These notebook sketches were an attempt to get the lay of the land. Even when you create a character, you have to draw it a bunch of times before you get really comfortable. Think about how funky The Thing looked in the first few issues of The Fantastic Four, how much his look fluctuated before it eventually gelled into the classic trademarked version. It’s that much more of a challenge to get comfortable with a character somebody else created. You have to know these things backwards and forwards, to be able to put them in all the different situations and express the range of emotions the comics form demands while having the characters be themselves, while still maintaining my individual artistic voice. That’s a lot to juggle. That means practice…lots and lots of practice.

I’ve devoured the reference IDW sent me. There’s more reference material on the way. I can’t wait. I’m studying the Masters of Transformers art. Don Perlin:

Guido Guidi:

Herb Trimpe:

Geoff Senior:

John Ridgeway, Mike Collins and Jeff Anderson:

I’m also sketching furiously while watching cartoons old and new, trying to figure out the essential elements that are common across all the iterations, so that I can recontruct them in my own particular idiom.