Hollywood Leko

So. You sold out, and signed away the rights to your OCs to a soulless Hollywood studio to butcher for a big budget, gritty action movie.

That was a random idea I had way back in 2009 as Michael Bay's Transformers movies were rolling out. I've never been a particularly massive fan or anything. Just always "kind of liked" the franchise, so the redesigns for the characters didn't really bother me as much as they probably did certain others. (But I did generally agree with many of the other reasons the movies weren't very good.)

I actually really liked the more realistic designs. The mechanical complexity really sold the idea that these were giant *alien* robots that could turn into vehicles. I was just starting to get into CG animation myself at the time, so the behind the scenes stuff was particularly fascinating. Especially hearing that rendering the enormous Devastator scenes supposedly melted one of the studio's PCs.

But knowing there was a lot of understandable hate for the character designs, I got to thinking about how a similar approach would turn out applied to Leko. More realistic and complex, but less like the original. Like the studio prioritized making it look technically impressive and appealing to a wider audience, rather than making it actually look like the character it's supposed to be.

I had a lot of fun making it as cursed as I could. If you like Leko's design, I hope you hate this one.

(Also after a brief Discord discussion, we determined that he'll be voiced by Seth Rogan.)