Why Micheal Bay Rejected The G1 Designs for Transformers (2007)

As transformer fan Who watches this channel sometimes this is gonna be a treat

I do really like the designs for the robots the first three films did (although wasn't crazy with the animalistic designs for the Decepticons) but Bumblebee showed that the G1 designs can be modernized and be realistic.

As a kid I thought these designs were the coolest thing on earth but as an adult and a huge fan of Transformers in general, I can appreciate them for what they meant at the time, but I think there are other ways they can approach these characters in the future and this definitely NOT "the only way to make the feel grounded"

You gotta admit that Megatron's bayverse design was menacing and badass

Shia LaBeouf's comments aged about as well as any Michael Bay movie.

Optimus Prime's facial movements were based off of Liam Neeson

One of the best things about the Bayverse designs was that they actually incorporated the ALIEN aspect to them. G1 never was made with that in mind since they just took the original Diaclone toys and ran with them and made up the plot and lore on the spot. Bayverse designs FEEL and LOOK foreign and alien, almost Lovecraftian in their complexity and geometry. It's what really got me into drawing and now I'm a freelance concept artist and illustrator that does a lot of TF work.

The transformers movie concept arts were the reason of why I started to practice drawing and studying animation, and honestly, some designs are excellent reinventions, in my case, I love the design of optimus prime, but there's a detail that I love of these designs, and that is the fact that the robots have alien runes in some metal pads, what gives to them a more ancient and mysterious vibe, so sad that this detail get lost in the last movies, but Im agree with the fact that the robots could look more simple, accurate to G1 and alien looking at the same time.

I think it’s pretty funny that Michael Bay was like “it would look so lame if I just took the G1 designs and put it in the movie, and to most people the best live action Optimus design is from Bumblebee, which is just the G1 design in live action

I grew up getting into transformers with G1, RID2001 and the unicron trilogy. However when this was releasing, the bayverse designs are still my favorite aesthetics for these bots, the only thing that suffered was the writing as time goes on.

Idc how much complaining people did about it. Not everything needs to be g1

In all honesty even if you hate the bay transformers movie you got to admit that the vfx where impressive especially for the times Also the design and engineering of the 3D models is really impressive, I remember watching the movie an pausing every time they transferred cuz I like seeing how every piece moved into place, yeah there's probably alot of times where they cheat an just make up parts of the transformation but as a kid watching it was so cool

I think that it was a good idea to update the designs, but I DEFINITELY feel that they over designed many of the characters, to the point they're pretty hard to read. I find that BumbleBee did a better did a better job of having the characters transform, while still maintaining some semblance of their original vehicle forms.

Say what you want about the Bayformer films, but a lot of the designs were pretty solid. Blackout from the ‘07 film will always be my favorite design.

To me, Shia kinda hit the nail on the head with that little comment in the beginning. The G1 designs were amazing for their time, and having them in live action would be a treat (as seen with Bumblebee and ROTB) but with the modern era you got to update things a little more to appeal for a wider audience instead of trying to limit yourself and keep everything 1:1 just to make some old fans happy. Having Megatron, a 20-30 ft tall blocky robot somehow shrink into a handheld pistol is going to require a MAJOR amount of suspending beliefs in a movie trying to convey a little more realism into the story -- at least as realistic as a world with giant sentient robots can get. That said, I'm not tryna argue that Bayformers were "peak fiction" since it definitely had some flaws as the designs got to a point that a lot of the characters became more and more unrecognizable (and this extends to their character too). But you could tell there was - at least in the beginning - an effort to start anew, while still giving just enough reference of the old.

My biggest issue with the Bay designs is that there’s so little defining features for these characters, regardless of how good the VFX is. Optimus and Bumblebee in the first movie look good enough, they’re a bit messy but they have the essence down. But Sideswipe, the red Lamborghini with a shoulder mounted rocket? Now he’s a silver car with swords and wheel feet. Wheeljack, the white and red sports car with a rocket launcher and head with fins and faceplate? Now he’s a blue, hideous Albert Einstein. There’s just no throughline. And don’t even get me started on the Decepticons. I loved these movies as a kid, and I think some things like the VFX hold up extremely well even today. But man, these films did a really poor job of representing this franchise, especially to casual audiences.

You know what, to me the only good thing about Bayverse are the design of the Character, how they brave enough to make a design that sometimes just wild and ridiculous (I'm looking at you Hightower) But of course geewunner have to ruin it because they fear change and Optimus Prime should be look exact like he did in 80 forever And The Bumblebee Movie are the perfect sample that G1 Design and Bayverse Aesthetic can combine and make something good

Imma be honest, in 2007 if the live action Transformers looked like G1, everyone would have clowned the film at that time

Awesome video, also that Megatron sketch at 5:09 is amazing imagine if they actually went with that look

Something funny about the first live-action TF film is that most of the Autobots & Decepticons still take some design cues from their G1 incarnations, just buried deep under the surface. For example, look at their heads: Optimus Prime is technically the best example of this, but Bee's horns, Ironhide's rounded-out helmet with the crest and Jazz's visor are also pretty good at invoking some amount of familiarity (Ratchet was originally gonna look a bit closer to his cartoon appearance, but that was scrapped in favor of something Bay deemed "cooler" ig). Now for the Decepticons it gets trickier, but once I point it out it might surprise ya. Both Starscream and Megatron have vaguely similar head shapes to their cartoon versions, with the top of Megatron's helmet meeting at a point and Starscream's helmet having side vents (funny cus Starscream's head was originally meant to be Megatron's). Blackout's head design definitely invokes Soundwave since that's pretty much the role he plays in the film (I remember seeing a concept animatic of Soundwave turning into a helicopter on the 2-disc special edition, so that might have been the case at some point) As for the rest of em they seem to be unique designs entirely X3