are good artists.

You really also have to be aware of who's doing the colors and inks. Sometimes good pencils can be screwed up by a poor coloring job.

Best TF artist? Rob Ruffolo. He penciled the RID story Ultra Magnus...To The Rescue? in the DW Summer Special, and I personally feel that it's the best drawn.

adamassc wrote:I have to say I like Don's art a little more than Pat Lee's, but both are good artists.

You really also have to be aware of who's doing the colors and inks. Sometimes good pencils can be screwed up by a poor coloring job.

Best TF artist? Rob Ruffolo. He penciled the RID story Ultra Magnus...To The Rescue? in the DW Summer Special, and I personally feel that it's the best drawn.

At this point, I prefer Dan Khanna, Guido Guidi, Nick Roche, and even E.J. Su.

But I believe the thread asks us to pcik between Pat and Don, mostly because each of them has majorly contributed to TFs, and also in some people's opinions, at least minorly set them back at some point.

Chaoslock wrote:Don did some awesome job, but the skeleton faces and Wolverine-Hot Rod were weak. Overall, he was still one of the best artists.

Pat Lee: While at first his art seems cool, when somebody figures out where the lines of all shapes that make his transformers take, it quickly becomes a joke:

Wow, I never realized Pat Lee is the Rob Liefeld of Transformers!

For those who don't get it:

An article on Liefeld's comics.

Midnight_Fox wrote:Wow, I never realized Pat Lee is the Rob Liefeld of Transformers!

For those who don't get it:

An article on Liefeld's comics.

Oh, how I thought Liefeld was the when I was a kid.

Now when I look at it, I realize what a joke his art was, and hate the fact that I tried to copy his style at some point.

Thanks for reminding me of his .

Midnight_Fox wrote:

Chaoslock wrote:Don did some awesome job, but the skeleton faces and Wolverine-Hot Rod were weak. Overall, he was still one of the best artists.

Pat Lee: While at first his art seems cool, when somebody figures out where the lines of all shapes that make his transformers take, it quickly becomes a joke:

Wow, I never realized Pat Lee is the Rob Liefeld of Transformers!

For those who don't get it:

An article on Liefeld's comics.

Considering that Pat Lee got his first big break in comics by doing finsihed peniceled art over Rob Liefeld's layouts on Bloodpool (this was one of Liefeld's Image books), the fact that he can draw worth a damn shouldn't be no big suprise.

Ultra Magnus shedding of the armor..........wasn't that credited to Brad Mick (the dynamic duo underpaid/or never paid scripters)?

I think Rob Liefeld at least pays the people he employs though.

I'll credit Pat Lee with this: his drawing of the G1 cast in a "back of the box" scene opened my eyes to a whole new style of art for TFs. It was that one image that I think brought the idea of G1 TFs back in a new way, and it changed my mind that these characters should always be drawn in a more expressionist way (like Geoff Senior), rather than trying to make them look like physical objects.

HOWEVER, Don's been THE Transformers artist since Macromasters. I may have disliked the moviefying of the faces in the recent IDW series, but that seems to be a line-wide thing, with WFC and a number of upcoming toys all having the same movie-slash-G1 type design sense. And he'll always be the guy that designed Nova Prime and that new Classics styled Menasor.