Bob Budiansky/Don Figueroa at Iacon One
crazysteve
crazysteve panel transcript! This is from the Bob Budiansky/Don
Figueroa panel that took place July 8th 2006 at Iacon One. This panel
was approximately 38 minutes long.
Standard disclaimers apply-this is an unofficial fanmade transcript and
as such it is subject to errors or innacuracies. I have edited out
verbal pauses, redundancies in speech, and other things for sake of
easier reading. I may have misspelled some words. I may have omitted
whole words or sentences by accident or because I couldn't make them
out. I have omitted many verbal pauses such as 'umm','you know', and
'like' when I felt they distracted from the flow of the sentences. In
short, if it's wrong or missing it's either my fault or my perogative.
Words in parenthesis or brackets are my own-they're added to clarify
meanings or describe actions taken during speech. I have included a few
footnotes that are referenced in the body of the transcript.
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Don Figueroa: My name's Don Figueroa. I think you've all seen my
work...
Bob Budiansky: ...and my name's Bob Budiansky and although I haven't
been doing anything on Transformers recently, I was involved with the
first five years of Transformers the comic book. So I can get more into
that.
Don Figueroa: If you guys got any questions, just blurt it out.
Bob Budiansky: Well, I was wondering before any questions, would you be
interested in hearing how Transformers got rolling? Like, back in 1983?
Audience: Yes.
Bob Budiansky: Is that a yes?
Audience: Yes.
Bob Budiansky: Okay, well, I worked for Marvel Comics for about twenty
years and in the eighties I was an editor for Marvel. Prior to
Transformers, Marvel had developed G.I. Joe with Hasbro as a comic
book. Marvel came up-and I wasn't involved directly with this so I'm
kind of like approximating here-but basically, one of the Marvel
editors who was also a writer came up with the whole lineup of names
and profiles et cetera, et cetera, for all the G.I. Joe characters. So
when Hasbro came along with Transformers I guess they wanted to do
something very similar. You know, have Marvel do the same kind of
development, come up with a treatment, a backstory of what The
Transformers was about and so they approached Marvel to do that.
Again, I'm still not involved yet, but the editor-in-chief at Marvel at
that time-his name is Jim Shooter-I believe he wrote the initial
treatment which created the whole world of Cybertron. Again, I don't
know which names he actually had and which names Hasbro might have
given him, but the whole concept of Cybertron, Transformers crashing
into earth millions of years ago and so on and so forth. Then working
with one of the senior editors at Marvel-a person named Denny O'Neil
who was also a very experienced long time comic book writer-they
developed the profiles and the characterizations of the initial line of
Transformers. I'll show up in the story very soon. So far it's
everybody else.
Anyway, I actually kept a lot of the stuff. [At this point Bob holds up
one of the papers from a stack in front of him] This is the initial
treatment for The Transformers. I didn't write it. I edit(ed)-I do have
my own handwritten notes crossing out some things on it so I know I was
involved at this point. This is from like November of 1983. So what
happened was, I guess the treatment went back and forth between Hasbro
and Marvel and they tweaked it. Apparently I tweaked it too, since like
I said this has my handwritten notes on it.
Maybe a week or two before Thanksgiving of 1983, Jim Shooter the
editor-in-chief was running around Marvel because Hasbro had basically
rejected most of all the character profiles that Denny O'Neil had come
up with and most of the names. So he was looking for somebody else who
would take this new property that nobody knew if it was gonna be
successful or the next bomb. Nobody knew anything about it. He was
running around the editorial offices trying to find an editor who would
rewrite about twenty or so character profiles over the weekend before
Thanksgiving and I was about the fourth choice. That means a few people
said, "No, no thanks, goodbye". I was more known as an editor/artist
not as an editor/writer at that time.
So anyway, he came to me. Like I said, most of the names and profiles
were rejected. Not Optimus Prime. Optimus Prime was Denny O'Neil's
creation, not me. But the others I can say for sure like all of them or
most of them-most of them at least-the others I came up with over that
weekend and wrote the profiles. And ever since-I mean ever since in
that period anyway-I was the guy that they came to to develop all the
names, all the profiles, and then I eventually was the editor of the
first four issue miniseries and I wrote like most of the next fifty
issues of the comic book. So that's how it happened.
[At this point Bob begins holding up and commenting on many of the
papers from a stack in front of him] And basically Hasbro-I wish I had
something to project this on but I wasn't thinking ahead so I didn't
plan ahead-Hasbro would send me a list of the next line of products.
[reading off one paper] Yellow Volkswagen, red Porsche, orange truck,
red sports car. And I would name them.
[Holding up a different paper] Then this is from 1986. New product, new
character requirements. Special teams-28 names and bios. Mini
Autobots-five names and bios. So they would give me a whole listing of
what their next product line was going to be. I don't know if they were
in production yet or not, and I would name them, come up with the
profiles-the packaging copy that you saw on the back of the boxes. They
would send me these model sheets of what these guys were gonna look
like so I had an idea of what I was writing about. I was coming up with
names that were relevant to what the actual characters were going to
be. This is only a fraction of what they sent me. I had over the years
tons of this kind of stuff.
In longhand I would write-this is before I had a wordprocessor-I'd
write my profiles and type 'em up eventually, (then) send them over to
Hasbro for their acceptance or rejection. Usually they accepted
about-I'd say I had a pretty good success rate about turning in names
that they liked. They probably accepted almost all of them on the first
shot. Sometimes I'd give them more than one choice. I'd give them two
or three choices. [Holding up a paper] Like here-oh, here's the
original character profile for somebody named Megatron. [audience
laughs] So I wrote down codename Megatron. Alternate name-it could have
been these names-Death Ray, Master, Slag Maker. They chose Megatron.
They rejected Megatron intially. They said it sounded-now this is
before-remember this is before the age of personal computers. So 'mega'
back then did not mean megabytes, it meant megatonnes, which was
associated with nuclear weapons. And they said at Hasbro-they thought
it sounded too scary. [audience laughs] And I pointed out he's the head
of the bad guys, he's supposed to be scary. They accepted that logic so
they went with Megatron. And then anyway, I wrote the rest of the
profile here. And so on and so forth.
[shuffling through papers] This is like the first bunch of them that I
wrote I suppose. Then eventually once I got that first set of character
profiles done and approved, they asked me to come up with the packaging
copy. [Holding up a paper] Looks like I put together this chart here,
this ratings chart [see Note 1]. This has all the original ratings that
appear on the back of the boxes for the first set of Transformers.
Strength, intelligence, speed-I figured it all out on this piece of
graph paper here. [audience laughs] Whatever those guys are today was
born on this one single piece of paper apparently. There were a lot
more good guys than bad guys back then it looks like. There was
only-one, two, three, four-there were only eight Decepticons and there
must have been about twenty-a whole bunch more Autobots. I don't know
why the Autobots didn't win right then. They were outnumbering them.
Then as the years went by, as you know, like there were line
extensions. There were Targetmasters and Headmasters, et cetera, et
cetera. So they would ask me to come up with more treatments, more
backstories explaining how these characters fit into the Transformers
universe. [Shuffling through more papers] These are just some more
treatments, et cetera, et cetera. Besides that, like I said I got
involved in writing comic books, wrote plots and scripts, occasionally
I drew a cover. I did a lot of cover sketches. These are actually some
of my original sketches. [Holding up a paper] This is for a comic, this
is for number 29, "Scourge of the Scraplets". [Holding up a different
paper] Uh, I don't know-this one has Skullgrin on the cover [see Note
2]. Anyway, these are just showing you how some of this stuff developed
out of nothing and how I got involved and how things took off from
there and then wouldn't let go of me for like five years basically. It
kept going and going and I finally had to surrender and say I'm done
and moved on. I think I've talked enough for now. I think we're both
ready for...[looking over at Don] Do you want to talk about anything
before the questions?
Don Figueroa: Well, no, I guess we can just...
Bob Budiansky: Alright. Go ahead, any questions?
audience member: Can you tell about what you're going to be doing for
IDW?
Don Figueroa: We're not really allowed to talk about it right now.
Bob Budiansky: We're doing it!
Don Figueroa: We're doing it right now, though. Chris wanted to save it
for Comic-Con.
Bob Budiansky: But we are doing something together. It's the first time
I'm writing Transformers again since 1989 and I'm really thrilled I'm
doing it with Don. His work is wonderful.
audience member: As long as you've got that story concept there with
your handwritten notes, can you give us maybe a couple of examples of
things that you penciled in changes on?
Bob Budiansky: Oh, you mean the original treatment?
audience member: Yeah!
Bob Budiansky: Okay, Lemme see. Well the original name of the Ark
apparently was 'Aunty'. I see I have crossed it out and it says 'The
Ark'. Somebody didn't like that name. Somebody smart. [audience laughs]
Jim Shooter came up with what I thought were a lot of funky names, but
he was my boss so I didn't argue with him.
audience member: Could you tell us what those names were?
Bob Budiansky: Buster Witwicky. [audience laughs] Need I say more?
Apparently he grew up with some kid named Buster in Pittsburgh and so
he wanted to honor him in that way. What else? That's the big one. Oh
okay, now I remember...now I've heard over the years that this has been
some kind of a confusing aspect of the Transformers storyline-Buster v.
Spike. In the original treatment it says "these will include Sparkplug
Witwicky and his son, Spike." 'Spike' is crossed out and it says
'Buster'. So I believe the cartoon had Spike as the kid, right? So this
probably went to the animators before it got amended. So in the comic
it was Buster and then eventually Spike..well, Spike was
Buster's...well I don't know. One was the dad or something. I forget.
Anyways, Spike got changed to Buster. Actually this is just tweaked a
little bit. [Looking at another paper] Oh, okay, look at this. Did you
know that Starscream's original name was Ulchtar? [see Note 3]
audience member: I'm sorry?
Bob Budiansky: Ulchtar. U-L-C-H-T-A-R [audience laughs] Now, like I
said, Hasbro rejected a lot of the names that Denny O'Neil came up
with, and I'm assuming this is one of them. It's crossed out to
'Starscream' above it. So Hasbro knew what they were doing I think.
[audience laughs] There's all sorts of fossils back in these old pieces
of paper. Things I could dig out probably if I really went through the
whole box of papers that I have. Figured out what they (the character
names) were at one point and what they changed to. Any other questions?
audience member: How would you choose which covers you did? I think
your last issue you did the layouts on the first ten pages. How did
those situations come up? Why did you have to step up to that extra
level of...?
Bob Budiansky: Well I chose the covers that I did because I wanted to
do them. I mean, even though I was writer, writers reported to editors.
My editor for most of the time on Transformers was thankful that I
could do whatever I wanted to do on it because he didn't know what was
going on. There was just too many Transformers buzzing around. He had
other books to edit. So if I came up with a cover concept I presented
it to him. He was thrilled. It was one less thing for him to deal with
to have to come up with a cover concept. And if I said, "Oh, if you
want, I can draw that cover," he was doubly thrilled because then he
wouldn't have to bother the regular artist to get off their schedule to
do the cover. So I would pick out the covers. Usually-this may be
sacreligious to say it to this audience-but usually it featured a human
prominently on the cover. There was a reason I wrote the book but
didn't draw it. I didn't want to have to deal with all that detail. I
admire somebody like Don who can handle that. It wasn't for me. So
usually most of the covers I did prominently featured a human, very
often a sexy female. That's true.
audience member: You didn't do any pencils or covers for Sleepwalker,
though.
Bob Budiansky: Well Sleepwalker was different. Sleepwalker by the way
was a comic book. When I quit Transformers one of the reasons I quit
was so I can open myself up for doing something else and I created this
comic book called Sleepwalker. And Sleepwalker-I went to the editor and
I said, "Here's my first choice for who I wanted to be the artist on
that book." And we got him. There was no reason for me to ever, ever
draw Sleepwalker because he was a far superior artist and he nailed it.
I did colors on a few issues.
audience member: On the topic of both Sleepwalker and
where you were going before,
obviously you worked with a whole bunch of different artists on
Transformers while still being an artist (yourself). Sleepwalker I know
was your baby as a concept originally. Did you do design work?
Presumably you designed Sleepwalker, but guys like 8-Ball or...
Bob Budiansky: Yeah, I designed all of 'em. Well, I designed most of
'em, not all of them. [Holding up a paper] Here's Circuit Breaker. My
design for Circuit Breaker.
audience member: I was just going to ask. Did you design incidental
characters then for Transformers? Guys like Lord Straxus and the actual
robots. Scrounge?
Bob Budiansky: Not so much the robots. I might have given a very
detailed description of what they looked like for any of the ancillary
robots that weren't Transformers toys per se, but were featured in the
book. There weren't that many of them, but occasionally. Very rarely in
Transformers because there were so many characters that were already
established as Transformers. Occasionally I would create a new
character like Circuit Breaker. This is actually my copy of the
original sketch I did for Circuit Breaker.
audience member: What was your favorite story or story arc that you
wrote on The Transformers?
Bob Budiansky: Oh, I would say it was the two parter Smelting
Pool/Bridge to Nowhere. That was I think my favorite of the ones I
wrote.
audience member: When was it realized that the comic book was going to
be popular enough to become a regular series instead of a miniseries?
Bob Budiansky: I think it was...if I remember correctly it was a
bi-monthly miniseries. I'm not sure if it was monthly. I could be
wrong.
audience member: It was bi.
Bob Budiansky: It was bi-monthly. So that did give enough time for
sales figures to come in. Because I don't think we skipped much time
between the miniseries and the regular series.
audience member: It ended in December and you started like in January.
Bob Budiansky: Yeah, so we knew pretty...we had I think it was probably
a blessing in disguise that we had it as a bi-monthly because it could
give us more time to get some feedback and get it rolling as a regular
series. I wouldn't know if exactly it would take us a month or two
months but the sales were really great. Back then we were very naive
and very innocent, so what did we do? We started the regular series
with issue five. Nowadays we'd start it with issue zero or issue one
with five different cover versions, some are chromium. [audience
laughs] We just went from issue four to issue five.
audience member: Kind of a follow up that. So you didn't have an arc
of..did you write them individually or just sort of, here's the four
issues if it's just a mini, here's how it wraps up at the end.
Bob Budiansky: We didn't have plans beyond the four issue miniseries.
audience member: If it hadn't been picked up for a monthly, would issue
four have ended where it ended?
Bob Budiansky: Well I think it would have...I don't know. I don't
remember how issue four ended, so it's possible...
audience member: Everyone dies.
Bob Budiansky: What? Everyone died? It's possible by issue four we knew
and I don't know if we ended it with a little bit of a cliffhanger or
continuing thread or something. I really don't remember.
audience member: It's just one of theose things where if you knew it
was going to be a four issue limited series you would write to that,
not something to be continued.
Bob Budiansky: Well does anybody know? Was it to be continued or...? I
really don't remember how it ended.
audience member: Shockwave shows up, comes out of nowhere and kills
everyone.
Bob Budiansky: Oh, okay. Then we must have known. [laughs] But
originally we didn't know. Originally we were gonna do a four issue
series.
audience member: But you didn't sketch out the four issue miniseries?
Bob Budiansky: No, in fact it was almost impossible to sketch out the
four issue series because it had a different writer for almost every
issue [see Note 4]. You know, usually if you get one writer who's
committed to it, he'll say, "Okay, four issue miniseries-here's my arc
of stories." But nobody could handle it and that was it. When issue
five started, the book was handed over to a different editor because I
was only editing specials and miniseries, not regular series back then.
I went to the regular editor and I said, "If I were you I'd fire the
guy who I had writing for me." [laughs] Because I was feeding him the
entire story. It was such a mess to get a story out of the writers back
then. And the guy who I was suggesting should be fired was a good
friend of mine. He appreciated the fact that I recommended that he get
fired. [audience laughs] He saw it like a mercy killing.
So I said, "If you want, I'll write it," because I was basically
writing the plots anyway. So right after everything worked out. Well,
everything didn't quite work out. The editor who took over was a
nightmare but that's another story.
audience member: Whose decision at Marvel was it to include Spider-Man
in issue three?
Bob Budiansky: Well that's a really good question and there's a good
story behind that as well. In issue three, Spider-Man guest starred.
The writer at the time was Jim Salicrup who happened to be-he was the
guy who I suggested get fired with issue four-he happened to be the
editor of Spider-Man. He thought-again we didn't have a clue as to
whether Transformers was going to be a big success or not when we were
plotting these stories out. So he thought it would be a great boost to
the book to feature Spider-Man, which would be like the most prominent
Marvel character and so on. So that was his idea. I said, "Okay, sure."
I can't knock Spider-Man.
Well what happened was, Hasbro rejected Spider-Man. [audience laughs]
Which really sent us in a tizzy, like, WHAT? The reason was I believe
at the time I think it was Kenner had the action figure license which
included Spider-Man for Marvel. They felt that if we featured
Spider-Man in Transformers we were promoting their competition, Kenner.
We didn't quite look at it that way. We felt like, "Hey you're lucky
we're showing Spider-Man in this Transformers book. Nobody knows who
the Transformers are". But anyway so they rejected Spider-Man so we
came up with a compromise. At the time Spider-Man was in the red and
blue costume and the alien costume-the black and white costume. So we
featured him in his black and white costume which was not being
licensed to Kenner at that time [see Note 5]. So if you remember that
comic he's in the black and white costume. That's why.
audience member: So there was no decision of "We're going to make
Transformers fit in the Marvel Universe"...
Bob Budiansky: No, in retrospect it was probably a mistake to make that
connection. I guess there were a couple of connections with the Savage
Land.
audience member: Yeah, then nothing is ever mentioned again.
Bob Budiansky: In fact, another little side note. The Circuit Breaker
character-because I created it, if you look at the indicia at the
bottom of the first page, the copyright notice-everything's copyright
Hasbro except for like Spider-Man when he appears. Well, we made
sure-we went out of our way, Jim Shooter and I-to feature this
character for one panel in a Marvel comic book prior to her appearing
in Transformers so Marvel kept the copyright. So we could if we wanted
to we could do something else with her, you know, not need Hasbro's
approval.
audience member: Secret Wars-you edited Secret Wars II, right? That's
the one where she came out.
Bob Budiansky: Yeah.
Our secret. We felt like there was no reason why Hasbro should get to
keep the character that we created. It has nothing to do with
Transformers per se, it's not a robot.
audience member: Your books, you always seem to like hot chicks in
bikinis and Scrounge essentially commits suicide at the end of the
smelting pool arc-the little yellow guy who gives up.
Bob Budiansky: Oh yeah.
audience member: Hasbro never had any problem with this?
Bob Budiansky: Scrounge wasn't a Transformer.
audience member: That's true.
Bob Budiansky: He died heroically.
audience member: Yes he did, you're right and it's very touching and
really hit me hard when I was a kid and it's one of my favorites. But
how much input beyond 'please include X character into each book' did
Hasbro have? Because I know Mr. Furman-Simon Furman-says he pretty much
had free reign. But I understand some of the crushing weight you had to
deal with was the constant demand of introduction of hordes of new
characters. But did they ever have any editorial inputs, thinking, hey
maybe you should lay off on all the skimpy clothes on the hot chicks
and stuff?
Bob Budiansky: Well, there weren't that many hot chicks, but there were
a couple. [audience laughs] I don't want to exaggerate it. But no, they
didn't say anything about that. They never said anything about that.
They would occasionally...well, you hit the nail on the head. The
biggest burden I had in dealing with Hasbro was introducing each new
line of characters. If anybody really followed the comic books and
compared it to what was coming out on the shelves, you knew this is the
month where I'm introducing whatever-the Pretenders or the Dinobots or
whatever. That was a real burden and that helped burn me out on that
book faster than anything. Having to continually go back and introduce
a whole new set of characters, never getting the kind of opportunity I
really wanted to develop a particular character for any length of time.
I was lucky to do a couple stories like 'The Smelting Pool' where I was
able to focus on a couple of characters, but that happened less and
less frequently as time went on.
By the way, I was digressing...As far as Hasbro's interference, other
than that, I kind of knew there were limitations to what I can do.
Things couldn't get too gory, too messy or too adult or anything, so
it's pretty innocent. Occasionally they came back-I remember there was
a cover toward the end of my run where there's like this Amazon warrior
holding the robot [see Note 6]. Well, the original cover-she's just
holding his head. It was like with wires hanging out of him. I believe
I drew that one although Jim Lee gets all the credit for that one. He
inked it. I think I may have penciled it. So it had to go back to Jim,
and he had to put the body-he had to reattach the body to the head
because it was too gory to see a beheaded robot. So that was one
example of where they interfered, but really not much more than that.
Early on I would put little jokes into my pl(ots). Back then we plotted
stories, we didn't script them. (We) plotted them, it went to the
artist, came back to the writer to be dialogued. So I would put funny
things in my plot just to get a laugh out of the artist when he's
reading it. But Hasbro misinterpreted it as being serious, like he
really wants them to do that. So early on I learned don't put in those
little funny asides to the artist because Hasbro will take them
seriously, but wasn't even supposed to be in there.
audience member: Did you have to work any farther ahead than the normal
artist, editor or writer on this book because of the approval process?
Bob Budiansky: Nah, they were pretty good about approvals. Anyway I
always had to work far ahead because I had to plan to introduce all
these characters. Typically an editor/writer relationship back then was
like, you give an editor a six month arc of story ideas so the editor
knows what's coming up. The editor has to promote that through our
marketing department anyway so he needs to know what's coming up. So I
was always working a little bit ahead anyway. The approval process went
pretty quickly.
audience member: What's different now working for IDW than it was for
Marvel? Is it similar? Or are there a lot of differences?
Bob Budiansky: I don't go to the office as often since they're in San
Diego and I'm in Jersey. [audience laughs] No, it's pretty smooth, I
don't know. If anything I'm so much less involved. Back then I was much
more immersed in everything Transformers
. I was in the office everyday.
It's pretty much a very distant process. I just turn in my work and
that's about it. Ask Don something! He's a great artist!
audience member: This is a question for both of you guys-who's your
favorite Transformer of all time and why?
Don Figueroa: Mine's Optimus Prime for obvious reasons you can already
guess. I think the second one is probably...well, to draw?
audience member: Either one.
Don Figueroa: Well to draw, it's Shockwave. It's just a box and a
cicle. [audience laughs]
Bob Budiansky: Well, I like a couple stories I wrote with Blaster in
them. But real favorites? I like Megatron. I like the name I came up
with, I like what kind of personality I was able to bring to him on
occasion. I don't have a passionate favorite one way or the other.
There was a couple of characters I liked.
audience member: Don, over the last couple of years you've had a bunch
of your designs made as toys. How has that been for you personally, and
set up the process.
Don Figueroa: It saves me a lot of time making them myself. [audience
laughs] Before I did the drawings I was doing kitbashes and I had to
scratchbuild robots
and all that stuff so
it's easier now because I just draw 'em and just let them do the
engineering. [audience laughs]
audience member: Did you know they were putting your name on Titanium
Prime?
Don Figueroa: Actually I put slipped that in myself.
audience member: You did that? [audience laughs]
Don Figueroa: I thought it would be funny. I thought they were just
going to take that off. They went with it. I didn't think they were
going to keep it.
audience member: Not everyone gets to sign an action figure.
Don Figueroa: Yeah, I thought they should have been doing that like a
while ago. They probably did, you just gotta probably look at the
details.
audience member: [to Bob] You've been working at Scholastic, right?
Bob Budiansky: Right.
audience member: Does this mark an interest here in you returning to
comic books beyond the Transformers?
Bob Budiansky: Oh, me? Yeah I am interested in being more involved in
comics. I really haven't been in comics for like ten years. I think I
wrote in my biography there in the booklet that went out that I dabbled
in comics. So it's really not been something I've been involved with
heavily for about the last ten years. But I'm starting to get back
involved with it again and I might be getting more involved as an
artist as well. So (we'll) see where it goes.
audience member: Have you still not seen the Transformers movie or any
of the cartoons?
Bob Budiansky: I've seen 'The Transformers:The Movie', yes.
audience member: So you guys aren't going to be involved in any of the
designs for the new movie, are you?
Bob Budiansky: I'm not.
Don Figueroa: I actually visited the studio in Santa Monica when Archer
was there. They called me up and they wanted to like, make it more
closely to the actual Transformers, you know? But they-ILM and
Dreamworks-got a different idea than what I thought.
audience member: Have you seen those conceptualizations?
Don Figueroa: The designs? Yeah, I've seen all of 'em. Like the early
stuff from-I'm not sure how far they've gone right now because I
haven't been to the studio lately.
audience member: So would you say it's kind of similar to your stuff,
or..?
Don Figueroa: No. [laughs] Just throw away anything that you've seen
before. Anything that you know about the design, how they look,
anything like that. Just throw that out and expect something different.
audience member: [to Bob] With the profiles there you had the
spreadsheet.
Bob Budiansky: Yeah.
audience member: Did you do that to kind of keep things spread out?
Bob Budiansky: [shuffling through papers] I'm not sure which...what are
you talking about, spreadsheet?
audience member: Where you had, you know, the intelligence...
Bob Budiansky: Oh, this thing-the ratings chart.
audience member: Yeah, were you doing that systematically?
Bob Budiansky: Yeah, at the time...it was quite a while ago, twenty-two
years ago..at the time I was working on the profiles for the packaging,
somebody came up with the idea of coming up with different power
ratings or whatever you want to call them. This is just a way to like,
organize it for me. I had in mind like you know, Optimus Prime has to
be at the high end of the scale and Megatron has to be at the high end
of the scale. So by doing it this way I was able to sort of look
immediately and see how are these guys balancing out. As you would
expect, Bumblebee and similar models which were like smaller
Transformers-I even have a total number here-he comes up to a 46,
whereas Optimus Prime comes up to a 75. So I was able to give myself a
comparative way of doing this by just putting it on one piece of paper.
Just a very organized way of going about it. I don't know if I was this
organized later on as more and more products rolled out.
audience member: After the success of the Transformers, did you get
typecast at Marvel as the toy guy because then you edited Visionaries
and Air Raiders and...
Bob Budiansky: I was the special projects editor. There was a reason
for that.
audience member: So that was your job?
Bob Budiansky: Yeah, you're right. I was on Visionaries and Air Raiders
and I got involved in some of the treatment development in those
toylines as well. Some of the names. I know on the Visionaries-I don't
know if you ever, still have those toys and their packaging-I wrote all
the poems on the back. [audience laughs] There's all these kinds of
enchantments. Whatever each character had-these kinds of magical poem
or something-I wrote those.
audience member: [to Don] How is working at IDW different from working
at Dreamwave?
Don Figueroa: Well, they pay me. [audience laughs] They're pretty much
the same, really, aside from that. [audience laughs] Minor details.
audience member: Have you already discussed the way Dreamwave puttered
out? What happened exactly?
Don Figueroa: I don't really know what happened with Dreamwave. They
just kind of shut down. I didn't even know what was happening that last
month. I actually met with Pat the month before that and he was talking
like everything's cool, you know? Then he's just suddenly closed down
and we're all left out in the cold. I don't really know about what
happened.
audience member: Do you think they were demanding too much out of you
or the other artists?
Don Figueroa: Nah, I didn't think they were asking too much. It was
just sad when I wasn't drawing like usual.
audience member: Don, what was your favorite issue of the original
Transformers?
Don Figueroa: I think the one when Megatron and Shockwave were
fighting. It was issue six, was it? Shockwave beat the hell out of
Megatron. [audience laughs] I didn't expect that because I watched the
cartoon before I got the issues and that was like totally different
from the cartoons. I came from the Phillipines and we had the cartoons
before the comic books. The comic books were actually sent to me by my
mom. That's where I noticed the difference between the cartoon and the
comic.
audience member: On the occasions when Hasbro has asked you to do
design work pertaining to the toys, do they ever go through the actual
production process and come back to you saying, "Oh this didn't work,"
or "This part doesn't go there," or something like that and could you
fix it?
Don Figueroa: No, actually they design. They're in charge of the
engineering so I don't want to tell them what to do. If it was up to
me, I would be like, so intricate in the detailing the transformation
would be about ten steps because I'd want it to be totally detailed and
complicated.
audience member: If you were asked to do like a revamped animated
series would you consider that?
Don Figueroa: Sure, yeah. I know if it were possible I'd pitch my
couple of ideas to them if they'll let me.
audience member: Is there any plans to finish War Within? Are you guys
not able to at IDW?
Don Figueroa: You would have to ask Simon that. He probably would want
to finish it, but I'm not sure what's the situation about that.
audience member: Did Hasbro approach you or how did they approach you
when you went from doing comics to the actual toy design?
Don Figueroa: The first time they asked me to draw for a toy was for
one of the old War Within stuff. They said, 'We would like to try some
of that'. Archer just approached me one time in San Diego and told me
'Hey, we're gonna do Starscream'. I didn't think it was gonna be that
big though. [audience laughs] I wish it was a bit smaller but it was
pretty cool. He added all kinds of cool stuff like the sword. I wasn't
expecting that. I think that was the first time I saw my design was
inspiring the toys.
audience member: Did they then just have you do drawings from then on?
Don Figueroa: Mostly they were just taking my ideas from some of the
stuff, like especially with Primus. They got that concept from the
sketch I did from War Within towards the end. They told me they were
going to do that and I thought they were just gonna remold Unicron at
the time, I didn't think they were going to make an actual unique
design for it.
audience member: What's up with the Titanium tank Megatron? Did they
tell you make him a tank?
Don Figueroa: I just did that as a tank because for the
Transformer/G.I. Joe World War II version that Dreamwave did, he was a
Luger. I didn't think it would be okay if I were to do a die cast Luger
Transformer. [audience laughs] It would be setting off all the airports
and stuff like that. I don't want that problem so I just told them let
me make him a Maus, a big giant tank that the Germans used to have. I
just kind of souped it up. The transformation kind of got carried away
and didn't look like a Maus when you started.
audience member: Are you particularly impressed or dissapointed with
how any of your designs ended up coming out in plastic?
Don Figueroa: Well the Titanium ones I guess because of the engineering
process, it's mostly metal so some of the details just kind of get
messed up and some of the articulation from the plastic parts and the
metal doesn't work and it pops off easily.
audience member: What's your favorite of your designs that's been
produced?
Don Figueroa: It's not out yet so I can't tell you. It's a titanium.
Iacon One staff: If there aren't any more questions, we're just about
out of time. Bob and Don will be available for autographs....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1: Steve-O Stonebreaker photographed and commented on the ratings
chart in this thread at alt.toys.transformers [
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.toys.transformers/browse_frm/thread/bcd2372e0a51d801/#
]
Note 2: This was the sketch for the cover of #45.
Note 3: He pronounced it ULK-tar.
Note 4: TFarchive.com has revealed how the fourth issue would have been
edited had the series ended. They have a scan of the final page with
the alternate ending. You can find it at the TF Archive comics FAQ [
http://tfarchive.com/comics/faq ] (question f). I didn't want to
mention this at the panel because I didn't want to contradict Bob and
make myself seem like a know-it-all.
Note 5: Most likely he meant Mattel's 1984 Marvel Super Heroes Secret
Wars line of 3 3/4 inch figures. The line included both red and black
costume Spider-Man. Kenner at the time had the DC license and was
making the DC Super Powers line. Again, I didn't want to be a smartass
and contradict the man.
Note 6: Issue 53
G.B. Blackrock
there for.
G.B. Blackrock
Thunder 06
interesting to see his take on them after all these years.
t.k.
crazysteve
You're welcome.
> This is an interview I'd love to have been there for.
I recorded four minutes of grainy video from the panel. You can kind
of get an idea of what it was like to be there:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5440635513325731407
--
crazysteve with rubber tires
G.B. Blackrock
Way cool! Thanks!
G.B. Blackrock
Denyer
> I went to a Transformers convention last week and that means a new
> crazysteve panel transcript!
Thanks so much for this -- it's always fascinating getting more
background from the Marvel development years. =)
> Note 4: TFarchive.com has revealed how the fourth issue would have been
> edited had the series ended. They have a scan of the final page with
> the alternate ending. You can find it at the TF Archive comics FAQ [
> http://tfarchive.com/comics/faq ]
http://www.tfarchive.com/comics/marvel/alternate.jpg
Specifically, if anyone reading didn't already know this (might've come
up in conversation already, I'm typing into a reply for the specific
post that got linked somewhere) it got published in the second volume
of the Complete Works, probably because the series only ran to two
books and the editors felt it best to use the art for the closed
version.
http://www.tfarchive.com/comics/marvel/index.php?s=collected#cw2
D.
crazysteve
> Thanks so much for this -- it's always fascinating getting more
> background from the Marvel development years. =)
Thank you for all the work you and the crew do at TFArchive.com .
It's easily the greatest source of comics related Transformers
information anywhere. I think TFArchive.com is a godsend for
Transformers comics fans.
Denyer
> source of comics related Transformers information anywhere
Cheers -- a great deal of that's thanks to Tom, the bulk of whose old
site has found a home with us, and Spengs for his love of (and
usefully, ability to read) the Japanese stuff. And t' other reviewers,
of course. :)
Some more appreciative people here:
http://tfarchive.com/community/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35886
...and a general wondering: are these convention transcripts gathered
together anywhere, and would you mind us doing so? With credits and
linkbacks to anyplace you want, naturally. I thought I remembered a
scrambledcity.com, but the only site I can find now is
http://www.geocities.com/scrambledcity/
D.
crazysteve
> together anywhere,
No, I never sat down and compiled all of them like I intended to a
few years ago. When I decided to let scrambledcity.com die, that idea
died with it. I figured it was no big loss because they're all in
google's usenet archive of a.t.t.
> and would you mind us doing so?
Go for it! It's going to be a bit of a task compiling all of the
posts. I know I broke some of the transcripts into multiple seperate
parts so it'll take a little bit of searching to find them. Plus thanks
to the inputs of others on a.t.t. many corrections were made to some
transcripts and I hope you can incorporate their edits.
I honestly don't even remember doing some of them so I can't
precisely tell you how many there are. I do remember I did them
starting in 2004. I also know that regardless of my posting address, I
always end every post with 'crazysteve' so doing a search for that and
the name of the person or persons speaking should pull them all up.The
list should look something like:
from Botcon 2004-Dan Gilvezan's panel, Peter Cullen's panel and the G1
Hasbro Marketers panel. I think I did the Saturday night script
reading, too, but I don't remember if I posted that one publicly.
from Auto Assembly 2004-the Simon Furman/Andrew Wildman/Lee Sullivan
panel
from OTFCC 2004-G1 comics creators panel and the organizer's panel. I
think the organizer's panel at OTFCC 2004 was the only one I left
incomplete because it was such a train wreck to listen to.
from Iacon One 2006-Bob Budiansky & Don Figeroa
> With credits and linkbacks to anyplace you want, naturally.
I don't have a site to plug anymore, but if you could write my name
as Esteban 'crazysteve' De Anda, I'd appreciate it.
> the only site I can find now is http://www.geocities.com/scrambledcity/
That site is really just an archive of my kitbashes and it's so
unrelated to the transcription topic that I think it's better to leave
it unlinked. I don't want people who read the transcripts going there
expecting some sort of quality content!
necrotron
> That site is really just an archive of my kitbashes and it's so
> unrelated to the transcription topic that I think it's better to leave
> it unlinked. I don't want people who read the transcripts going there
> expecting some sort of quality content!
> crazysteve with rubber tires
Your custom figures are nothing *but* quality, my friend. You have no idea
how much I regretted not going to Iacon One when I saw them.
Joe
necrotron
(still going to Cybcon?)
Denyer
> > That site is really just an archive of my kitbashes
> how much I regretted not going to Iacon One when I saw them.
Aye, I particularly like Scrounge, part of whose charm is that he's a
Cybertronian who didn't luck out and end up as a more fully-featured
Autobot warrior. And the more detailed pieces (Megs, Starscream and
Cybmode Bumblebee are fantastic. I say link. Won't if he really doesn't
want me to, though. =)
[Will go through and gather transcripts, hopefully with a site ETA of a
few days' time -- bit busy at the moment.]
D.
Steve-o Stonebraker
> Go for it! It's going to be a bit of a task compiling all of the
> posts. I know I broke some of the transcripts into multiple seperate
> parts so it'll take a little bit of searching to find them. Plus thanks
> to the inputs of others on a.t.t. many corrections were made to some
> transcripts and I hope you can incorporate their edits.
I have... five of them saved, and already assembled. Three from BotCon 04
and two from OTFCC 04. I'll put them here so Denyer can grab them if he
wants:
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~sstoneb/misc/
They mainly still have their usenet headers in them, even at the
beginnings of new parts, but they're compiled at least.
--Steve-o
--
Steve Stonebraker (sst...@gmail.com) Physicist and All-Around Geek
www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~sstoneb/ AIM: srstoneb Y!IM: sstoneb