SPeak Art

Digital Artist, He/Him, Robot Enthusiast. Mostly doing Transformers fanart with some smatterings of oc content and my other hyperfixations. Reanimating my tumblr account after a decade because the rest of the internet is so tiring I may like robots but if you use AI do not percieve me let alone interact.

[sirpeakpen]

A few more Autobots

Think I should start knocking out more of my AU's "Earth-Strandee" autobots because I keep staring at the full scale chart and wanting to share but not wanting to do so without all the designs being accessible elsewhere. But since this will take a while I might as well share the ones who's designs that have most of their part placement or shapes planned out.

First up is the Chief Medical Officer Ratchet. Love his cranky-ol-coot persona in TFA and MTMTE but he's never been a bot I've thought heavily about personality-wise and so I think his current design might be lacking on characterful details. I am very fond of this Sprinter 316 altmode and the Danish ambulance green/black colorscheme, as I think there are all too many red and white autobots but the cute compact van shape still appeals to me more than some boxy US ambulances. Definitely a design I'll have to look back over because even if It looks good to me I think it doesn't speak much to who/what Ratchet is

Next up is Ironhide, who for years I knew that a bulky, obnoxious SUV would be the perfect altmode for, perfectly briding that Bayverse Pickup and the G1 Van. Not a friendly looking vehicle, but fitting for a tough bot like him. Since his head and arms rising from the bottom of the hood, he'll always face backwards from whereever the car was facing and be ready to stand and fight anyone behind him. Stacked with rivets in the armor, having silly tire-biceps to pump up, and rocking a Movie scarred optic sells his look as this rough and tumble autobot, so I'm very satisfied with where his design is going.

Finally we have Bulkhead, a bot of many talents but who's chief one aboard the Ark is Engineer. He's another big intimidating autobot, even bigger than Ironhide, but who's far more chill and content and much less violent and moody. Design is pretty much a G1-ified TFA look, and admitedly he needs another pass so that he makes more sense, but I am just too endeared by having him be this big boxy bot (I'm a person who actually loves his Legacy figure so maybe I'm just sick). A old swiss army vehicle like the Mowag Duro is probably the best real life design I can use for him that justifies him being so big, and even then I think I'm starting to feel that anti-mass-shifting bias push me towards significant redesigning.

Anyways heres the...van trio? Small medium and large truck squad? Theres some overlap here but the words fail me... Anyway I'll flesh them all out more in due time, after either studying designs from more prolific Transformers fanartists or just finding a similar human character who's design and fashion inspires me. Still, plenty more designs to look through that I'll hopefully actually draw instead of getting obsessed with lore details (Does Ratchet actually have a medical liscense) or voice claims (Nick Nolte, Bob Carter, Norm MacDonald, no further elaboration)

[sirpeakpen]

Perona I'm sorry I hope there's still time...

Perona is my favorite muse I might love drawing her more than anything else. But I've been so distracted I didn't even realize her birthday was today.... As consolation for my IGNORANCE I'm posting this old fanart I did a little under a year ago

[sirpeakpen]

As extra penance two more; first is just a more saturated version of my 6-Fave-Character drawing (I use it as my icon on discord and its probably my favorite drawing I've ever made) and second is Golden Week art I made to celebrate how that original piece popped off on twitter (Not my most tasteful work but I was less thirsty and more excited to try rendering larger areas of skin)

[sirpeakpen]

Perona I'm sorry I hope there's still time...

Perona is my favorite muse I might love drawing her more than anything else. But I've been so distracted I didn't even realize her birthday was today.... As consolation for my IGNORANCE I'm posting this old fanart I did a little under a year ago

[sirpeakpen]

Wheeljack Design!

Been slowing down trying to do some other designs in the backlog but to break that up I tried experimenting with some very strange color placements for Jackie

[sirpeakpen]

Wheeljack...I think it was only halfway through my 10th doodle of him did I realize "Holy shit am I a Wheeljack lover?"

Something very charming about deranged autobot scientists, as in this AU he'd be a bit of a composite of obviously Wheeljack but with a fair helping of Brainstorm's warcriminal ass shoved in. I think I'm also very endeared just cause I was obsessed with the old Dr.Smoov youtube skits with him like "Autobot SOS" and"Wheeljack vs Cereal", so hearing that voice while he fucks up an invention and blows his lab up just soothes the soul...but back to the designing

Wheeljack was very fun for me to design because there are a LOT of good designs for him outside of G1 (Sorry not you DotM Movie Que) all testing new part placement and colors. Originally I was very loyal to doing the Alternator's/Movie blue and white colorscheme, and I still may make an alt, but I think the orange eyes/accents from Cybertron Downshift coupled with the almost sickly muted colors from the Movie Advanced Wheeljack are winning me over now. Something I want to emphasize which these odder color choices is helping with is how strange Wheeljack is. A big focus of the design is him being overtuned, overclocked, and stuffed with novel gadgets he modded himself with out of curiosity or convenience. And so part placement, while on the surface achieving the G1 Silhouette, is still breaking away from that. For example yeah he's got the big car feet except...oh thats the back of the car not the front, and...its upside down for some reason? Just enough so that the surface level he's already a little strange to the average observer/fellow cybertronian, and thats before he unleashes some decepticon-incinerating laser out of his forehead.

I still however was very attatched to him being a smaller autobot, so a van or mobile meth-lab or anything more utilitarian lost favor compared to just a really tuned up Rally Car. The Ford RS200 won that competition thanks to that funny quad light array on the front and having enough angular surfaces that transformation planning was still feasible

Beyond the base car though, a big inspiration was all of the ridiculous spy cars popularized in film series like James Bond, shows like Knight Rider, and especially games like GTAV. Hidden rayguns or mine deployers, hover technology built under the chasis, other strange ideas that would be fantastical for normal cars would be fun inclusions for Jackie to incorperate into his own body for use in either mode, which in spite of him being an untrained fighter could easily make him one of the most dangerous and unpredictable autobots to face as the average decepticon. And that doesn't even account for what weapons or machines he's got around him to use.

Thats about it for the moment, already showed the scale so ending this post with some 5+ year old proto design (back when I settled for copying colors from some Naihaan artwork on a standard g1 wheeljack and called it a day). I might drop some more non-colored unfinished designs just cause they're not doing me any good sitting on my iPad uncolored (and since theres a couple like Ironhide, Perceptor and Megatron that I'm actually rather happy with) Thank you for reading this far if my ramblings were interesting to you, as well as for all the love I recieved for the Whirlwind design, and now I'll go to bed

[sirpeakpen]

Wheeljack Design!

Been slowing down trying to do some other designs in the backlog but to break that up I tried experimenting with some very strange color placements for Jackie

[sirpeakpen]

Progress with Whirl, or as I'm naming him in this AU, Whirlwind!

[sirpeakpen]

First things first: "Why change the name?" To be honest its mostly because (baring "Kup" all the wreckers have these multi syllable 2-part transformer names (Roadbuster, Topspin, Sandstorm) and I want him to match those a little better. Though part of it is also that "Whirl" as a word doesn't fit such a scary guy; it's like "Twirl" or "Spin", its simple and almost cute. That works as a nickname, but I think "Whirlwind" evokes more of what he's about; He's a wild, lively, and violent bot that transforms into a helicopter, a flying vehicle that spins to create lift. And plus I saw on his TFWiki page shows thats his French Canadian name, so I think I got a pass to change things up.

Anyways a Mil Mi-24V was picked for the alt mode as it was a pretty slender and simple helicopter shapewise. There's a fun cockpit shape that makes him look a little bigger than he really is by hiding the second dome after he transforms.

The big arms forming from the tail get to swing forward in transformation, like two giant pincers...almost like the two on the ends of each hand!

The design will eventually get cleaned up a little more, but as is I'm satisfied with actually knowing where most of the parts go (Do NOT ask how half of the chopper's body compresses into his turkey thighs and calves). Whirl's one of my favorite characters, I loved him so much in MTMTE with 2:1 ratio of fucking asshole and sad woobie. For now I'll move on to other characters, but before I close I'll include the several redesigns from many years ago (so far back that I was just redrawing MMC's R-24 Turben and using that as the design)

[sirpeakpen]

Progress with Whirl, or as I'm naming him in this AU, Whirlwind!

[sirpeakpen]

Back half of May has been empty mb

Have had more transformers fan designs in the oven but been a little hesitant to post the ones that aren't as polished. Next up will definitely be another Whirl because I decided to refine his look a little more. But also I'm just posting because that greasy fuck who runs twitter suspended me (and many other people including other friends of mine) for "inauthentic behaviors" and I'm so livid right now it's not funny. So if those morons steering "X the Everything App" are really that fucking incompetent that they can't fix it; guess this will be my primary art posting site period! Happy happy joy joy!

[sirpeakpen]

Happy Star Wars Day for all the nerds out there. We will be repping our Seperatist propaganda as much as possible.

[sirpeakpen]

Soundwave, my favorite transformer, finally has a redesign from me that I'm happy with (and finally has colors after that 6-character drawing forced me to pick some)

[sirpeakpen]

Wanna see how reblogging looks so we putting all the yap here instead

As indicated in my fav character art, Soundwave is not only my favorite Transformer but favorite fictional character (MAYBE tied with The Fallen, but that's an obsession thats harder to justify). As such I've thought through MANY redesigns and tried to understand what from his plethora of appearances and characterizations I wanted to pull. After years of just picking computer terminals and lamposts and rovers and cybertronian blocks-o-bullshit, what finally kicked off this design was seeing this "news van" made from a Chevy Suburban

Because I have been a Soundwave surveillance van truther for a while, but felt uninspired with the Ironhide/Ratchet copy paste transformation schemes with traditional big boxy vans. the shapes of this older car stuck with me, not to mention the ridiculous satellite hooked up on top, so I decided that known family-bot Soundwave could rock a fitting station wagon.

Following that, main goal was then how he'd "wear" this alt mode. I've liked many looks for soundwave from lithe and creepy like TFP to big and boxy like TFA, but what pushed me to decide how I'd want him to look is by imagining if their body was an outfit, how it'd work. Of the roles soundwave would play, while I could see any of them being a strong basis, something spoke to me about soundwave as a creative, someone stylish who engages with art, which lead to one of my strangest thoughts; "What if Soundwave was Anby from ZZZ?"

As such, the "headphones", "sleeves" and "skirt" were all shamelessly stolen as to give Cuntwave somecool features. I think I could have pushed the idea further, but I think that the shape language Soundwave with the fanned out shoulders and ankles, the boxy chest and hips, they all are just too gratifying to look at (the legs are a little bare, and the exposed thigh gimmick was cute but probably should be reworked)

But of course thats not all, because with Soundwave comes a legion of child soldiers. I'll be briefer with them but the gist is that since we're not cassettes we need other "semi-plausible" alt modes. Rumble Frenzy are easy, two bikes sounded fun and lets them be especially mobile when fighing autobots at their short heights. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw were unfortunate; I was NOT using some dinky 4-bladed box-with-wings normal drone and so had to go with soem insane military ones. The two are distinct, and Buzzsaw is far too big a bird to even pretend like he'd fit in Soundwaves trunk, so again not too much interplay with Soundwave Leaving Ravage and Ratbat, who both attempt actual interplay with Soundwave's alt mode to differing success. Ratbat as a satellite dish is just perfect, matches amazingly with the bat aesthetic to funnel signals, and it can mount right on the roof in station wagon mode which is amazing. Ravage meanwhile is a bunch of computer equipment shoved in the backseat....yeah we might need some revisions. Having a silly stationary altmode can be fine, but I'll need to really exagerate some features to make it not look so phoned in.

So yeah! Theres the happy family. A very cathartic share, even if there are details I'm now more critical of after posting regarding everyone. With that, and a little collage showing my...painful past soundwave redesigins, I can stop the word vomit.

[sirpeakpen]

Soundwave, my favorite transformer, finally has a redesign from me that I'm happy with (and finally has colors after that 6-character drawing forced me to pick some)

[sirpeakpen]

While not as fleshed out as the others, the wreckers are also a faction of autobots I was interested in and were among the first redesigns I did a year ago. Had to try and do right by my second favorite faction of fucked-up muderhappy autobots

Starting from the easiest to explain, Roadbuster was the product of seeing the Kalyani M4 armored vehicle and thinking "Holy shit that'd be a good Roadbuster", followed by me bullshitting up a design. The kinks with his part placement aren't fully ironed out yet but the most fun part for me was visualizing a transformation. With the wheels on his elbows and knees, he can almost hit a ballistic pushup from the ground to get straight to shooting, which I think fits well with such a tough wardog guy. Seaspray meanwhile I had to HUNT to find a vehicle mode that fit him; I desperately wanted to keep the hovercraft look but most real world equivelants are just way too big. Eventually this ancient british craft showed up that was close enough to what I'd want...and it just happened to be the G1 inspiration too so I had to softly weep. Changing up the transformation scheme was the best I could do, going more HftD with the torso and wearing the big flotation portion like puffy sleeves on his arms.

Whirl, as one of my favorite characters, has been drawn and redesigned by me alot. The russian helicopter I picked for him was chosen so that his chest and shoulders could wear interesting rounded shape, because in the past I've gone overly sci fi with him and given him angular sharp vtol traits. I still got to emphasize the gangly almost scary MTMTE design I love with the tail portion splitting for the arms, giving him some very intimidating weapons. The only other notable trait I'll emphasize is that his head is supposed to be the Mi-24V's flight instruments and cockpit controls, which means that should he have a passenger he can make things really scary really fast.

Steeljaw is the team pet, and while I could bring up his sad backstory details the main focus is his design, which as a quadbike means he's got some surprising size and heft for a minibot (not that it matters on a team with such freakishly large bots. The articulating handlebar ears and front wheels compressing while the back ones sit as hips are my favorite design choices.

Closing with the triple changers...yeah they don't triple change. I think Springer has enough going on in terms of character and design that he doesn't really "Need" his gimmick to set him apart from other autobots, and I think that the Osprey really is a wacky enough vehicle that he can get away with it. He wears the VTOL with some heroic proportions, and having the blades reconfigure to be almost batman arm spikes was very fun Broadside is the least fleshed out of the bunch but partially because with his vehicle mode hes just very panel heavy and therefor not so fun to draw. I think details like his armada jetfire fold-down chest and the landing gear down his arms are fine, but he's certainly gonna need some reworks to be interesting to me. Which sucks because he's the most neglected bot on this list and I wanna give him a real chance to shine.

And thats them, for now at least. Whirl shouldn't really be here as a Wrecker dropout or should otherwise be surrounded by some more parttimers, but since they were designed at the same time I think its good. As for who i'll do next, probably gonna shine some light on that soundwave design I shared and then go back to Ark crew members.

[sirpeakpen]

Finally, head of Autobot Spec. Ops and essentially the right hand of Optimus Prime; Jazz. High expectations going into designing Jazz, because he's a transformer who's been all but perfected designwise. RTS Jazz might be my favorite looking tf figure period and does basically everything right in terms of looks and feel, and his look in Animated, FOC and IDW really can't be ignored either (and dare I also give praise to RotB Mirage who's Jazz in all but name?). I feel as though with the current design direction he calls back to all 3 to a decent extent, with some Ingredient X thrown in with a certain anime character's influence

I think something I've neglected in the past regarding designing figures for my AU is transformation, specifically how a character moves during it. Some are very stand out, like G1 Optimus or Movie Starscream, but its not something I dwell too long on for transformers...with the sole exception of Sato- i mean Jazz. I played FOC an unhealthy amount growing up and Jazz's transformation ways always incredibly eye catching and showed off character. With that I KNEW I had to include a rotation at the hip so that his transformation could be lively, the legs spin kicking around to almost look like breakdancing. Past the swinging legs, Main goal was just to give him as much aura as I could while still looking like Jazz. Raised collar, big smile, and I wanted the legs to gradually bulk out towards the bottom almost like loose fitting pants (More visible in the sketch than the "final" design, 10 years of this and I still can't help but drastically undersize thighs hips and waists on transformers) All this built around a Porche 918 Spyder SRS, cause G1 callbacks aside the contour lines on the hood and air intakes on the sides make drawing it more engaging than most modern cars.

With that, Spec Ops is done (shamelessly throws in scale chart again). Autobot "scouts" (or to be more direct, deluxe class carbots) aren't always the most engaging for me, but of the 3 included I think they each have a pretty distinct visual identity. Add in Prowl shedding the police car for a much sillier vehicle and they make for a pretty ridiculous team.

[sirpeakpen]

Completed this "Draw A Character You Like" Sheet after like 5 days of work and 5 months of it sitting on my ipad untouched. The Perona might be my new favorite artwork I've produced but I'm happy with how all of them turned out as this is kind of my comeback to drawing after half a year of barely any output!

Here's everyone individually, including a peek at my redesign of Soundwave

[sirpeakpen]

Arcee and Sideswipe double feature because both being fast and violent sports cars that stab people to death, they match a lot. Both are gonna be designed to be a little "scary". Arcee is a pretty hardened jaded autobot and Sideswipe is an ex-decepticon (as an inversion of armada wheeljack) and so each needs to be a little offputting to the average bot that doesn't know them better.

Arcee was interesting just because as a "female robot" some feminine shapes are common place, but not something I think should be too exagerated (no disrespect to artists or viewers who enjoy their goonbait, personally the only Double D transformer I'm looking Shockwave). I did find some artwork Makotron did with some wheels in her chest cute, but past that and being a lankier bot with smaller feet I didn't care to do some wasp waist or sculpted asscheek nonsense. More important than her physique is getting those shoulder blocks and round noggin, the former of which I might rework to further refine the backpack but otherwise is nice.

Sideswipe is supposed to be a real asshole toughguy punk compared to silly cute autobots like Bee, cause equal to the now iconic RotF look I love his G2 design with the gritted teeth and spikes and guns (traits that also make him a better sidekick to Ironhide). So that combined with a pretty sharp modern sports car means he gets to have some agressive sharp angels on the design. Past that and callbacks to that movie design with swiveling feet for the wheel gimick and arm blades from some kibble, he's a design so gratuitous that my restraint with Arcee looks a bit hypocritical. These designs have been sitting around for a while at this point, so I'm hoping to polish them up a bit more since their among my favorites of the autobots I've done.

[sirpeakpen]

Bumblebee is one of two designs I did full colors for so for a while I can't share anything as impressive as him; I do have basic designs done for most of my "Ark Crew" Autobots in my AU though, so I can start trickling them out, starting with some of the autobot Spec Ops team

Prowl is an interesting transformers character because while I'm WAY more attached to the (admittedly blander) TFA ninja bot than the prick-prowl most apparent in idw, I also am a bigger fan of the more conventional police colors and want to avoid having a normal motorcycle for any normal cybertronain's altmode for the mass-shifting reasons I mentioned in my last post.

The solution? as a New Yorker for all my life I've seen these little goofy motorized tricycles used by NYPD (always parked around looking silly instead of actually going on a road). And I thought that this vehicle mode means he'd actually be just big enough to feel like a normal bot (and might actually get taller than Bumblebee) and incorperate a more typical colorscheme for him So Prowl gets to bring some of the prick's aura while serving a role on the team as his more reserved and introverted TFA incarnation. Its fun trying to get door wings and puffy ninja pants out of the very iregular shape

Will admit though, my mass shifting hangups kinda look silly when I then use a vehicle like this where, ya know, theres basically NO MASS in the thing and its a box with wheels and an engine. Sure theres plenty of kibble but; where is the rest of the transformers anatomy going? Lets just assume out of sight out of mind..

Next I'll do Arcee but just a preview of the designs and their heights here so you can see how a quadcycle and a tricycle measure up to some "real" carbots

[sirpeakpen]

Inagural art of the new account; I still really really love transformers and am on my 10th wave of redesigining characters for my no-name decade-in-the-oven AU. Here's Bumblebee! I hate excessive mass-shifting in transformers but love the idea of BB being a little chungus compared to everyone else, so a tiny EV like the Silence-S04 was far too appealing. Gods favorite marketable kids-appeal robot gets to keep the door wings AND the hood feet because as designer we will stretch the rules as far as possible