So, whenever they transformed, it looked like some intricate shit with a ton of moving parts.

I’m wondering if the animations and designs were actually planned out, so if you had a model of say, Bunblebee, an animator could move him piece by piece to go from robot to car, or if it was just animation with random moving stuff to make it look complicated. Were there any special features that discussed this?

I'm not sure if you mean this exactly, but the designers and Bay said that they wanted to make sure that, unlike the cartoon, there was no mass shifting or cheating, so the size of the car pieces matched in both modes. Beyond that, though, they basically cheated by allowing things to basically fold up in unrealistic ways, like a car panel could fold up into a small piece without the corresponding thickness or joints.

You can see the designers talk about it around the 6 minute mark:


Here's an article where they basically say they designed the robot separately from the car and left it to the animators to work out how to go between forms:

http://www.creativebloq.com/making-transformers-3123105


As I didn't really watch the subsequent movies, I'm not sure how they changed the designs or if they kept to these parameters with the follow up films.

'Mass shifting' was the retcon answer to, "we have really cheap quickly made animation". The G1 series was a disaster in the animation quality department. Also, you have to remember that the Transformers were comprised of various foreign toy lines, which found their rights purchased and then shoehorned into the animated series. Scales/transformations were all over the place which I'm sure the animators struggled with at times.

As for Bay's movies:
Does it make any sense that they would care about scale and/or correct transformation, and probably spent all of two minutes on the actual facial designs we would see? I honestly can't remember what Megatron even looked like. Sounds like Hasbro would push for that so it would be easier to create the toylines.

Thanks for that info Fuji, some of that seems familiar. That’s kind of what I was getting at, in that would the initial and final forms have the same mass and also be “realistic” to whatever mechanics they were doing. Looks like it was yes to the first question, and no to the second.

I’m willing to by that they ca transform from one thing to the other and back
But my issue has always been how fast they do it.

All those mechanics and moving parts and it happens in about three seconds.

You can buy autonomous giant robots who turn into driveable cars and planes and stuff but the speed of their transformation takes you out of it?

The movies are long enough and you want them longer?

Yeah Jesus don't make them any longer. The most recent is already 2.5 hours too long. In one of the features on the first or second Bay said they wanted it to appear as though it was an "actual" transformation. I'm paraphrasing but as others said, basically they made sure the size was the same and that panels were apparent in either form. Since it was all CGI there was no need to make them 100% accurate in the transformation and would have made it far more difficult.

Not what I said.
I like the movies and know they can’t have it take five minutes each time they change.

I accept it as part of what they are.

Just something that catches my attention when it happened in 3 seconds is all.

I was just teasing you, sorry if it came across as putting you down or something.

My problem was always that they made them almost too complex for me. At least in the early movies it was really hard for me to follow the action when the Transformers are fighting, it was just a mess of moving gears and such.

I used to wonder the same thing but after watching the movies and seeing dozens of “transformations” that are just a clusterfuck of movement I realized it doesn’t matter if they painstakingly created a realistic transformation since what you see on screen is just messy blur.

I'm not offended, so I'll say YES.

I wasn’t bothered by your post.