To celebrate the live-action movie coming out in a little over a week, here's a collection of the outstanding Transformers fanart here on DA. With twenty-three years of toys and supporting media (come on, it's a toyline with awesome supporting media, like cartoons and comics. But it's still a toyline first and foremost.), over ten different incarnations in the English versions, there's a wealth of art to choose from.

Generation One

The original 1984 cartoon created a world with many fondly-remembered characters, and it's the one a lot of people seem to think of when you first mention Transformers.

Gestalts

One of the unique and awesome things to come out of G1 was the gestalt - five (or six) Transformers who combined into one really big robot. Like, 'zilla sized big. Each side had two or three, though the one people remember the most is Devastator, the Constructicons' gestalt.

Transformers: The Movie

The 1986 animated movie, where the writers massacred most of the notable cast-members. Optimus Prime and Megatron both died, as did Starscream, Ironhide, Prowl, Ratchet, Skywarp, Thundercracker, Wheeljack, Windcharger, Brawn, Shrapnel, Bombshell, and Kickback. I've seen plenty of people who weren't afraid to admit that they cried during this movie.

Brought us a whole new cast of folks, though.

Redesigns

Because everyone loves redesigning characters. It's fun!

Comics

There have been at least three comic companies who've had the Transformers license, from Marvel in the 80s and 90s, Dreamwave in the early '00s, and IDW currently. While the comics tend to stick to a G1-style universe and character set, they're /very/ different from the cartoon. And that's ignoring the GI Joe vs. Transformers mini-serieses Devil's Due has put out.

We've also got a large collection of the artists and colorists for the official comics here on DA.

Beast Wars

The mid-90s CGI series by Mainframe Entertainment. (You may remember them from doing ReBoot.) It, and Beast Machines, took the franchise in a radically different direction for the duration of its run. Not everyone liked it at the time, but I personally think Beast Wars is the best written of the Transformers serieses.

Armada/Energon/Cybertron

The Unicron Trilogy set of series. They're dubbed anime, so we get a lot of Transformers grappling rather than shooting at each other. But we also get some fun new ideas for the Transformers mythos.

Toys

There are far, far more toys of characters than there are characters who made it into one of the supporting media. Often as not, too, the cartoon and comics versions of characters are simplified to spare the artists pain. That doesn't stop people from drawing the toy characters, though.






And fractaling out from my favorites to other people's favorites has gotten me a whole heaping of new Transformers fanart, but it's time to pry my fingers away from the keyboard before this article gets any longer.

Hope you folks enjoyed it!

(But wait! Where is the art based on the new movie designs? Trust me, it's out there. I'm just extremely spoilerphobic.)