(ZMFTS) TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE: REVISITED Issue #3 (aka Zob's Third Huge Collection of Even More Generic Background Characters)

[Zobovor]

For at least a decade now, I've been documenting some of the many generic background characters in Transformers, assigning names and personalities to the ones who never got official ones. More recently, for the past couple of years I've been writing full-length profiles and creating color models for them, in the style of the old TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE profiles by Marvel Comics. I just finished up another batch of 32 profiles and illustrations:

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/tfu_revisited_03.html

I have to say that this batch of characters isn't quite as exciting to me as the two previous ones. I have to face the reality that there are only so many background characters in the cartoon and comics, and by simple merit of the fact that I've already addressed so many of them, in some ways I was scraping the bottom of the barrel with this batch. Next year, my plan is to focus on characters for whom I've already done physical PVC repaints (they usually get truncated Hasbro-style tech specs on my web site, but not full-length profiles). Some of those guys are actually my favorites (Slaughterhouse, Crankshaft, etc.) and it would be a shame to neglect them just because I've already done toy versions of them. I originally thought that perhaps I would compile them into a fourth issue and call it quits. In fact, I have enough fan characters to do five complete issues totalling 160 profiles. That's almost the number of characters that Bob Budiansky created for the original Transformers toy line. When I do the fifth and final issue, I'll take the opportunity to reorganize all the previous issues alphabetically so the indexes will finally make sense. But, that will have to wait until next year, because this has taken two months of my life and I want to go back to writing e-books and painting toys.

So! As always, here are some notes about each character, including what cartoon episode or comic book they originated from and some random thoughts about the genesis of each profile.

Beatdown is a character from that world-class set of episodes, "Five Faces of Darkness," who is designed like Streetwise but colored like Dead End. (I think "Five Faces of Darkness" has given me more generic characters than any other single source, due to the extremely meticulous and high-quality animation. Snerk.)

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/beatdown_tfu.html

Blues is a background character from "Dark Awakening" who looks like Jazz but is colored in (yep, you guessed it!) shades of blue like Blurr. I decided to go a little creepy and decide he was a mortician and that they only called him in for that episode because Optimus Prime had come back from the dead.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/blues_tfu.html

Boost is a favorite character of mine from this batch--a miscolored version of Powermaster Joyride, from the pages of Marvel Comics. If his toy had come out in 1988 I would have bought him just based on his personality. (I love writing characters who have Nebulan partners. There's just so much more to explore when you're dealing with two distinct personality types.) I didn't have a U.S. model of Joyride to work with, so I actually had to scan his TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE profile and edit out the colors. It's harder than it sounds. So much extra work. I actually debated whether to include him because he was the last model I edited, and it was only for my insane love for the character and his quirks that I pushed myself to finish him.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/boost_tfu.html

Brakelight is a purple version of Smokescreen who comes from the front cover of TRANSFORMERS #41. I got a lot of mileage out of this cover, with three separate characters from this batch originating from that issue. I love purple-colored Autobots. (I edited out Smokescreen's racing numbers since it seemed unlikely to be that two different Autobots would both be number #38.) He's also interesting to me in that he's got whitewall tires, which I think is a first anywhere for Transformers.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/brakelight_tfu.html

Coldfront is also from Marvel Comics, similar to Tracks but colored closer to Hoist. I hesitated to address him since he's technically from a comic-within-a-comic (there is an issue of the fictional ROBOT-MASTER comic book on the cover of TRANSFORMERS #15), so it's possible he's a fictional robot within the "real-life" Transformers mythos. (Knowing Donny Finkelberg, though, it's likely they cribbed from the designs of existing Transformers when drawing the robots for their comic book, so...) I didn't give him the flying car mode because I felt like that should be unique to Tracks.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/coldfront_tfu.html

Cop-Out is technically a non-media character. Back when Takara was doing reissues of G1 toys (whatever happened to that, anyway?), they were reappropriating Diaclone color schemes and retroactively adding them to the Transformers mythos. The police car version of Sideswipe, for example, became Clampdown. The unused silver version of Skids became Crosscut. Well, they never got around to doing a Sunstreaker reissue, but I'm sure that if they had, we would have gotten a Transformers version of the police car Sunstreaker. Here's my take on the character.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/cop-out_tfu.html

Diamondbeak is a character I discovered totally by accident. I actually saw a picture of him on another (prominent) fan web site that identified him as Misfire, but upon closer inspection he's actually a robot with Cutthroat's design but Misfire's color scheme. Oops! He's from "The Rebirth" part 1. I like the way his creature-mode colors turned out. Check out the cool extra-wide screen shot that I spliced together using footage from when the camera pans across the animation cel!

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/diamondbeak_tfu.html

Double Feature is a character I've had in mind for a long time, and I've been planning to do a PVC figure of him forever. He looks like Jazz but he's colored like Cliffjumper (specifically, the red-and-blue Marvel Comics version of Cliffjumper). The character's name is kind of a play on his ability to create a twin of himself, and the fact that he appears in the pages of the TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE comic book adaptation. (I think that if I were to do the PVC figure now, I'd have to find a second Heroes of Cybertron version of Jazz and soak it in Windex to dissolve the paint. I'd end up with a translucent blue "hologram" version of him, which would be pretty cool.) I had some fun editing his dialogue baloons. (Points if you can identify the issue I borrowed the lettering from. I was limited to issues where Janice Chiang did the lettering because I wanted it to match.)

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/double_feature_tfu.html

Echo is a G2-era character who is drawn like Powermaster Darkwing but colored like Shrapnel, one of the few generic background characters from the G2 comics. (Sarra Mossof was new to Transformers. You can't expect her to be intimately familiar with every single robot's design. Shrapnel wasn't a bad guess, actually. Darkwing has the same V-shaped thing on his chest.) Yes, there was supposed to be contest associated with this character but only one person participated. Sorry, Gustavo. Anyway, I wanted to explore what would have happened to a Powermaster character after the Powermaster process fused their minds together, and this was the result. I wasn't sure what colors to make his Powermaster partner, but then it occurred to me I could use Shrapnel's original Diaclone colors and that worked out fairly well.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/echo_tfu.html

I remembered Fright Bite as being from "The Rebirth" and was supposed to be a version of Mindwipe who was colored like Snapdragon, but when I went to actually take the screen shots, I discovered to my horror that the scene I was remembering actually featured a miscolored Skullcruncher! Problem was, I'd already written the character as a vampire, which doesn't really work as well with an alligator. Frantically, I searched for another miscolored Mindwipe who would still make the character work and I actually found one in the pages of the Marvel HEADMASTERS mini-series. Crisis averted! He's really cool-looking, I think. The Apeface colors translate surprisingly well to the radically-different bat mode.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/fright_bite_tfu.html

Gatecrasher is another miscolored Autobot from TRANSFORMERS #41, this one a green Trailbreaker. At first I'd thought he had Cosmos colors until I realized he's actually colored like Hoist. So, in that regard, he's kind of like Nightwatch (Prowl colored like Bluestreak; both character pairs are drawn slightly differently but based on identical toys). Isn't a Trailbreaker-colored-like-Hoist just, basically, Hoist? Well, not really. Trailbreaker is long and lean while Hoist is pudgy and fat. Anyway, here he is.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/gatecrasher_tfu.html

Greenhorn is an all-green Bluestreak from the cover of TRANSFORMERS #12 (Nel Yomtov might have thought he was Hound, I suppose). I did some fancy editing to his comics appearance since the UPC bar code covers up a good chunk of his body. I had to redraw everything that was hidden behind that big rectangular box. I don't know if anybody notices when I do stuff like this. I did cheat slightly and do a more proper reading of Hound's colors. In retrospect, I wonder if that was a mistake, because my color model is now fairly disingenuous (and there *are* Transformers in the comics who are all one color, like Ironhide or Emirate Xaaron). I may fix this later.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/greenhorn_tfu.html

Grudgematch is a character I've known about for a long time, but I was hesitant to do a PVC figure of him because we really don't get a full body shot. People tend to say there's a trio of generic Decepticons attacking Wheeljack and Bumblebee in "More Than Meets the Eye" part 1, but there's actually a fourth Decepticon present in the scene. He's dark blue, but we don't see a lot of him so I had to guess at over half his color scheme, using the other characters in the scene for reference. I think this guy actually went with the Decepticons to Earth, since there's a dark blue Decepticon jet who also shows up in the pilot episode. I gave him a Cybertronic vehicle mode, though:

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/grudgematch_tfu.html

Gun Shy is from the pages of the HEADMASTERS mini-series, a version of Misfire colored like Mindwipe. He actually looks like he could have been a 1987 toy, which I like. He has an air of authencitiy to him. (No, I didn't do any editing to the dialogue balloon in his appearance. I don't know what you're talking about.)

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/gun_shy_tfu.html

Irontooth is the "extra" Constructicon appearing in TRANSFORMERS #10, who is colored a darker green (almost like Hoist... hmm), indicating his different status. See, right there, how there are seven Constructicons? What, you think I'm making this stuff up? I think the other Constructicons eventually dug a very deep hole and buried him in it. I think he's one of my least favorites from this batch. I almost didn't include him at all.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/irontooth_tfu.html

Junkpile is a weird-colored Long Haul from "Fight or Flee." There are actually two prominent miscolored Long Hauls; the other one is from "Five Faces of Darkness," and I call him Gravedigger. I keep mixing the two up, though, and I think I've been calling them both Gravedigger. Finally, I just belted out a new name and profile on the spot in an attempt to distinguish the two, and I ended up creating one of the most truly original and interesting characters from this batch. He's a favorite of mine now.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/junkpile_tfu.html

Lightning Rod is a much, much newer generic character, owing his origins to TRANSFORMERS: REGENERATION ONE by IDW. He and his partner, Thunderbolt, combine together in much the same way that Darkwing and Dreadwind did. Also, by the time we got official TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE profiles for the Powermaster-era characters, it was Simon Furman writing the profiles, not Bob Budiansky. Furman tended to write longer profiles and kind of rambled a little (and it's Furman writing REGENERATION ONE), so I've tried to capture the same style of profile for the generic characters whose toys would have come later (like around 1988 or so). I could have used the Japanese model for Dreadwind, but instead I took the time to scan the U.S. model printed in his TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE profile and edit out the colors by hand. The illustration from his profile wasn't complete, though, because he was missing his back kibble (wings and such) and Hi-Test was missing his engine backpack, so I actually scanned elements from the comics and grafted them onto the profile drawings. So much work, but to not do so would have resulted in an incomplete model, and I'm terribly OCD about these sorts of things.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/lightning_rod_tfu.html

Muffler is one of the very first generic background characters I ever took notice of and embraced. He's sort of a "first generation" generic like Slaughterhouse and Ballistic and Potshot (being one of the very first I discovered), so I always think of him as an older character as opposed to some of the ones I found more recently. For the longest time, I was calling him the very silly name "Butterfly" (he's Sunstreaker colored like Bumblebee) until he finally told me his "real" name.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/muffler_tfu.html

Pile-Up is one of the first miscolored Autobots to appear in the cartoon, and he's very obvious, since he looks like Bluestreak with a Bumblebee head. I had to guess at his color scheme from the waist down, of course, and I seriously doubt that his helmet is the only piece of him that's yellow. So, this is a slightly less canonical appearance than some of these other guys. Also, I've always disliked Bluestreak's non-standard animation model where his arm is raised, so I spliced in a piece of Hound's arm to get him to stand in a more neutral stance. I also got rid of some of the Prowl details for his car mode that crept into Bluestreak's vehicle model. He ended up being a lot more yellow than I thought he would! I didn't want his vehicle form to be all mismatched and ugly like Nightwatch, so I realized that I could get away with making his body and doors yellow (the doors are grey from the back, yellow from the front). I really like the two-tone look of his car mode. This could totally have been a Diaclone toy.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/pile-up_tfu.html

Pinhead is the last of the TRANSFORMERS #41 cover appearances. I had two versions of Brainstorm I could potentially do (the other being on the cover to HEADMASTERS #1 with Hardhead's colors) but I really didn't want to do two Brainstorms in one batch, so maybe we'll look at the other one next time. I really liked the purple colors on him. The model for Brainstorm that was printed in IDW's The Ark was of terribly quality so I had to make my own. These things take forever to put together! My wife and my son watched, like, three Harry Potter movies while I worked on this.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/pinhead_tfu.html

Plague is one of the many miscolored Cyclonus-style robots from "Five Faces of Darkness," this one using Scourge's color scheme. I'm a little bit burned out on all the Cyclonuses and Scourges, to be totally frank, so I don't think I'll be doing too many more of these. I deliberately wrote a bad profile for him to try to capture the style of the movie character profiles from TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE #4.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/plague_tfu.html

Rapidfire is a last-minute addition to the group that I threw into this batch because I noticed him when I was scanning my HEADMASTERS comic for another character. He's designed like Kup; I'm not sure whose color scheme he's wearing. Jazz, maybe? He is based on a personality from ATT's past, but I won't tell you who. You'll have to guess. Kup's regular cartoon model wasn't sufficient here since this is Marvel Comics (who used early, rejected designs for the animated characters and then stuck with 'em for good), so I grabbed a picture of an early colored cel and had to do some fancy editing to make it black-and-white and suitable for me to color myself.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/rapidfire_tfu.html

Skyslicer is special for a few different reasons. For one, he's one of only two G2-era characters from this batch, so I made sure to alter his character model and give him the proper symbols. Also, I've done so many characters who are meant to exist within the fairly rigid framework of the G1 universe, but I really wanted to break the mold and create a genuinely different and interesting character. (It was either that, or do a totally bland and generic G2-style "he fights furiously with ultra-powerful missile launchers!" profile that seemed to dominate the G2 tech specs.)

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/skyslicer_tfu.html

Spectacle is this crazy version of Springer in Perceptor colors from "Thief in the Night." I wish his vehicles modes were more colorful, but a strict reading of his robot mode means that most of his colors disappear when he transforms.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/spectacle_tfu.html

Spin-Out is a version of Sideswipe who is colored like Sunstreaker. I think that this makes Spin-Out the "true" twin brother for Sideswipe, so I gave him the early, rejected name that Hasbro had originally assigned to Sunstreaker. (I always feel a little disingenous giving characters names with hyphens in them, like Pile-Up or Psyche-Out, but then I always reassure myself with the knowledge that Hasbro was going to use Spin-Out and Blow-Out at one point.) Since he would have been among the first characters to get write-ups, I made sure to use certain conventions like giving him a nickname (from the old TRANSFORMERS COMICS MAGAZINE reprints of the TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE profiles) and referring to his robot mode as "Autobot mode."

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/spin-out_tfu.html

Stonebreaker is a surprise Constructicon I discovered while researching "Fight or Flee" for screen shots. The camera pans by him so fast that I never noticed him before. He's designed like Scrapper but he's colored like Headstrong! How cool is that? I named him after Steve-o Stonebraker, the former FAQ keeper for alt.toys.transformers.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/stonebreaker_tfu.html

Thunderbolt is the other Decepticon Powermaster from REGENERATION ONE. Colorist John Paul-Bove took a flashback scene from issue #80.5 featuring Darkwing and Dreadwind, but colored the pair like Skydive and Slingshot. I went through many, many names for these guys until I settled on ones that had the right rhythm and cadence (at first I was sticking with more "D.W." names like Deadweight and Doomwave, but then I realized the names had to combine in a way that made sense. Thunderbolt and Lightning Rod combine into Lightning Bolt. Again, I had to do a huge amount of work to Darkwing's model to make it usable, but at least I got to use it twice so I got some extra mileage out of it.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/thunderbolt_tfu.html

Tune-Up is the Paradron Medic, only with an actual name. I took the Heroes of Cybertron biography written by Hasbro and expanded it into a full profile, so this is only approximately half my creation. (She was a late, unscheduled addition so I forgot to add her to the index page, but here she is anyway.)

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/tune-up_tfu.html

Turbine is a Decepticon jet from "S.O.S. Dinobots" who is colored like Frenzy, which technically means that Frenzy's color scheme makes its first appearance before Frenzy does! Or maybe it's Bluestreak's color scheme. I'm not too sure. Anyway, I've written a lot of Decepticon jets, and in some ways I'm a little burned out like I am with all the Cyclonuses and Sweeps. It's much more interesting to me when I can find a new body type to write about. I do like the way this guy looks, though. (Frenzy's cassette window roughly translates to a Decepticon jet's cockpit glass.)

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/turbine_tfu.html

Tussle is one of the many multi-colored Decepticon cassettes from "More Than Meets the Eye" part 2. He's one of the few generic background characters who is arguably not a mistake at all, but a deliberate attempt at a crowdfiller to pad out the Decepticon ranks (the animators really only had ten Decepticons to work with, officially).

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/tussle_tfu.html

Valve is a character I rediscovered while researching Marvel Comics' version of THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE. Looks like Bumblebee; colored like Grimlock. He's a 1986 Mini Autobot so it made sense to name him after some random car part (like Hubcap, Pipes, etc.) but the fact that he also shares a name with a company that made great computer game series like Portal and Half-Life does not bother me. It is a proven fact that all the 1986 Minibots have mental problems, so Valve could not be an exception. Yes, I know his vehicle mode is ugly. It was unavoidable this time.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/valve_tfu.html

War Zone is a character I went from hating to absolutely loving. He's given me so much trouble because, for the longest time, I was never able to identify his color scheme. I actually had his profile ready for the last batch of characters, but I never colored him because I didn't know whose color scheme to use. We see him from the back, and he's all grey and boring with a yellow head. There is no Transformer in existence with a yellow head like that. Finally, in desperation, I began flipping through every color model I have, and suddenly it dawned on me: it's Slag! The yellow is his dinosaur head, whose colors somebody applied to the robot head for Ultra Magnus. Wacky! Once I was able to identify the color scheme, I was finally able to envision what the front of his robot mode must "really" look like. He actually ended up looking kind of cool! If he got a Habro toy package biography, I envision it as being one of the special extra-long tech specs cards like Metroplex and Fortress Maximus and Action Master Optimus Prime all got.

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/war_zone_tfu.html

Yellowbelly is that infamous yellow Decepticon boot from "S.O.S. Dinobots." We're provided with juuuust enough of the character's look that I was able to approximate the look of his robot mode, assuming his color layout is a standard one like Thundercracker (and not a crazy one like Turbine).

http://www.zmfts.t15.org/yellowbelly_tfu.html

Comments and criticisms are always welcome. (Criticism is slightly less welcome, but at this point I'll take whatever I can get!)


Zob

[gustavowombat]

Zobovor <zm...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> Echo is a G2-era character who is drawn like Powermaster Darkwing but
> colored like Shrapnel, one of the few generic background characters from
> the G2 comics. (Sarra Mossof was new to Transformers. You can't expect
> her to be intimately familiar with every single robot's design. Shrapnel
> wasn't a bad guess, actually. Darkwing has the same V-shaped thing on
> his chest.) Yes, there was supposed to be contest associated with this
> character but only one person participated. Sorry, Gustavo. Anyway, I
> wanted to explore what would have happened to a Powermaster character
> after the Powermaster process fused their minds together, and this was
> the result. I wasn't sure what colors to make his Powermaster partner,
> but then it occurred to me I could use Shrapnel's original Diaclone
> colors and that worked out fairly well.
>
> http://www.zmfts.t15.org/echo_tfu.html

Curses! There are plenty of Decepticon mechanics -- but no environmental
terrorists. I have a half-written Kup's Tale about him... Tommy Kennedy has
a report due on the environment (the hellish, destroyed environment with
the glowing red clouds and the wasteland), but Optimus isn't around so he
ends up asking Kup. Give me an environmental terrorist in set 5.

Perhaps he is a field medic, and those giant guns he is holding are hot
glue guns or something for quickly patching up fallen Decepticons on the
front lines?

> Lightning Rod is a much, much newer generic character, owing his origins
> to TRANSFORMERS: REGENERATION ONE by IDW. He and his partner,
> Thunderbolt, combine together in much the same way that Darkwing and
> Dreadwind did. Also, by the time we got official TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE
> profiles for the Powermaster-era characters, it was Simon Furman writing
> the profiles, not Bob Budiansky. Furman tended to write longer profiles
> and kind of rambled a little (and it's Furman writing REGENERATION ONE),
> so I've tried to capture the same style of profile for the generic
> characters whose toys would have come later (like around 1988 or so). I
> could have used the Japanese model for Dreadwind, but instead I took the
> time to scan the U.S. model printed in his TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE profile
> and edit out the colors by hand. The illustration from his profile
> wasn't complete, though, because he was missing his back kibble (wings
> and such) and Hi-Test was missing his engine backpack, so I actually
> scanned elements from the comics and grafted them onto the profile
> drawings. So much work, but to not do so would have resulted in an
> incomplete model, and I'm terribly OCD about these sorts of things.
>
> http://www.zmfts.t15.org/lightning_rod_tfu.html

This bothers me. Not for any good reason, but because I firmly believe that
Lightning Rod is a name for Hot Rod's twin brother (in blue), who calamity
always befalls, despite him being extra cautious. While Hot Rod always
escapes the consequences of his recklessness, Lightning Rod always pays an
entirely unrelated price. And the TFCC even happily provided me with a blue
Classics Hot Rod with no identity to match the character (that is not
Sideburn, I don't care what they say -- Sideburn is asymmetrical, with a
riot shield and a dagger...)

Barely read this one, so bothered by the name. Skimmed and there's really
no use of the concept of a lightning rod in the description, unless I
missed something. This one either needs a new name (Lightning Blast?
Lightning Strike?) or to be rewritten to use the concept of him being an
attractor for something. It's too good of a name to use without that.

Also, too late to read much and I am tired, and I have an internet
connection from 1998 or something here...

[Zobovor]

On Wednesday, February 19, 2014 10:40:28 PM UTC-7, Gustavo Wombat wrote:

> This one either needs a new name or to be rewritten to use the concept of him

> being an attractor for something. It's too good of a name to use without that.

One definition of "lightning rod" is a person (or robot, in this case) who attracts negative or hostile feelings, and the character tends to do that. So, I think the name fits, but its meaning is a bit more subtle. (Buzzsaw doesn't actually have spinning buzzsaw blades, and Hound doesn't transform into a dog.)


Zob

[Shin Hibiki]

Zobovor <zm...@aol.com> wrote:

>Blues is a background character from "Dark Awakening" who looks like Jazz but is colored in (yep, you guessed it!) shades of blue like Blurr. I decided to go a little creepy and decide he was a mortician and that they only called him in for that episode because Optimus Prime had come back from the dead.
>
> http://www.zmfts.t15.org/blues_tfu.html

One of my favorites. Great color apps.

>Cop-Out is technically a non-media character. Back when Takara was doing reissues of G1 toys (whatever happened to that, anyway?), they were reappropriating Diaclone color schemes and retroactively adding them to the Transformers mythos. The police car version of Sideswipe, for example, became Clampdown. The unused silver version of Skids became Crosscut. Well, they never got around to doing a Sunstreaker reissue, but I'm sure that if they had, we would have gotten a Transformers version of the police car Sunstreaker. Here's my take on the character.
>
> http://www.zmfts.t15.org/cop-out_tfu.html

A little cheatsy, but justifiable. The fake screenshot is
ace.

>Plague is one of the many miscolored Cyclonus-style robots from "Five Faces of Darkness," this one using Scourge's color scheme. I'm a little bit burned out on all the Cyclonuses and Scourges, to be totally frank, so I don't think I'll be doing too many more of these. I deliberately wrote a bad profile for him to try to capture the style of the movie character profiles from TRANSFORMERS UNIVERSE #4.
>
> http://www.zmfts.t15.org/plague_tfu.html

Another beauty. He sort of *looks* diseased somehow.

>Rapidfire is a last-minute addition to the group that I threw into this batch because I noticed him when I was scanning my HEADMASTERS comic for another character. He's designed like Kup; I'm not sure whose color scheme he's wearing. Jazz, maybe? He is based on a personality from ATT's past, but I won't tell you who. You'll have to guess. Kup's regular cartoon model wasn't sufficient here since this is Marvel Comics (who used early, rejected designs for the animated characters and then stuck with 'em for good), so I grabbed a picture of an early colored cel and had to do some fancy editing to make it black-and-white and suitable for me to color myself.
>
> http://www.zmfts.t15.org/rapidfire_tfu.html

Surprisingly good vehicle mode.

>Tune-Up is the Paradron Medic, only with an actual name. I took the Heroes of Cybertron biography written by Hasbro and expanded it into a full profile, so this is only approximately half my creation. (She was a late, unscheduled addition so I forgot to add her to the index page, but here she is anyway.)
>
> http://www.zmfts.t15.org/tune-up_tfu.html

Woot!

- Shin Hibiki, loves this stuff

----
The race ain't over yet, baby
It's only just begun
They thought they had it won, baby
But soon we'll have 'em on the run

[shaunbi...@gmail.com]

I just discovered this latest update. Before I comment on anything, I was wondering whether or not you were planning to complete the profiles for the Rescuebots and Invadicons. I was sure you'd have all that done by the third time around. :(

[Zobovor]

On Tuesday, March 25, 2014 4:38:26 PM UTC-6, shaunbi...@gmail.com wrote:

> I was wondering whether or not you were planning to complete the profiles for
> the Rescuebots and Invadicons. I was sure you'd have all that done by the
> third time around.

I am hindered by the lack of a discovery of a complete team. I'm sure there's a miscolored Blades out there somewhere to complete the Rescuebot group, but I haven't come across one yet. Same with the hypothetical miscolored Blast Off... I'm sure there must be one somewhere, but I need to find one before he can join the Invadicons.

I have not given up on them!


Zob

[shaunbi...@gmail.com]

Ever consider taking a shot at a Pretender bio? Given the fact that Transformers #40 introduced so many new characters, not to mention the fact that they look a good deal alike, I'd be shocked if there wasn't a miscolored Landmine or Skullgrin floating out there.

[Zobovor]

Possibly. The fact that there are no published American character designs (and that Landmine and Skullgrin are the only two that got Marvel profiles) makes the lack of source material a challenge. (There are Japanese models available, but to me it's a little disingenuous to use them.)

Next year when I do the final batch of characters, there will likely be a couple of new ones thrown into the mix. If I discover a Pretender that really appeals to me I'll totally throw him in there somewhere.


Zob