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Transformers Idw - Blog Posts
It’s lesbian visibility day so you know what that means, I’m about to make some lesbians very visible! Have Arcee and Aileron in the colors of the lesbian flag because I love them a lot
Sibling Dance - Lost Light Animatic
I was not thinking as I made this. I was certainly laughing though
Transformers and Female Body Types (Rant/Essay)
(I wanted more images in this, but tumblr has a limit and it was a lot of pictures anyway)
Anyone who complains about female transformers having “robot boobs” needs to shut up. Unless it’s a case of critiquing a design that’s genuinely caricatured, this complaint only serves to protest against robots looking too feminine, as if all robots by default should have broad, masculine shoulders and flat chests instead. The problem is that people look at a masculine transformer and say, “Ah yes, an anthropomorphised robot.” But the moment it’s one of the female transformers, it’s “why do robots need boobs?” as if a male-looking body type is anthropomorphizing, but a female-looking body time is suddenly “too human” or “too much.” As if all humanoid robot aliens should look male by default.
That being said, for a long time transformers did have a glaring issue of their female transformers having a generic, Barbie-doll like body type. This especially became problematic as male characters appeared with several different and varying heights and builds, while female characters all looked the same.
This eventually improved with newer media. I’m going to go through different transformers series, giving my opinions on various female Cybertronians designs.
Transformers Animated and Transformers Prime are the cases where we see the very few female characters that there are being designed with this more Barbie doll look, especially in comparison to the male cast, who each have strikingly different silhouettes. I maintain that there’s nothing wrong with having this stereotypically feminine figure as long as it’s not caricatured or designed to sxualize the character (in TFA’s case, Black Airachnid was extremely sexualized, but Arcee wasn’t at least) it’s just the lack of variety that makes it painful. If all female characters were designed with a stocky, square body type, it would be just as bad; the problem is the lack of diversity in representing how each woman is different.
I think Arcee from Transformers Prime gets some of the most comments about how she has breasts and hips and is most often faced with the question “why should robots have boobs?” In response to this question, I propose: why shouldn’t they? The shape of their chassis really doesn’t matter in the end. I like Arcee’s design and acting like she’s inherently caricatured for looking like a woman is just a way of alienating femininity.
TFP Arcee is also unfortunately sexualized a lot by the fandom. Primus forbid a woman exist in peace.
The problem with these ‘Barbie doll’ designs isn’t that they are oversexualized— while this may have been a problem with Black Airachnia, the true problem, as seen especially with the treatment of TFP Arcee, is the concept that any female body traits are inherently sexual, which both creators and fandom spaces feed into.
It’s not as prominent, but I’ve also seen a trend of attempting to give female transformers more diverse body types by giving them… male body types.
In Transformers Cyberverse, the Seekers all have the same body type, whether they are male, female, or genderfluid, the only differences being that the female models have lips and the male ones have facial-hair like chin stubs (and Acid Storm switches back and forth). However I would hardly call this progress, because the body type is more male-leaning, not truly gender neutral.
Often to make something appear gender neutral, people will just remove anything too obviously feminine. This treats masculine traits as the “default” and female traits as a deviance from this. A truly gender-neutral design would incorporate both masculine and feminine traits at the same time.
(What if we just made all the Seekers look like women and gave the dudes chins. What if we did that. Huh.)
Shadowstriker from Cyberverse is a better example of this, having a female body type but a chin stub and generally gender neutral face.
I like the look of Alpha Strike as well, she feels actually gender neutral and isn’t too exaggerated like most muscular (and especially muscular female) characters are.
For example, Clobber’s design is good, but I do think her lips were strangely exaggerated.
Once the IDW run of the Transformers comics actually introduced female characters, they eventually gained a large cast with a variety of different body types. Take Windblade, Nautica, Pyra Magna, the Mistress of Flame, and Aileron.
These aren’t all examples, but IDW certainly had a unique design for each of their female characters, with different heights, width, mixing and matching the proportions of their bodies and displaying diverse body types. Aileron is also a stand-out character design for me, as one of the few heavy-set transformers to be designed in a way that looks more rounded than bulky, implying weight over muscle. We need more weighted transformers in general.
I have many positive feelings about Transformers Earthspark’s choice of character design for their female characters.
Earthspark has the most consistently diverse character design for its female characters.
And it shows that the key to designing actually good female Cybertronians isn’t necessarily to make them not feminine, but to show diverse depictions of femininity. All of the female characters in this show are pretty feminine, but they all look different. Twitch is small and slight, Hashtag is tall and boxy. Each one has different proportions and are easy to tell apart by body type alone. Even better, they each have drastically different facial structures. Twitch has large eyes, Hashtag has a strong chin, Elita-1 has a straight nose and pronounced lips, Arcee has small eyes and a very slight nose, et cetera. Earthspark is definitely a win in this department.
My point with all of this is to say that femininity isn’t a one-size fits all. Every woman is different and everyone should get to express their gender in whatever way they see fit. Transformers gradually diversifying the look of their female characters represents this, and I hope they continue improving as the franchise continues.
Prowl does not want to be with Tarantulas
Sunder is so silly <3
✨husbands✨
The result of this post! I had such a good time drawing these two, I love them so much!
Some Transformers Ships I like! Which should I draw next?
Ships: Starscream x Skyfire, Optimus/Orion Pax x Megatron/D-16, Optimus x Elita, Knockout x Breakdown, Tailgate x Cyclonus, Megatron x Minimus, Windblade x Slipstream, Ironhide x Chromia, Soundwave x Shockwave, Chromedome x Rewind
also feel free to specify series- I showed TFONE megOp but I could Earthspark instead, either way
WHICH ONE SHOULD I DRAW AHH!!! :D
Prowl art dump because he sucks so much he’s such a problematic mess it makes me want to draw him
I feel like Jazz would go out of his way to purposely love on Prowl whenever he senses the stress bubbling over. 🤍🖤
So I've seen ROTTMNT but I haven't read MTMTE/Lost Light..only seen snippets of the comic....
Someone who's seen both pieces of media, tell me if these two blorbos are anything alike?
Because they're both giving "silly goober trying to live up to the roll of leader while experiencing an angsty personal crisis" and I don't know how accurate it is to say they're basically the same or not....
bro......
bruh
New Transformers OCs
Earthspark Edition
These are two OCs that I made for other continuities originally, but these EARTHSPARK versions are the first ones if finished digitally.
Skyline is essentially Skywarp’s spark-twin, and she has the same outlier ability as them. She is in a trine with my OCs Overcast and Stormraiser. Their trine is all outliers and all female, and depending on the continuity they might all turn into a different type of aircraft. (Example, on one continuity skyline turns into a 117-nighthawk, stormraiser into a yf-17 cobra, and Overcast into an f-22 raptor)
And Contrail is originally for the MTMTE and Lost Light comic lines, and is essentially a human that got turned into a cybertronian by mistake. (She turns into the dragonfly ship from dune cause they look cool).
I’ll have versions without the names under the cut.
Here’s a WIP for a piece I’m working on, it’s going to have three characters by the time I’m finished.
And I just realized that I’m missing a chunk of the lightning bolt, but I’m very happy with how it’s coming so far.
Also if someone can tell me how to get procreate to not destroy the quality when I save an artwork please tell me
Helooooooooooo tumblr! Have a little something I made for Valentine’s Day approaching around the corner~ (please ignore any spelling errors on my behalf but I did NOT feel like rewriting this pitch all over again) If you would like one of these pieces for yourself, feel free to contact me so I can get them to you!
The consequences of pulling every baddie
Just wanting to know what yall are thinking about them because I haven’t heard much feedback and I’m a nervous bean 🙊
IDW Starscream X Reader
Rendezvous Part 6
Warnings: none
Slowly your brain came back to life as you rested clutched in the servos of that creature. It said it was from the government. But that didn’t make any sense either. ***you*** work for the government. Granted you work for a research branch that deals with strange anomalous geological formations, but surely you would have heard office gossip about literal sentient mechs being developed. The guys you work with couldn’t keep their mouths shut once they got a few drinks in them. Lucky for them, the government kept them far away from anything sensitive. Still, this didn’t add up in your head. There was no way you were going to argue with a giant robot though so you just smile weakly at him. Hoping he’ll put you down soon as his grip was digging uncomfortably into your ribcage. He just looked at you with that odd expression you can’t really place.
Thanking him for rescuing you? Of course you are. What else would a helpless creature like you do? He grins back at you. Baring his denta in what he hopes is a genuine looking smile. slowly lowering you back to the frozen ground where he snatched you from. He’d let you go of course. Only because he knew no one would believe you, and killing you would be more suspicious than not. “Don’t tell anyone about this or there will could be horrible repercussions.” He said, voice rumbling through you as he let you drop the last ten feet to the ground. Standing back to his full height, he lifts his wings and makes himself look bigger for emphasis.
You drop painfully to the ground. The fall knocked the wind out of you for a brief moment, making you wheeze as you try to stand. He’s standing there now. Towering over you as you slowly back up towards your car. Making a mad dash you start the engine and nearly peel out on the ice as you throw it in drive. Down the icy dirt road and onto the pavement, you take a deep breath and try to convince yourself that what you just saw was real. You shake your head. Your brain telling you that there was no way you should have gotten out of there alive. The tremors in your hands refusing to cease as you break the speed limit by at least thirty. Giant robots? Now this was something your coworkers were going to want to hear about.
He watches you go. Tracking your vehicle as it speeds away. He had found out where you lived. Just in case he had to get rid of you. No other reason. Definitely not out of concern for your safety. He vented heavily and sat down in the clearing. Finally some alone time. What he had come for in the first place. His place to think wasn’t sacred anymore but at least it was just some random organic. He couldn’t stop thinking about your little face, your curiously Cybertronian expressions and how you didn’t scream. Just sat there in his servo and stared. He scoffed. No sense of self preservation at all. Turning his attention to his most recent scheme to usurp Megatron, he puts you out of his mind for now. If all goes according to plan he won’t have to deal with you ever again.
***the next morning***
You hadn’t slept a wink. Tired eyelids sticking together as you drag yourself into work. You wave at the few people you pass, looking rough and a bit out of it. Your mind was filled with questions as you sit at your desk across from your research partner. He peers at you from his place sitting with his feet propped up on his desk. Th pile of paperwork un-filed in front of him and slightly stained by his third cup of coffee this morning resting on top of it. “Something happened. Spill.” You nearly startle at his voice. Your mind still racing as you plop down in your desk chair. “You don’t know if Weapons is developing anything….ai related do you?” He pauses and looks up, seemingly wracking his brain. “You know those guys. They don’t like to talk about anything. It’s all “classified” or something.” He rolls his eyes and scoots his chair back from his desk. Placing his face in his hands and elbows on either side of his chair, giving you his full attention. “Why? Did you hear something?”
Who is this sassy lost child. Screamer has his work cut out for him here. Just practicing comic layout. Anyway here is my first attempt at illustrating my upcoming fic Emptiness Machine.
(Based off of that one scene in Toy Story with Buzz and Jessie where she does that backflip and it makes his wings flip up I love that scene it’s so cute.)
I’m curious for those that do follow me…are you here for my writing or my fan art? Just wanna know what’s most important to focus on.
He’s extremely worried about her 💕
Yelling at him. He probably deserved it…. I love him sm
First time using procreate to do anything so here’s my starboy✨. Don’t look too closely at it.
THE CHRISTMAS HAUL EVER