Robots to Receive "Updated" Looks in Transformers 3
Posted 03.04.10 by BrentJS
Only a month after director Michael Bay said that 3-D technology "might be a fad" and that it isn't suited for his "old school" style of filmmaking, Bay conceded that he was "testing" 3-D conversion on his first Transformers to see if it will be viable to release Transformers 3 in 3-D. Now, it appears that the Transformers, themselves, might be getting a makeover along with the movies in which they star.
In a recent interview with SciFiWire, Scott Benza, animation supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic, said that at least two of the featured robots will be getting upgrades in Transformers 3.
Our two lead characters, Optimus and Bumblebee, needed to be updated for the next chapter in the Transformers series. Bumblebee's matured a little bit, so I would just say look for subtle changes to his physique that have him look more mature.
Scott Farrar, the visual effects supervisor on Transformers 3, said that the changes to Optimus Prime will be more subtle.
[Prime will have] little tiny things that maybe the average viewer isn't going to notice but probably the fanboys will. You actually will run into pieces that are maybe always in the way, and wouldn't it be nice if that part wasn't there? Maybe you make a shift in the shoulder, in the chest or what have you. So it might be proportioning, but it also might be for usability, so [the animators]' task could be easier, too.
Farrar also offered the first update on the progress of Ehren Kruger's script for Transformers 3.
There's an outline and most of the script is done. It hasn't been released to us completely because they want to keep that under wraps, but we certainly know enough. Michael turns over sections of the script, and then the art department is full steam ahead right now, the L.A. art department. We also have an ILM art department working on this at the same time. So we take their 2-D work and start turning it into 3-D models, because we like to get a jump-start on this. Any model that looks like it could start, we want to get going, because it'll take us 30 weeks to build it.