Transformers: MTMTE #3 Preview Panel and MTMTE Hoist Concept Art from Alex Milne

Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye Ongoing artest Alex Milne has shared some more of his MTMTE concept art over on Full Metal Hero. Check out the concepts for Rung's office and Swerve's bar from the Lost Light below.

i don't have a lot of time to post and explain too much, but i figure i'd show a couple things until i have more time
for now, here is the bar that swerve found and rung's office both seen in issue 3 of MTMTE
i might post a page break down when i have the time, until then
enjoy

I just love this series!
Putting effort into this level of detailing in story and art truely shows that for once, the Transformers comic brand is in the best hands

Artist Alex Milne has shared more of his concept art from IDW's Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye by way of UK fansite Full Metal Hero. Below we have character designs for Fortress Maximus, Pharma, First Aid, and Ambulon.

so here are a few more designs for MTMTE. i would have posted them up sooner, but i've been pretty busy
so first we have fortmax. basically the same design of him from when i first designed him for the IDW universe back in spotlight arcee. there are a few tweaks to him that i was always meaning to do, but never had the time to do. with those tweaks i feel his more functional. i'll post his alt mode at a later date, or maybe just hold onto it until i put a sketchbook together. i haven't made up my mind just yet.

next we have pharma. the description James gave me was he turn into a jet. so i went from there and this is what i came up with. durning the design process i was talking with James to get a better understanding of the character and his relationship with ratchet. i proposed the idea that pharma should have a similar head design to ratchets since he was basically his protégé. also i felt it would make the two of them have a stronger connection. most of the medical team have the red and white colours to them, and that was something i wanted from the start. i felt it made it seem like you were in a hospital and all the doctors and nurses had the same uniform. but i added a few more colours to pharma to make him stand out more. i also had the idea to have the medical staff have a silver autobot emblem instead of the traditional red. i thought that would make them a bit different then normal autobots

first aid was a lot of fun to design. i was looking over his toy and cartoon models as a base for his look here, but i was also came up with some differences to match his personality for this story. i wanted him to be very slender. i felt he wouldn't be the heavy combat type, but more the thinker. at times he had to look a bit timid due to things which were going on in the story and with his character, so that played into my design. overall i like what i came up with.

last we have ambulon. i won't say too much about him. you'll have to wait for issue 5 to find out more about him ;p
enjoy

Cool Designs, I really like these! I don't know why over time they strayed so far away from the G1 look.....and it's not about me being old school they just look better...you know the blocky robust look with killer visors and what not. THE MICHAEL BAY DESIGNS were an atrocity. I don't get it how anyone not to mention with that budget could come up with those designs WHAT A JOKE and even worse the script LOL insulting. I can live with the Transfomers Prime designs somewhat but COME ON MAN! Gooooo back to the original designs. Goooooo back to the G1 era on Cybertron....forget about Earth and little kids running around saving the day. YEAH RIGHT!? It would blow the socks off of Transformers Prime. Or hey here's a thought .....DC and Marvel come out all the time with 1 hour movie's straight to DVD and the DC action isn't half bad...actually pretty good. I would drop $20.00 on a G1 1 hour long animation on Cybertron ALL DAY LONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

starscream1974 wrote::CON: Cool Designs, I really like these! I don't know why over time they strayed so far away from the G1 look.....and it's not about me being old school they just look better...you know the blocky robust look with killer visors and what not. THE MICHAEL BAY DESIGNS were an atrocity. I don't get it how anyone not to mention with that budget could come up with those designs WHAT A JOKE and even worse the script LOL insulting. I can live with the Transfomers Prime designs somewhat but COME ON MAN! Gooooo back to the original designs. Goooooo back to the G1 era on Cybertron....forget about Earth and little kids running around saving the day. YEAH RIGHT!? It would blow the socks off of Transformers Prime. Or hey here's a thought .....DC and Marvel come out all the time with 1 hour movie's straight to DVD and the DC action isn't half bad...actually pretty good. I would drop $20.00 on a G1 1 hour long animation on Cybertron ALL DAY LONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thats why the comics are the best form of TF story telling. Their audience is squarly aimed at the TF enthusiasts more often than not.

It's too bad every character is written as a smart ass as if they all took cues from Spider-Man. Four issues into this book and I still can't figure out why this wasn't just part of the existing ongoing series instead of ending that book and starting two different books. This was most certainly not a jumping on point for new readers if that was the intention.

I'm not sure what would make me happy as a Transformers comic book collector. I guess I really like the look and approach from the comics published in the Million Publishing Transformers Generations books. Comics that feature the current toys and/or comics that artistically embrace the Japanese aspect (heritage?) of the Transformers brand. Comics that tell a compelling story, that uses humor when necessary, appropriate, and not on every page. Comics that have a clear focus, a primary cast of characters or the ability to quickly introduce new characters when appropriate and make the reader feel a bond with the character. Comics that get to the point instead of dragging on a boring storyline for 4 to 6 issues simply so that it it can get packaged up "neatly" in a trade paperback. The first 3 or four issues of MTMTE could have easily been told in one or two comics ... NEXT ISSUE: A new enemy lurks within the Lost Light after Rodimus' rogue band of Transformers crash lands shortly after departing Cybertron!

I've been a big cheerleader of the style in which the original Marvel Transformers comics were written. No, they weren't perfect. Yes, I see them for what they are ... 22 page advertisements with the sole purpose to promote an ongoing toyline. I think Budiansky and Furman's writing was the best that it could be, having their hands tied, and being told to introduce toys on a regular basis by a company that, at the time, cared more about making money right then and there than the longevity of the brand and characters (and yes I understand that the primary purpose of the brand continues to be to make money, yet there is also a focus on how to make the brand last for future generations). There is a happy compromise between that approach and modern day Transformers comics. Something is wrong when the comics are toted as being geared toward more die-hard fans, yet many die-hard fans (such as myself) seem to care less about these books. Their sales numbers of these books seem to agree with what I'm saying as well (books that have print numbers of 5,000 to 12,000 copies per issue), which is why I don't understand how or why this has continued for 7 years.

I don't feel like I'm asking for too much. I just don't get what IDW's doing with their Transformers comic books.

MINDVVIPE wrote:Thats why the comics are the best form of TF story telling. Their audience is squarly aimed at the TF enthusiasts more often than not.

Exactly. These designs are DAMN COOL.... I wonder Fortress Maximus's alt mode is. Hey IDW isn't it about time these guys do their own sourcebook with character bios, ala Dreamwave's "More Than Meets The Eye" styled character bio books yet

Hey Seibertron, I've just gotten back into reading the comics, with a buncha random issues I grabbed at free comic book day, including MTMTE, Ongoing, as well as RID.
They seem pretty cool to me, but I hear ya about the humour, especially since I felt Drift was a more serious character opposed to being more chippy. Anyway, my question is, what exactly are you talking about with the older comics you spoke favourably about? was it the Marvel G2 ish stuff (which i really liked)? Or just in general. Any suggestions on specific storylines, etc?

MINDVVIPE wrote:Hey Seibertron, I've just gotten back into reading the comics, with a buncha random issues I grabbed at free comic book day, including MTMTE, Ongoing, as well as RID.
They seem pretty cool to me, but I hear ya about the humour, especially since I felt Drift was a more serious character opposed to being more chippy. Anyway, my question is, what exactly are you talking about with the older comics you spoke favourably about? was it the Marvel G2 ish stuff (which i really liked)? Or just in general. Any suggestions on specific storylines, etc?

I have a love/hate relationship with most Transformers comic books. My favorites are the original G1 Marvel books. A lot of it isn't the greatest, but they did the best with what they could do back then. I would be disappointed with today's books if they continued to be done in the manner in which the 80s books were. However, that doesn't mean that the old stuff should be overlooked or that there aren't elements that could be integrated with today's style.

I'm less concerned with storylines than I am with how the stories are told. I think any number of the new stories have been overall intriguing and have/have had lots of potential. Unfortunately, the tendency of today's comics are to tell stories that can be packaged up later into a trade paperback.

Perhaps I know too much about what goes on behind-the-scenes so it spoils a lot of how these books are made, gives me a bit of a negative attitude right from the get-go. Spoiled milk. Feel free to correct me if I've got any of this wrong ... the Transformers writers and artists are all freelancers, brought on board to work on a book for X number of issues. Knowing this, it seems too obvious that they are just filling out their contract obligations. I also feel like a writer comes up with a story that might be sufficient for a 2 or 3 issue run, but they're told that the book needs to be put into a 4 or 6 issue storyline for a later trade paperback collection. Whether its the writer or someone else, the storyline seems to get stretched to a point where the book is just too damn slow of a read. Too little seems to happen between issues. I feel bored when I read today's comic books ... IDW's first Infestation storyline being the best paced storyline I've read since the 90s.

I don't understand why there isn't one comic that is about the Classics toyline. I feel like they're really missing the opportunity to use the ongoing comics to focus on the toys that have been coming out. Maybe there hasn't been enough product to work with in the way that I'm envisioning.

I feel like the IDW Transformers comics have just thrown all of the elements about the Transformers into a blender and have their fingers crossed that the end result is OK. There seems to be little rhyme or reason about why characters are in situations together in the books. Maybe I'm too close minded ... when I see Brainstorm in the comics, I expect Chromedome, Highbrow, and Hardhead to not be far behind. If Brainstorm and Ratchet share a scene together, it should be a special situation because they shouldn't normally be around each other.

That statement might seem contradictory because if I had it my way where the ongoing series would be guided by the release of Classics toys, we would certainly end up with odd pairings such as Kup and Thunderwing or Black Shadow and Junkheap ... but at least there would be a reason as dictated by the toy releases, which could prove for some interesting storytelling.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what Furman's got cooked up for us in Regeneration. Maybe that's the series for which I've been waiting years. I don't know what the solution is. I just know that I'm not a fan of the IDW has been telling the Transformers story. I think it's salvageable if you had the right person in charge that could help guide the overall universe, put in some restrictions and rules on the writers and artists.

Classics figures are not enough to fill a storyline - there aren't 20-30 new figures a year worthy of using them in a comic. It could end up like a BotCon/TFCC or Henkei-style story, with generations and movie figures' repaints fighting each other. I can't see that working.

All Hail Megatron tried to integrate some Universe figures into the story, but didn't really have high success.

In my opinion, Hasbro made some successful moves when they used IDW artists' artworks for figures - Drift and Thunderwing were total hits (while they tried to use Bludgeons sketch, but ruined him with making him more movie-ish) So, they should just sit down with Milne and Roché, and buy as many concept arts from them as possible.

I have to agree I've been pretty disappointed with the overall quality of the IDW run for Transformers.

For the most part I felt the stories were pretty disjointed. Some stories were well done, Like LSOTW or the Dinobot story. But overall there was a lot of inconsistency to the feel of the books.

With the release of the new titles, I think they are finally on the right track to having consistency in what is happening. They are building a good stable of main characters, and a bigger group of "B" characters.

More to the point, everyone involved has a place in the story. I often felt with both the "Transformers" title, as well as the -tion stories that preceded them that characters would just show up randomly because someone thought they were cool.

While there are some things I dislike about the current titles, most of it can be explained away because they chose not to scrap the preceding history. It is forcing them to work with story elements that old readers wish they could forget or new readers may not like. So, I'm willing to give them a little leeway, while they hash out the old and build up the current scenarios.

I've been pretty lukewarm on the TF books for a while now, but the 2 new titles have given me a bit of hope in the comic incarnations.