#track draws

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-Ratchet puts Bumblebee in the Sandblaster-

(I'm OBSESSED with the idea of medics having sandblasters, like the sand-filled cabinet ones used to strip paint and rust from old metal. I imagine it's useful if you have to remove a full paint job to do a new one, but also you can just put bots in it, like, no one can stop you sooo???? THIS MESSAGE HAS NOT BEEN APPROVED BY OPTIMUS PRIME)

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💫🌟DTIYS Contest!!🌟💫

Starting now until September 25th, I'm holding a Draw This In Your Style contest, the reward for which will be a TF fic for the Top 3!!

I will write anything you like (within reason), at a minimum of 1,000 words!

Here is your art prompt!

-This is my OC Lovebug! He's a factionless seeker, a surrogate before and during the war. I love him very dearly!-

Now here are the rules!

* The art piece has to be of Lovebug! It doesn't have to be this pose, and you can add other mechs and/or change the scenario if you like.

*NO AI WHATSOEVER

* Has to be full-body, with flat colors at minimum. Don't worry about backgrounds if you dont want to. I suck at them too lol.

* No gore!! I'm fine with sexual scenarios, he is a surrogate after all (and I'm a valveplug fan), but I don't want to see him being hurt.

* Tag it with #LovebugDTIYS2025 so I can find it!!!

* Has to be posted before midnight on the 25th!!

Winners will be announced on the 26th, and afterwards I will DM to ask what you want me to write! You will have until the 27th to respond before I move on to the next closest winner. Have fun everyone!!! I look forward to all your beautiful art!

*update* Deadline is now midnight on the 30th!!

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My TF OC, Lovebug!!!

Welcome to another episode of "Track tries to make a tf character with limited success and bad art!"

Today's subject, Lovebug!

Lovebug is a seeker, very calm and collected, he carries himself with a poised, polite air. He adores sparklings, and babysat before he was old enough to carry. His pupils are hearts, the heart shaped panel on his chest lets him see the sparks orbiting his spark when he's carrying. He's very protective of his bitlets, and despises being called an oil bot. He may be a carry, but he's a trained warframe too, he would and has killed to keep his sparklings safe.

-Timeline and Lore beneath the cut!-

Lovebug is my Carry OC. Before the war, Carries were surrogates, helping conjunxes who, for one reason or another, couldn't conceive naturally. They would live with the host couple for the duration of the pregnancy, to allow for the sparkling to bond with the parents.

Some Carries only conceived for their hosts asexually, but Lovebug was open to all methods, including interfacing.

Due to this, he and many Carries like him were derogatively referred to as "oil bots", basically their word for sex workers.

Once the war started, bots stopped starting families, and Carries were only needed for one thing: producing soldiers. As a seeker, Lovebug's sparklings were highly sought, but his love for his sparklings prevented him from having any knowing they would be raised as weapons for the front lines.

He managed to stay covert for a good chunk of the war, but watching the population of cybertron fall broke his spark, and he decided to offer his services to everybot regardless of alliance, in something of a one bot repopulation effort.

At some point, while wandering unknowingly through Decepticon territory, he was taken in and interrogated/tortured by Starscream as a suspected autobot spy, but Megatron recognized Lovebug as a Carry, and offered him a deal: carry for the Decepticons, or be imprisoned.

Lovebug agreed, with a few conditions of his own: first, his sparklings couldn't be made into canon fodder. If they were to become soldiers, they were to be trained by Megatron's best. Second, no cold construction, frequent medic checkups, and good energon. The metals available to them were too low quality to make an adequate frame, and he was determined to keep his sparklings healthy. Last, and most certainly not least, Lovebug wanted to stay with his children, at the very least as a sitter if not as an acknowledged parent.

With the ground rules set up, Lovebug carried three times for the Decepticons.

His first was sired by Megatron, an intelligent and kindhearted mech, more inspired by his father's poetry than his war mongering.

The second was sired by Knockout, a headstrong, powerful, and strict femme named Mayday, who Megatron clearly preferred to her half brother due to her battle prowess.

The last, and the smallest, was Sequence, sired by a reluctant Starscream. Half the size of a normal femme, Sequence was quiet, thoughtful, with a heart as kind as her father's was cold. Originally a seeker trio in the forge, Sequence had seemingly absorbed her siblings, but after birth gained the ability to split herself into three, all sharing one hivemind.

(Anyways, I fucking love this OC, tell me how I did please, and don't mind the messy art, I'm still learning how to draw bots.)

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So, what do the feral mine children do?

(You cannot see me, but you should know I am breaking the fourth wall by grinning very evilly into the camera.)

Anything and everything Sentinel didn't want his regular slaves workers to know about. Things it would be heinous to make a bot do, but not that they can voice any complaints. They aren't feral though! Just segregated from other bots.

Mainly, they harvest sparklings and remove the cogs. With such a vast amount of the mined energon going to the Quintessons, what little there is for the cybertronians has to be used for sustenance. People would begin to panic if they thought there was a shortage of food. However, this leaves little to no energon left for powering and fueling the city.

Luckily, t-cogs can be forged into rather efficient batteries, although it renders them useless as cogs. These aren't the only things harvested though. Most of a sparkling can be used to forge different parts and tools. You wouldn't be surprised to find that a non-negligible amount of bitlets don't survive the cog removal process, making them a rather reliable source of scrap metal.

Now, the reason it's so dark on the other sublevels isn't because it's a mine of some kind. Rather, those levels hold the Spark Wells, which occur naturally far below ground.

Sentinel can't risk any average worker having access to them, it'd be far too easy for somebot to witness a miner come online, and notice they still had their cog.

Perhaps the most heinous part of all of this is how the population of the Empurata Born is maintained. The first few waves of them had the procedure performed by surgeons, but it became impractical to bring bots down every couple days to do it, not to mention how the surgeons could become a liability if they decided to tattle about this heinous tasked they were hired to do.

So instead, a portion of the Empurata Born are trained to do it themselves. There's a weekly quota to be met of sparklings that must be turned into new harvesters and forgers. It's a horrible thing to have to do, but there's nowhere to hide a mech with noticeably normal features.

They can, however, rebel in one minor way. The first waves also can't speak, their voice boxes were removed as part of the procedure. But this isn't necessary, so the ones taught to do surgery don't do it on the sparklings. It's far easier to teach a mech not to speak when Sentinel is around. It's perhaps the only thing they still have for themselves, the soft tune of voices that belong to the little ones they claim as their own.

Here's a design I made a while back for one of the Empurata Born who still has her voice. She's designed around crabs, I haven't named her yet. Any suggestions?

Ugly scrapped frame design under the cut.

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Hive Prime as a Bee chasing Starscream, as promised.

(I can't draw)

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👻Yameowth👻

-alt with mouth beneath the cut because I didn't like it-

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Even flowers can be dangerous....

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She wants to play Rock, Paper, Scissors.