G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy)

Friday, November 15th, 2013 5:47AM CST

Categories: Cartoon News, People News, Collectables
Posted by: Va'al Views: 71,767

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Earlier this week, Seibertron.com user Cyberpath posted a piece of unused concept art by Floro Dey in the Energon Pub forums. It got some attention and good comments, and inspired others to track down more of Dey's art for his vision of the G1 universe. Now, Seibertron user sabrblade has gone and compiled an almost comprehensive list of all the available artwork out there, from his blog and his Etsy "FDartstudio" account. The concepts span across seasons 2 and 3 and the 1986 movie of the G1 cartoon, and some that never made it into the series at all. Take a look below at an image heavy post, and feast your eyes on some early G1 goodness.

sabrblade wrote:
Decepticon Hall of Heroes, shown in BG are the Earth's moon and the severed head of Unicron.

First version of Junkion spaceship, in BG is Cybertron.

Temporary Decepticon base, in BG is Cybertron and two of its five moons.
From the episode "Enter the Nightbird"

Shown on the left side is the Decepticon Forest Base; on the right side is the Decepticon tower on Cybertron, in BG are three of the five moons of Cybertron.
First is from "Make Tracks", and I'm not sure which episode the tower is from.

Decepticon lunar dome base.
From "Blaster Blues"

On the left side is Cybertron and its robot mode.The city of Lithone, in BG is Unicron, is on the right side.
First is from the discarded early draft of the G1 movie called "The Secret of Cybertron"; the second is from the final version of said movie.

Early version of Autobot City, from when the name "Fortress Maximus" was originally going to refer to said city instead of being the name of the big Headmaster Citybot.

The first version of Fortress Maximus, shown above, transforms to Autobot City, shown below.

Early concept for Scourge

Iron Mountain from "The Insecticon Syndrome"

Unicron concept art

Early concept for Galvatron

Junkion ship and Quintesson ship from the G1 movie

Nightbird concept art

Surface of one of Cybertron's moons, from the G1 movie

Decepticon ship concept art, from the G1 movie

Early concept for Hot Rod

The Kronosphere from "War Dawn"

Cybertron

Sharkticon concept

Unicron's brain, from the G1 movie

TORQ III from "Day of the Machines"

Space carrier and an early version of Chaar

Matrix of Leadership

One of Cybertron's moons, from the G1 movie

Autobot City (third version)

Early concept for Cyclonus

Aujtobot shuttle from the G1 movie

Autobot City transformed (third version)

War screen room, from the G1 movie

Sub-Atlantica, from "Atlantis, Arise!"

Concept of Wreck-Gar

Credit(s): Floro Dey, Cyberpath, Sabrblade

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Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529863)
Posted by griftimus prime on November 15th, 2013 @ 5:56am CST

this is total awesomesauce. i would love all of this in a book

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529864)
Posted by fenrir72 on November 15th, 2013 @ 5:56am CST

The ideas running in Mr. Dery's head.Amazing, breath taking! I read somewhere that he used to be a Physics professor...........so math indeed is the language of the universe. :APPLAUSE:

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529871)
Posted by xyl360 on November 15th, 2013 @ 6:43am CST

Do those concept drawings of the movie Decepticons remind anyone else of Bayverse bots

?

Seriously, it's kinda eerie. I wonder if Bay's design team saw these and drew inspiration from them for his insecoidbots.

Also, what the heck's up with the whole Cybertron having a robot mode thing? Was that seriously a concept tossed around for the movie as in Primus and all that? I thought all that stuff was just junk cooked up for the comics.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529878)
Posted by Sabrblade on November 15th, 2013 @ 7:23am CST

xyl360 wrote:Also, what the heck's up with the whole Cybertron having a robot mode thing? Was that seriously a concept tossed around for the movie as in Primus and all that? I thought all that stuff was just junk cooked up for the comics.

Simon Furman created the character of Primus in 1988. This idea of Cybertron being a giant robot came about two whole years before Furman would create Primus. So, no, it's not meant to be Primus. It was from the discarded early draft for the 1986 movie called "The Secret of Cybertron":

TFWiki.net wrote:"The Secret of Cybertron" was a proposed script by writer Flint Dille and creative director Jay Bacal, hastily produced in a week after they read Ron Friedman's original draft for The Transformers: The Movie and deemed it "incoherent." Although hugely proud and excited about the script they had created, Dille and Bacal were disappointed to discover that executive producers Joe Bacal and Tom Griffin did not share their enthusiasm, and "The Secret of Cybertron" was promptly "filed away."

Details on the story of "The Secret of Cybertron" remain minimal, as the script is lost to the mists of time - Dille believes he may own a copy, but has yet to uncover it. It is believed that at least some aspects of the story made it into the completed movie, although Dille describes the finished feature as "such a Frankenstein of different drafts and ideas and people" that he cannot remember which elements, if any, originated in his and Bacal's script. What is known, though, is that "The Secret of Cybertron" originated the idea of the Quintessons as the creators of the Transformers, which Dille later revived for "Five Faces of Darkness".

As pieced together from different interviews with Dille, the story would have allegedly involved Optimus Prime embarking on a quest to discover the origin of the Transformer race. The titular "secret" would have been that Cybertron itself was a giant robot, and the planet would have been transformed by the Matrix of Leadership to fight Unicron, who was in this draft a weapon apparently created by the Quintessons, intentionally setting up a "brotherly" dynamic between the two planets years before Simon Furman got the idea into his noggin.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529889)
Posted by Wasp-shot23 on November 15th, 2013 @ 8:05am CST

Looking at those Galvatron, Scourge and Cyclonus concepts, they look a hell of a lot like Ulises Farinas' weird take on the trio... Maybe he was privy to this art and was acting to homage it, actually being very clever and not making Heart of Darkness look rubbish?
...Yeah, I don't think so somehow.

And that Proto-Primus looks awesome. I love the multi-layered complicated look... Cos lets face it, even in the 80's before Mr Bay, it couldn't have been hard to imagine that a robot that size would be almost infinitely complex.
I think I'd like that in plastic.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529900)
Posted by Cyberpath on November 15th, 2013 @ 8:49am CST

Hey, where's my news credit point? I posted some of these months ago and no one seemed to care. :lol:

I wonder if the sketch work with the exposed inner mechanics of Galvatron, Cyclonus, Scourge and Nightbird was a type of robotic écorché, or an actual proposed look. Probably the former.

I think The Transformers could have pulled off a robot Cybertron, but I never liked the idea, so I'm glad the concept never made it to the series. Though the illustration is great!
Without the creativity and skill of Dery I think the show might not have been as successful and timeless.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529907)
Posted by gothsaurus on November 15th, 2013 @ 9:25am CST

I'd buy this in a book... in a heartbeat.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529915)
Posted by spiderbob007 on November 15th, 2013 @ 9:59am CST

The lush nuances of Dery's watercolors were apparently lost in translation once animated for the cartoon episodes and movie. The sci-fi quality of the images reminds me of Ralph McQuarrie's Star Wars concept art, or to a lesser degree the Ralph Bakshi era Spider-Man cartoon backgrounds. Although probably budgetary prohibitive, it would be cool to see future animated projects integrate what for me is an epically grandiose visual energy that would become legendary among Transformers fans.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529921)
Posted by Trikeboy on November 15th, 2013 @ 10:27am CST

Well, the concepts for Galvatron, Scourge and Cyclonus explain why the toys look the way they do. The designs got changed after the toy designers started work and couldn't change it.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529927)
Posted by triKlops on November 15th, 2013 @ 10:33am CST

Great job compiling all of this Sabr!
The images are amazing to see together, hopefully all this work leads to something down the line in printed form.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529931)
Posted by ScottyP on November 15th, 2013 @ 11:02am CST

Awesome, awesome, incredible stuff. How cool is that first concept of Autobot city?

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529940)
Posted by Va'al on November 15th, 2013 @ 11:50am CST

Cyberpath wrote:Hey, where's my news credit point? I posted some of these months ago and no one seemed to care.

I did credit you in the news post, but we can only assign the numeric credit count to one user at a time.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529950)
Posted by kirbenvost on November 15th, 2013 @ 12:37pm CST

Oh man, these look amazing. Some of those landscapes would make great framed artwork for my wall. I love the grandiose sci-fi designs. And hey look, G1 Proto-Primus! So awesome.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529974)
Posted by MINDVVIPE on November 15th, 2013 @ 3:32pm CST

THIS ART IS AMAZING! HOLY SHIT! Seriously mind blowing.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529976)
Posted by Banjo-Tron on November 15th, 2013 @ 3:39pm CST

Great work compiling this, Sabrblade! Some of these would make awesome prints.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529993)
Posted by Mindmaster on November 15th, 2013 @ 6:10pm CST

The space carrier is extremely ridiculous.

I like it. A lot.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1529997)
Posted by wewyllenium on November 15th, 2013 @ 6:27pm CST

I miss this artist on TFs. I'm not that happy with the stuff that's currently out there.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1530026)
Posted by Sabrblade on November 15th, 2013 @ 10:02pm CST

It's funny how folks refer to the Robot Mode Cybertron as "Proto Primus", "Pre-Primus", etc. since "The Secret of Cybertron" was still going to have the Quintessons as the TFs' creators while Robot Mode Cybertron was just that, a robot mode for the planet without any god status. It's also funny since Primus' original schtick was just "TF god" instead of "Cybertron's robot mode", when the latter is all that we see here.

Not to mention how TSoC would have had Unicron also be a product of the Quintessons, as a WMD created by them to reclaim Cybertron, instead of the origins we later got for the character (monkey scientist creation in the cartoon, evil god in everything else).

Had this thing been greenlit, we would have gotten non-god Unicron vs non-god robot Cybertron, and both simply being trump card pawns in the greater "Quintessons vs. Cybertronians" conflict.

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1530059)
Posted by Hans on November 16th, 2013 @ 4:00am CST

Floro Dery is a legend. The very first batch of cartoon models based on the toys were created by Shohei Kohara, and I believe Dery's first job was to clean these up (removing doors on the back of Jazz, removing wheels on the legs of Optimus Prime, that sort of thing) for animation. Dery went on to create all the other cartoon models (season 2/movie), designs and backgrounds. Including characters like Elita One, Orion Pax etc. Without him, the cartoon and movie would have looked vastly different.

One thing though, I believe the first picture does not show Unicron's severed head, but instead envisions him attacking Cybertron as seen from the Hall of Heroes. He's using the same cloud mist cover as seen in the Lithone piece, and the original Marvel comics movie adaptation

Re: G1 Concept Art by Floro Dery (Image Heavy) (1530065)
Posted by Sabrblade on November 16th, 2013 @ 5:10am CST

Hans wrote:One thing though, I believe the first picture does not show Unicron's severed head, but instead envisions him attacking Cybertron as seen from the Hall of Heroes. He's using the same cloud mist cover as seen in the Lithone piece, and the original Marvel comics movie adaptation

Well, that's just what Dery wrote on his blog entry for that image.[quote]Decepticon Hall of Heroes, shown in BG are the Earth's moon and the severed head of Unicron. The 11"x17" signed print of this poster was recently bought by a Japanese collector for $200. Always check my daughter's Etsy store because other signed Transformers prints will be posted anytime at:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/FDartstudio

Also, check the Home page.[/quote]

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