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Here are some more, including Bumblebee, Needlenose, Ravage, Ratbat and Tappet!

Congratulations James and John!

Lest I forget to say so, Congratulations are due to James Roberts and John Barber for scoring the writing gigs on the upcoming Transformers Ongoings acnnounced yesterday at SDCC!

James Roberts had proven himself with his fan novel Eugenesis before going on to great fame writing  the mini-series Last Stand of the Wreckers along with fan-favorite Nick Roche, which is one of the most popular Transformers series of the last few years among the fans. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to help out a bit on that series as an inker, and got to work on a great team including Nick Roche, James Roberts, Josh Burcham, Guido Guidi, John Wycough and editors Denton J. Tipton and Andy Schmidt.

John Barber had been an Editor at Marvel for years before going freelance, and landed a series of writing gigs in the Transformers movieverse. Inheriting the work done by Chris Ryall, Chris Mowry and Simon Furman, he was able to make sense of the contradictory continuity of the movie themselves and the previous books that were written without knowing what would take part in the sequels. John's first Transformers series was Sector Seven, followed up by The Dark of the Moon tie-in books Foundation, Rising Storm and the Dark of the Moon Movie Adaptation. I again had the pleasure of working with John on Foundation, which we began working on a full year ago now. (So hard to believe!)

Both Roberts and Barber have definitely proven themselves with fans and are sure to make readers happy when the new year rolls around.

Transformers: Generations: Scourge

I recently picked up my own copy of the Transformers action figure Scourge, part of the Generations toyline.

For non-Transformers fans, he's a character that's been around since the original G1 series from the 80s, and made his debut in the 1986 Transformers: The Movie.

This figure holds a particular interest for me because it seems to be heavily influenced by my redesign of the character for an 11 page story I drew as part of IDW Publishing's All Hail Megatron Issue 14, written by Andy Schmidt and colored by Josh Burcham.

Here's how Scourge's original toy looked in the 1980s.

Scourge Action Figure circa 1986

Here is the comic book version I designed and drew in 2009, as it appeared in All Hail Megatron.

Panel featuring Scourge from All Hail Megatron 14

And finally, here is the modern toy version of the character. 

Scourge Action Figure circa 2011 

Notice design of the chest, with the segmented sections and the shape of the section in the center top of the chest. The details of the "abs" are distinctive as well, in addition to the circular shapes on the sides of his waist.

Although the truncated cone shapes of his shoulders sit further away from his main body, they are also similar to my design as well as the foreams and other minor designs cues such as the shape and proportions of his head.

One other thing of note is that the toy version is clearly marked as a Deception, while IDW's version is not affiliated with Autobots or Decepticons since his origins date from a time before the Transformers' war began.

So I'm pretty convinced that this toy was at least heavily influenced by my toy design. I'm not complaining at all, once I'm paid for work I'm well aware it belongs to Hasbro for them to do as they wish.

I'm actually just pretty chuffed to see a Transformer toy based on my work sitting on the toy shelves. Had I known this would happen when I was a wee boy I would have died from excitement.