Interesting talk from a Hasbro designer, Emiliano Santalucia, from TF Nation (found on allspark.com).
Its been confirmed: Alpha Trion and Galvatron were planned prior to Titans Return (without a headmaster gimmick).
We then turned to the Titans Return line, looking first at Alpha Trion. As noted previously, he was not originally planned for that line, and as such was not originally designed as either a Headmaster or a Triple Changer. Emiliano’s original design showed a robot mode very similar to the final toy, inspired by Cybertron Vector Prime, but equipped with an extra spiked sceptre weapon and a cloak, whilst the lion mode was significantly more sleek and organic, with a Transmetal 2-style cyborg look.
Emiliano also worked on the beast modes for Skullsmasher, Mindwipe and Wolfwire, with Takara then designing robot modes out of them. Wolfwire’s intial design was very close to the final toy, whilst Skullsmasher was originally planned to have his cockpit in his crocodile head before having it moved to his torso due to space limitations. Mindwipe’s design art was most different from the final figure, having a far more realistic bat silhouette, and a more snub-nosed bat head. The final toy’s ‘robot legs to bat wings’ transformation scheme was also absent, with the robot legs forming the bat torso instead.
Next was wave 1 of the single-packed Titan Masters and their drone vehicles/beast. Interestingly, Emiliano noted that these were originally designed as brand-new characters, explaining why their robot modes didn’t appear to be based on anything in particular. Their original head modes had very cool, unusual designs, with features like large cylinders and chunky faceplates, before being replaced with those of existing characters.
Galvatron was another figure Emiliano worked on, and like Alpha Trion, was not designed as a Headmaster. He noted that his earliest sketches were approved very quickly. Interestingly, these early designs sported a cartoon-style ‘crown’ rather than the IDW-style helmet seen recently on test shots.
Next up was Powermaster Optimus Prime, for which Emiliano had to search up pictures of Leader Class Ultra Magnus online to identify the figure’s transformation scheme! The initial concepts were mostly similar to the final toy, but unfortunately new parts to close up the front of Prime’s vehicle trailer didn’t make it onto the figure. Also lost from the original design art were several extra paint applications, including blue fists, detailing on the shins, and extra black and white details on the chest plate’s faux Hi-Q.
Finally for Titans Return, we saw the design art for the Soundwave retool of Leader Class Blaster. Emiliano was specifically asked to give him a modern sound bar alternate mode. Two pieces of tooling that didn’t make it to the final toy were Soundwave’s traditional rifle, and a mounted microphone which would have replaced Blaster’s boombox handle and transformed into Soundwave’s shoulder cannon for robot mode.
Okay, so how do I make a tank to fishing boat out of TR Megatron?
Shaun
"Decepticons! Transform and Rise Up!" 
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