BUILD A G1 TRANSFORMER

Mohamed Abdel Baki demonstrates his process for building, texturing and rendering a huge mech model

- Mohamed Abdel Baki

The concept behind this project was to model one of the robots from the Transformers franchise; this character is called Hot Rod, the original protagonist in the 1986 Transformers: The Movie. The design direction was something much closer to the original Gen 1 style of the cartoon and also the Bumblebee live-action film in 2018. I have always been a fan of the Hot Rod character from the G1 Transformers cartoon, and seeing how I hadn't seen the original design recreated in any of the live-action films, it felt like a unique project to take on.

It is a challenge to try and recreate a 2D cartoon character as a 3D model. However, I felt that if I kept the face and helmet overall shape the same, as well as the main colour scheme in addition to the painted yellow flames on the chest, the rest of the body's design could be somewhat different - but, it would still echo the original G1 design and the robot would be recognised as Hot Rod at first glance.

Finding good reference of both real-world objects and concept art is crucial while modelling, it will usually answer a lot questions that may arise. I always like to think of the concept as being there for the overall idea/shape, and then it's grounded in reality by trying to match the reference you have. I hope you enjoy this step-by-step breakdown of my process, and find some useful tips on both modelling and texturing your own Transformer.

01 START WITH A CONCEPT