Who knew that blasting Starset and Radiohead on repeat would give me so many ideas for your ex!wheeljack. Some of these songs really resonate with wheeljack a lot and I genuinely reached a flow state reading bits of the fic, listening to these songs and drawing little sketches of wheeljack. It's helping get me out of artblock atleast!!!
Here have some little sketches I recently did of wheeljack! :D
I'm trying to do more dynamic styles with him aswell bc my artstyle is a little outdated and needs some tweaking here and there but I'll get the hang of it! Its been a while lol. The mandible design that I came up with is also getting a little bit of work but this is how it is so far!
First one kinda giving thousand yard stare lmao
Lots of yapping below the cut lol
OH MY GOD. OMHY GOD LOOK AT HIM. HOLY SHIT. SCREAMING AND CRYING. MIGHT TAKE ME A SECOND TO BE COHERENT ABOUT THIS
Ok first of all STARSET SONG RECOMMENDATIONS HAND ‘EM OVER. I absolutely agree, I already have a few saved to my Horror Show playlist that I listen to when I write. If I have missed any that fit him I need to know immediately lol. The ones I’ve picked out are Monster, Unbecoming, and My Demons. I am so honored that this has helped you with your artblock, and also WHAT DO YOU MEAN SKETCHES THESE ARE FULLY FINISHED MASTERPIECES. AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN OUTDATED THIS IS BEAUTIFUL
Holy crap his eyes. It’s the first thing I noticed. He is giving thousand yard stare mixed with that weird, blank, uncanny valley stare described in the fic. It’s so, so, so unsettling and frankly it fits his default facial expression even better than the one I had in my head. He also looks like he’s on the verge of tears in every picture except the last one which is. Also very accurate LMAO
Look at all the scars. LOOK AT ALL THE DETAILS. Is that white pencil in the eyes?? If you have any tips on blocking out shapes, clean detailing, or shading I would love to hear it. HIS BACK IS SO WELL DRAWN
The teeth my god he has so many teeth!! That jaw split looks so raw and unnatural and terrifying!!! That’s what Ratchet was staring down??? That’s the face that he looked into and thought he was gonna die???? I’m gonna be so normal about this I’m so normal right now. HE LOOKS SO PREDATORIAL/PISSED OFF IN THE LAST ONE RGRHTHHRGRGRHFGRGRGHRHFHFHFG WHY DOES HIS JAW OPEN THAT WIDE. THAT’S HORRIFYING. AND PERFECT.
My beastly little sopping wet cat/octopus/weird bug thing <333333 I have spent so much time just scrolling up and down staring at these and applying my eyeballs directly to the screen to absorb all the details. NECRO THANK YOU SO MUCH THIS IS GORGEOUS!!! HE IS ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE FUEL!!! Seriously I cannot thank you enough, when I finally have enough time to write (FINALS FREE ME) I am going to have these pulled up to look at while I’m writing and listening to my playlist. For reasons. Definitely writing a happy chapter where nothing goes wrong reasons. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
Enjoy my pretties! Also @leafdragon16 your lovely Experiment!Wheeljack was the main inspiration for it’s creation so I hope u like or it gives you some ideas :)
THE POWERPOINT EDITION OF HORROR SHOW HAS RETURNED >:)
THE MINECRAFT CAVE SCREENSHOT TOOK ME OUT. NOW ALL I CAN IMAGINE IS WHEELJACK APPEARING IN THE DARKNESS VIA POWERPOINT SWIPE EFFECT ACCOMPANIED BY A MINECRAFT CAVE SOUND
I am terrified and in awe of your power. How did you layer images on top of one another. HOW DID YOU COLOR CORRECT WHEELJACK. This is not PowerPoint it’s sorcery
TFP Meg from months ago bc I haven’t drawn him in a while and I miss my boy :(
Small compilation of Ex!Jackie (plus Shockwave) doodles I made in pen while bored volunteering at a convention. Anyone who draws with pen is stronger than me bc it is impossible to erase mistakes and I Am Not Okay With That
First attempts at drawing IDW Helex and Tarn! Not super proud of Helex but he is another pen sketch so I couldn’t adjust any mistakes
And of course this post was not gonna escape without featuring an Overlord. His dynamic with Tarn is hilarious in the comics, he pretty much just bullies him the whole time and all Tarn can do is either glare at him or attempt to insult him only to get clapped back so hard that there’s no way to recover LMAO
For Wheeljack's facial mods I heard you're still working on their structure and such. May I present my reference? I've been using a wasp mandible reference for the the way I've been drawing your wheeljack. It also reminded me of preying mantis and tiger beetle. Thought about how his jaws were supposed to split apart, and it gave me an idea.
I did a few concepts of my own and settled on this for his jaws. It's not exactly canon to your design, but I wanted to do my own take on it and wanted to know your thoughts! Just thought this was pretty cool :D Here's a little bit of what I had in mind!
This fic just has me locked in and has given me so many ideas and I love it so much
NECRO. GRIPPING YOUR SHOULDERS. NECRO OH MY GOD THIS IS ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE
Ok normal for exactly 2 seconds because I started rambling and drew some small diagrams so I’m putting it under the cut because this got LONG (and it also is looking like it won’t initially post with the readmore TUMBLR so I will probably go back and edit this post a few times upon posting it lol)
EDIT: Okay it is not posting the readmore for some reason so apologies for any nuked dashboards lol
I WILL ANSWER YOUR QUESTION BUT LET ME FREAK OUT ABOUT THAT ART REALLY QUICK BECAUSE I HAD TO SIT DOWN AND PROCESS IT FOR A FULL 30 SECONDS BEDORE I COULD EVEN BEGIN FORMULATING A RESPONSE. I KEEP SCROLLING BACK UP WHILE TYPING JUST TO STARE AT IT
THAT IS TERRIFYING. HE IS ALL TEETH!! THERE IS NOTHING BUT TEETH IN THERE!!! THERE IS TOO MANY TEETH FOR ANYONE TO RIGHTFULLY HAVE WHICH IS EXACTLY THE AMOUNT OF TEETH EX!JACKIE SHOULD HAVE!!!
ALSO THE CIRCULAR SCRAPLET TEETH FAINTLY VISIBLE AT THE BACK OF HIS THROAT?? OH MY GOD?? I HAVE BEEN STRUGGLING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO PORTRAY THAT FOR SO LONG I AM LOSING MY MIND. I AM STICKING MY HEAD IN THERE
OH AND THE ADDED DETAIL OF THE PLACES WHERE HIS JAWS CONNECT ADDS SO MUCH. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN IT BUT IT LOOKS SO MUCH MORE RAW AND MONSTROUS AND NOT CYBERTRONIAN AND EGHFGRHGFHSGDHFHBDGRFRGRGRGGRR
Ok I will move on to my explanation now but thank you so much!! This is so gorgeous and I love it so much!! This is the sort of thing that would make someone hide their face for centuries and give their teammates nightmares if they were looking it dead in the face (looking at you Ratchet). This is exactly the level of terrifying that I was going for when I originally started writing this fic. It encapsulates it perfectly! He is an absolute nightmare in the best way possible
I have been having a lot of trouble figuring out how his facial mods would work, and that’s mainly because I haven’t been using any references LOL. When I first tried doodling his face wayyyy back in the first post about this AU I used a few screenshots of Terrorcon Breakdown, but I only used it loosely. I absolutely LOVE the insect references for his jaws, it really helps clarify the structure and when I opened the ask and saw them (particularly the mantis) I went “huh that’s actually really close to what I had in mind!” And the got completely blown away by the concept at the bottom LMAO
I originally based his facial mods (or at least how they unhinge) a lot on Predaking. His jaw splits down the middle and at the sides to create two halves (I THINK), and I thought it looked really cool so I wanted to do something like that. But especially now that I’ve been playing with how his jaw works again, I’ve been thinking that it would be better if it splits into three parts like how you drew it. It is more visually cohesive, and it also just makes more sense looking at it! It allows his lower jaw to drop down much further and his mouth to open much wider and just in general isn’t as awkward. I may have downloaded your art both to keep it forever and also to draw a few diagrams, I hope you don’t mind^^
(I had to take a screenshot of your art bc Tumblr won’t let me download it until I post this, so sorry for nuking the quality LMAO)
While I do like the Predaking jaw, I think it works on Predaking but not on Wheeljack because Predaking’s face is so long and his is so flat. So if his jaw were to split into only two parts it would be very awkward, you can see all the lines in the drawing on the left where I kept redrawing his jaw because conceptually it didn’t make sense. Like I mentioned before it also doesn’t really allow his jaw to unhinge, which is a very important part of his design lol.
On the right however, it splits a lot more cleanly! It just all around looks more natural and less awkward and has a lot more maneuverability. I also love the addition of the teeth on the walls/sides of his mouth!! I added a few in my references bc it looked better and made his jaw come together a bit more in it’s horrifying-ness, but the addition of even MORE teeth just amplifies that. It also implies that when he latches on to something, all of the teeth dig in and make it extremely difficult to pull away, allowing him to just drag it into his mouth and shred it to pieces. If he bites down on someone, even if they’re strong enough to pull away they’re not getting their limb back in one piece. The way the teeth are curved in will ensure that they have to rip through their own plating to get away. He looks like a living iron maiden and I am OBSESSEDD
Plus the way his jaw splits is so much more extreme in a way that is so. LOOK AT HIM. When he opens his mouth it’s like a giant tear separates the upper half of his face from the lower half. Horrifying to behold and also looks like it would be painful even though it isn’t, which is exactly the vibe I was going for. He just doesn’t look Cybertronian. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Anyway sorry for the long rant, his jaws have been on my mind a lot because I’ve been struggling with the concept so I kind of just dumped all of the thoughts I’ve been having for 2+ weeks plus all of the thoughts I had when seeing your references and art. If you don’t mind I may be borrowing the references because they really do help illustrate how a split jaw would work. And also if you don’t mind this may be the canon design from now on, just because IT’S SO COOL!! And it makes so much sense conceptually, I actually cannot put into words how much I love this. It fits right in with the worldbuilding!
TLDR: Absolutely god tier take on his design thank u Necro
