Concept Art for Transformers Generations Combiner Wars by Emiliano Santalucia

There's some faction symbols on those flags that I never expected to see again. Though I suppose since this picture is from 2013, it pre-dates the point that I never expected to see them after.

It's an odd effect. The battle is pure 80's guys with their 80's look, but above this throwback, Alpha Trion sits, in his new and vastly different Titans Return body, surrounded by sigils that have come and gone over the course of the franchise. It's like one picture using another, vert different picture as a frame. It's not a bad picture, it's just... a little strange.

What Alpha Bravo is a background charecter and not a part of Superion While Off Road isn't even a part of Menesor. No Rook, No Jet mode Blast Off.
NOOO combiner wars is ruined.

Umm... why is Sky Lynx so menacing?

o.supreme wrote:

Kurona wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Everyone else looks like, well, Dreamwave G1.

Well that's just mean. The characters have correct proportions and there's an actual background

As someone who actually liked DW I take it as a compliment...Oh what could have been...This one drawing alone is better than that awful Machinima series that was released.

I mean, like, Superion, there, looks like he stepped right off the page of his Dreamwave MTMTE profile:

For years I've wanted updated profile books for characters that have not been done, especially for Original Series Japanese Transformers. I know a lot of fans would rather have an updated profile books with personalities more conforming to IDW, but I'd rather get something we haven't seen before than just an update to appease fans of the personalities constructed by IDW.

The MTMTE series done by Dreamwave was a really nice update to what was done by the Marvel 4-issue Transformers Universe series back in 1986. Armada MTMTE was pretty good too, as was The Beast Wars Sourcebook from IDW. I would like to see more Profile/Sourcebook from other series, and the remaining original series characters that never got one.

Kurona wrote:Aw c'mon man, I just got finished with all of Dreamwave's stuff; don't make me look at the artwork again

william-james88 wrote:

Kurona wrote:Aw c'mon man, I just got finished with all of Dreamwave's stuff; don't make me look at the artwork again

I can physically feel my soul trying to tear itself from this mortal plane. Thank god CW Devastator doesn't look like this monstrosity; there's better proportions and sense of art direction in the friggin' G1 Boxart.



The worst part is? That's a joke, but I looked at the picture I just linked again and I think it's actually true. I feel like crawling into my grave 70 years early.

Sabrblade wrote:

o.supreme wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

o.supreme wrote:as was The Beast Wars Sourcebook from IDW.

Including all of its errors, lies, contradictions, and selective bad artwork?

Like I said it was pretty good, not perfect. Besides, I've never read any 3P fiction, so I have no idea what's -what in BW anymore. I haven't read Gathering or Ascending since their original release. I tend to stick to what was in BW the animated series, BWII, and BW Neo -Botcon & club fiction I haven't really read, or even consider.

BotCon and Club fiction is barely a blip on the radar of the Sourcebook's inaccuracies and failings. The Sourcebook deliberately set out to trample all over the source material of BWII and Neo by completely rewriting nearly all of those series' characters from the ground up, willfully ignoring the Japanese characters' cartoon portrayals/personalities and instead making up near-entirely new ones that went against how all those characters originally were. In other words, virtually every single one of the Sourcebook's profile entries on the Japanese BW characters was a lie.

To an extent though that does make sense. Even if we ignore cultural differences in regards to plot and character and how character portrayals have historically varied wildly in different material in Transformers (Cartoon Blaster vs. Marvel Blaster; Headmasters Chromedome vs Rebirth Chromedome), you've got the fact IDW was coming out with their own new Beast Wars comics that followed their own continuity coming out as well as the fact that Japan's G1 continuity by then had grown to be veeery different to Hasbro's. If you're going to include the Japanese-original characters in this context, they're likely going to have to be rewritten to some extent. I think calling it a 'lie' is a bit dramatic when we have much greater examples of characters differing depending on the source material.
And that's even before we get to the fact there are no official dubs or subs for Takara's original BW series. The book's error-ridden and has choices that border on the bizarre, that much is true, but calling new characterisation for imported characters that have to be made to work in a new continuity especially when this franchise has practically made differing characterisation tradition is something I highly disagree with.

It's always frustrated me as well. While I can easily understand dueling origins like Blaster and Ratbat and Fortress Maximus - all of which later re-interpretations try to reconcile - I always hold to the idea of "why use the character and/or name if they're gonna be a completely different character". Armada Blurr, Movie Bonecrusher, TFP Smokescreen; a billion other examples. None of these are necessarily bad characters - tell a lie, no movie character is good - but it just confuses me why they have these particular names attached to them if they're not supposed to be a new version of the character(s) previously called that.
Still, once I get past it, I can finally just look at it from a pure story and character perspective and not care.

Smokescreen should have been red and yellow with a spoiler and called Hot Rod. He is so clearly a Hot Rod how did they miss that


REGARDLESS, Combiner Wars thread! Not the let's-debate-about-Dreamwave-and-sourcebooks-and-characterisation thread! Let's get back on topic before Burn hires a hitman.

Kurona wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

o.supreme wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

o.supreme wrote:as was The Beast Wars Sourcebook from IDW.

Including all of its errors, lies, contradictions, and selective bad artwork?

Like I said it was pretty good, not perfect. Besides, I've never read any 3P fiction, so I have no idea what's -what in BW anymore. I haven't read Gathering or Ascending since their original release. I tend to stick to what was in BW the animated series, BWII, and BW Neo -Botcon & club fiction I haven't really read, or even consider.

BotCon and Club fiction is barely a blip on the radar of the Sourcebook's inaccuracies and failings. The Sourcebook deliberately set out to trample all over the source material of BWII and Neo by completely rewriting nearly all of those series' characters from the ground up, willfully ignoring the Japanese characters' cartoon portrayals/personalities and instead making up near-entirely new ones that went against how all those characters originally were. In other words, virtually every single one of the Sourcebook's profile entries on the Japanese BW characters was a lie.

To an extent though that does make sense. Even if we ignore cultural differences in regards to plot and character and how character portrayals have historically varied wildly in different material in Transformers (Cartoon Blaster vs. Marvel Blaster; Headmasters Chromedome vs Rebirth Chromedome), you've got the fact IDW was coming out with their own new Beast Wars comics that followed their own continuity coming out as well as the fact that Japan's G1 continuity by then had grown to be veeery different to Hasbro's. If you're going to include the Japanese-original characters in this context, they're likely going to have to be rewritten to some extent. I think calling it a 'lie' is a bit dramatic when we have much greater examples of characters differing depending on the source material.
And that's even before we get to the fact there are no official dubs or subs for Takara's original BW series. The book's error-ridden and has choices that border on the bizarre, that much is true, but calling new characterisation for imported characters that have to be made to work in a new continuity especially when this franchise has practically made differing characterisation tradition is something I highly disagree with.

Think of this way. Those books didn't just serve as a representation of the continuity that was created for The Gathering and The Ascending, but also served as a means to introduce all of the characters formally to the average layman who was unfamiliar with all of the characters, both American and Japanese, of the Beast Era. And instead of presenting each of the characters in a fashion that was true and respectful towards their original depictions that had been set in stone and in effect for nearly a decade at the time, they instead made several arbitrary changes to many of the Japanese characters for little good reason at all.

I get that they wanted to tone down the inherent goofiness of the Japanese series to better fit the tone of the American BW cartoon, but there was literally no reason to invert several characters' personalities into being the opposite of who they were (i.e. - making the cowardly Diver brave and fearless, the fiercely loyal Guiledart distrustful and scheming, the dimwitted and humorously bad swordsman Hardhead into an intelligent leader-type and master swordsman, the grumpy psycho loner Mantis into a super happy "friend-to-all" type, or the lighthearted and fun Moon all grim and humorless).