First Look at Transformers 2015 Cartoon Optimus Prime

I like that Optimus

viruscarnage wrote:I like that Optimus

So do I, but since he's faded I suspect he might be a memory, or maybe even optimus's ghost. I can see how they might try to revive optimus.

What if Optimus plays Obi-Wan here and shows up as a ghost to guide Bumblebee now and then? I'd be okay with that.

The Thuggernaut wrote:

viruscarnage wrote:I like that Optimus

So do I, but since he's faded I suspect he might be a memory, or maybe even optimus's ghost. I can see how they might try to revive optimus.

I barely noticed that he was faded, I assumed that the magazine was designed that way.

Grimlock64 wrote:What if Optimus plays Obi-Wan here and shows up as a ghost to guide Bumblebee now and then? I'd be okay with that.

Yea that would be cool! It would also be good news for those wanting Peter Cullen as Optimus in the cartoon

The...dat background it looks...CYBERTRONIAN?! A CARTOON THAT TAKES PLACE ENTIRELY ON CYBERTRON? I THINK I'M HYPERVENTILATING. ALL OF MY YES.

The Thuggernaut wrote:

Grimlock64 wrote:What if Optimus plays Obi-Wan here and shows up as a ghost to guide Bumblebee now and then? I'd be okay with that.

Yea that would be cool! It would also be good news for those wanting Peter Cullen as Optimus in the cartoon

I would have to think that Peter Cullen is a must have for Optimus now.

I think if that's so, I wonder if this just might be an IDW situation, Optimus is gone, now Bee and the gang must try and bring order back to a war ravaged Cybertron after the Autobot victory...then again they might try something new.

Ghostimus Prime?

But... Prime is dead...

optimus does not look amused

You guys are crazy if you think they're not going to bring Prime back to life. Besides if he were a ghost why would he have a new design?

CR71Autobot wrote:But... Prime is dead...

He'll be back, you can put money on that.

A TF version of "The Search For Spock", I'm calling it now.

I just read the posts on another site about this. It diverted into some unintentional hilarity.

I like the looks of this, but I'm also burned out on the Prime look. I liked it ok, but i'd like to see something that takes advantage of the aligned art used for the pop-up book.

Please don't lynch me about the comparisons, but:

If they are going with the simplified, stylized cartoon look, why not just get Derrick J. Wyatt back? At least his art has charm.

It all still looks as flat as hell....reeeaaaalllly hoping it's not bad flash animation.

On the flip side...I see potential for cool optimus toy

Now, Optimus looks badass. As do the buildings in the background.

What I really want is an all-ecompasing perfect Prime toy to represent my ultimate version of Prime. The not-optimus Orion almost did that, but it just fell flat to me. WFC Prime is next but not quite. I was hoping the new show would be based on the aligned revelations book and I would dig that one. I don't like the tiny waist. As it is, I'm not interested in another Prime ...er...Prime.

I dunno if anyone's mentioned this, but Bumblebee's face kinda resemble's Prime's. Will we finally see all this love for our yellow friend culminate into him becoming a Prime? :O

While it's clearly just a coloured design sketch (note the sketch lines especially around the shoulders that have yet to be cleaned up) the design is definitely interesting, and I think it looks pretty damn cool. I'm guessing that, as with the Bumblebee design, it's "not the final product" or whatever they said, but hey. I'm liking what I see so far. As for the fading, I'm guessing less "Ghost Prime" and more "attempting to hide areas of the sketch that are incomplete"

I'm having a strange feeling for some reason. Something tells me that this series would be like Beast Machines (disgusting robot modes and not a lot of episodes). I could be wrong, but we have seen these character designs before and it's starting to get old.

There is blurb further on in the magazine...
"A lighter, more comedic feel"? As long as it goes in the direction of Animated and not in the direction of Beast Wars 2, I can get behind that! The movie is not going to satiate me until next spring though, that is stupid! I wonder what Japan will do? They could run with Go! a little longer...

This would explain why TF Prime bailed on the CGI format. CGI cartoons are notoriously expensive, and even introducing ONE new character is enormously compliated and costly, as was seen with Predaking. Creating, rigging and animating every new character takes up time and effort from the entire production crew. They had the entire season revolve around Predaking, and he wasn't even that good a character.

Not only that, but CGI tv shows haven't evolved to the point where they can do crowds, or large complicated scenes very well. It's just not cost effective. This is why CGI shows on tv are usually set on alien worlds, or sparsely populated towns, or deserts - where there isn't much scenery to render or crowds to deal with. Even Cybertron, while more complicated to the eye, was devoid of any visible life except for the already-created crew of robots that had already been on the show for two seasons. Any crowds that are rendered are 'clones', be it he MECH troopers (all masked), the Insecticons (all carbon copies), or the Terrorcons. There was no 'individuality' in any of the crowds because they were too lazy and/or cheap to spring for individualized characters. Note how on the "New York" episode in Season 2, they had them go immediately underground into the subways where the only other life form was the subway worker. This meant that they wouldn't have to render any crowds, cars, trucks or other things you would normally see above the surface in New York. I think this is primarily one of the reasons why the newer CGI "Batman" series failed so quickly. It was supposed to be set in Gotham City - but you could tell that (limited by expense and rendering technology) they were artificially rigging each episode to simplify the settings so there wouldn't be any crowds or complicated scenery. And for what was supposed to be a sprawling city, full of people and life, that just sucked.

This new show must be their attempt to fix that. By combining some CGI with hand drawn stuff, they must figure it will be much cheaper and easier to barf out new episodes and introduce more characters - as well as being able to put in crowds and varieties of people without needing CRAY computers and billions of dollars. Hopefully that means we'll see more than just a small core of characters. I like individual characterization, and more focus being put on fewer characters (The G1 cartoon jammed so many characters in that it felt impersonal). But I'd like more than just one or two new characters a season.

What think ye?

Bee's Autobot symbol is not red, I wonder is this means anything?

Optimus has a reeeeally similar chest design and proportions to Bumblebee's. Like you could paint them in each other's colors and they wouldn't look all that different.

I'm actually thrilled about this.

Great, they have eyebrows now... What's next, zits?

I wish they'd stop giving Optimus a mouth... He just never looks quite right without his lucky faceplate.

There appears to be quite a few comments on Optimus and Megatron not returning. I thought It was stated last year that the two would return for the new series. Perhaps that changed. And it would be kind of cool if it did. But I doubt that.

Please be good. That's all I ask from this series: be good, be great. Please.

El Duque wrote:Besides if he were a ghost why would he have a new design?

Because Hasbro (unfortunately) doesn't seem to give two cents about aesthetics in the Aligned continuity. For instance, Optimus appears in WFC with one body, and then in FOC in a different body with no in-story explanation. And, Optimus has one body in Prime that turns into a long-nosed truck, while in Rescue Bots his body looks a bit different and turns into a flat-nosed truck, despite these two bodies supposing to be the same body. And then the Covenant of Primus book drew him in his Binder of Revelation body in all of its illustrations that took place, even the ones that took place on Cybertron in the past and the ones set on Earth in the present, despite other characters getting their own respective, distinct Cybertron-based and Earth-based bodies in the same illustrations.

In other words, Optimus could be drawn here with bunny ears and neon green polka dots and could still be a ghost if the makers wanted to go that route.

Oh I do always like a Cybertronian Optimus design.

shajaki wrote:

More like:

Sabrblade wrote:

shajaki wrote:

More like:

I don't mind the designs. Optimus looks good (though no idea why he's even there). But those flat legs on Bumblebee are still bothering me. Hope they're not like that in the final show.

Bee is actually giving me a bit of the feel of Animated Blurr. If this is a new timeline, or a rough jump back to Animated I'm on board. If this is just another pull from aligned I can do without.

Editor wrote:Bee is actually giving me a bit of the feel of Animated Blurr. If this is a new timeline, or a rough jump back to Animated I'm on board. If this is just another pull from aligned I can do without.

It's a sequel to TF: Prime, set a few years after with Bumblebee now as a leader.

Eyebrows are definitely PITA, I can never get used to them

Prime really needs a nose or his faceplate back, at least he looks more like fall of cybertron & less like bayfomers.

Interior blurb on another page in the magazine:

Hmm, I'm hoping we'll be blessed with another TFA (Big on fun). I admittedly hated the designs of TFA but the writing and characters out-scored Prime by a mile (The exception that proves the rule being TFP Starscream).

I am thinking they might do something similar to TFA with this show. (The original idea being it would be tied into the Movies, but that faded quickly )

All the fun of Animated that Prime was lacking in went into Rescue Bots.

Sabrblade wrote:

Editor wrote:Bee is actually giving me a bit of the feel of Animated Blurr. If this is a new timeline, or a rough jump back to Animated I'm on board. If this is just another pull from aligned I can do without.

It's a sequel to TF: Prime, set a few years after with Bumblebee now as a leader.

You beat me to the punch Sabrblade.
Honestly folks, I'm amazed that so many of you jumped to so many conclusions when this news (as Sabrblade reiterated) has already been made known. Bumblebee is A leader as was pointed out but not necessarily THE leader of the Autobots, or at least that's what we've been told so far.
As for the speculation on Prime's appearance, I honestly wouldn't expect much folks. You'll only get disappointed. Although I have to admit that the design appears very cool. He has something of a cross between TFA and FoC going on and it seems to work well.
At the absolute MOST I would imagine he would have an occasional 30 second spot in a flash back or MAYBE something like Jugga in the original Thundercats cartoon although how they make that happen is speculation I don't even want to go into nor would I like to see anyone else go into it either. Many of you have already gone beyond the bounds of absurdity as it is. Suffice it to say I'll be spending about as much on cartoon related TF's in 2015 as I will in 2014... which is in the neighborhood of squat just like it was in 2013. I haven't gotten into the cartoons since before TFA and since this is a sequel to TFP I don't see myself enjoying this one much either. I simply cannot stomach the vast majority of the character designs and I find the basic animation style to be irritating at best and since the toys are the same style, I find them irritating too.

The animation is fine for most part. I didn't mind the Animated overall look. The story line behind Animated wasn't bad either. One thing I hope they do with this series is to introduce either rarely used or new ideas. The first transformation of Munflap and Skids in the first TF movie wasn't a bad idea but horribly pulled off. I wouldn't mind seeing something similar done but much better job. It would also be nice for them to pay a little more homage to BW by throwing in a beastial mech and call him Maximal or have a trio of Maximals. Then you can have the others being the more traditional vehicles. Bumblebee would have the challenge of trying to keep the two sides together as well as taking on the Preds\Cons. It also be nice to see gestalts return but not in the way of Armada\Energon. Triple changers would also be a nice touch since I think the last ones were back in BW with Rampage and Depthcharge.

sumowrestler wrote:The animation is fine for most part.

Animation? This is a still image.

This is great. A return to 2d animation, a spin-off of my favorite Transformers, and it's totally original with Bumblebee, instead of Prime, as the leader, and it takes place completely on Cybertron!

ishigoto wrote:The...dat background it looks...CYBERTRONIAN?! A CARTOON THAT TAKES PLACE ENTIRELY ON CYBERTRON? I THINK I'M HYPERVENTILATING. ALL OF MY YES.

Beast Machines took place on Cybertron for the whole series too so this series wouldn't be the first.

Looks neat, i'm eager to see the first episode and how it will play out. Would I prefer a new series with the art style from the 80s making a return in better quality and consistency? Sure. But I got over my dislike for the Animated style, and this already looks better than that. I'm much more interested in how stories and dialogue will play out. Action scenes too.

I think Optimus looks rather good. I'm betting he's a "ghostly advisor" to Bumblebee, though. That's kind of how I figured things would go for a sequel far before these announcements. Can't wait to see the rest of the cast. Hopefully some all-new characters will be introduced for Bumblebee's team instead of re-using G1 characters and monikers (not that I have a big problem with that, honestly).

And now, a word from our sponsors...

El Duque wrote:Besides if he were a ghost why would he have a new design?

He doesn't, really. It's practically S3 Prime Optimus with quite a few touch ups. Then there's that whole "not caring about designs" thing.

Spleenzorio wrote:I dunno if anyone's mentioned this, but Bumblebee's face kinda resemble's Prime's. Will we finally see all this love for our yellow friend culminate into him becoming a Prime? :O

The age of Primes ended when Optimus collided the Matrix of Leadership with the AllSpark and committed suicide. Nobody will be a Prime unless Optimus miraculously brings the Matrix back upon some sort of miraculous revival, which would be some tough shit to write.

MegaDump wrote:Great, they have eyebrows now...

They've had eyebrows.

Shockwave7 wrote:CGI cartoons are notoriously expensive, and even introducing ONE new character is enormously compliated and costly, as was seen with Predaking. Creating, rigging and animating every new character takes up time and effort from the entire production crew.

And maybe that's a good thing. One of the problems with a lot of previous Transformers shows (G1, Animated, Energon, Cybertron) is that their casts were huge. They couldn't focus on every character and therefore resulted in some rather shitty story (save for Animated. While I hate it, the story was...okay I suppose.)

Shockwave7 wrote:They had the entire season revolve around Predaking, and he wasn't even that good a character.

What are you talking about? Predaking was a fantastic character.

Shockwave7 wrote:I like individual characterization, and more focus being put on fewer characters (The G1 cartoon jammed so many characters in that it felt impersonal). But I'd like more than just one or two new characters a season.

What think ye?

Prime introduced four-to-six characters a season, not just one or two.