NOTE: These pictures can also be seen over at Mrcappy’s gallery [link]
He was very gracious and gave me permission to upload his drawings here…seeing as I’m Mrcappy.
In other words, these aren’t stolen unless you think I plagiarized myself.

Despite giving off the impression that all his prayers end with “And God, thank you for blessing the world with my presence!”, I was impressed at the degree in which Michael Bay was willing to listen to fans’ input for the Transformer movie.

“JASSN NYUUU!!1 TEH TRANSFURMER MOVIE WULD HAV BEEN HEKA BETTER WIT TEH ORIGINEL CARICTERS!11!!”
Well, if I deciphered your internet dyslexia correctly, then I think I’m up to answer your plight! To satisfy transfans’ curiosity about what the movie would’ve looked like had Bay been faithful to the G1 designs, I had the idea to retrofit the live action movie with old school flair. I’d be interested to learn if other artists tackled this idea, especially with the added effort to hunt down what Blackout and Barricade looked like. If the Transformers were done up in their G1 deco, it’d look something like this.

All the action and adventure of the movie has been retained, can you not sense the drama and sheer scale of midgetized robo death orgies?! This would have cost ILM thirty-five thou to render, but with Cappitron’s discount price it’ll only cost you…nothing. Wait that’s not how capitalism works.

If you need detailed descriptions of the original characters, then this picture probably doesn’t appeal to you anyway. I’ll quickly describe where the character made his/her debut, and go into detail if there’s some interesting factoid. We’ll start from the bottom up, left to right:

BLACKOUT: Man, I messed up. See, I was originally gonna add Arcee into the picture, because she was originally scripted to be the motorcycle that helped take down Blackout. So I thought it cute to have Arcee putting him in a chokehold. By the time I sketched out the picture however, I realized that both Arcee AND Blackout were missing from the doodle. So in desperation, I was going to suggest Blackout got bazooka’d in the crotch and disintegrated, just to be movie faithful and THAT’S why you can’t see him (oddly, that’s my one weakness too)! But I was able to plop his crisped disembodied head in the corner and call the picture finished.

If you’re curious as to who Blackout was in the original series, he came courtesy as part of the Micromaster toyline where he was a blue conehead jet that combined with another Decepticon (Spaceshot) that formed a bigger jet that could then go inside a tank. Don’t ask me, the toyline got chronologically weirder as time went on.

CARLY: Believe it or…well, you have to believe it. When you have a cartoon with robots blowing crap up, little kids just NEED to know that the human characters are emotionally secure for relationships! Carly showed up during season two, and was equally useless to the Autobots as Spike was. But cartoon Carly showed a little more refrain than her boobity movie doppelganger, thinking that she could bag scores of men who weren’t mandated to wear helmets. As if God Himself made her sarcasm a reality, the whole human population died, and so Spike WAS the last man on earth. Their unholy union spawned a hellchild that combined both of their incompetencies and doomed the Autobots into laziness by lulling ‘em into being twenty-four-hour babysitters.
TAKE CARE OF YOUR OWN FRICKIN’ KIDS SPIKE.

SPIKE: Spike. I liked Silo LaBuffer in the movie, but man Spike sucked in the cartoon. Since the first episode Spike has been hindering the progress of the Autobots, and miraculously stayed alive long enough to finish the American run of the show. Since the AllSpark was considered the source of all life, power, wisdom, heart, which I guess could then summon Captain Planet, I figured the cartoon’s Matrix would be the equivalent of it.

Fun fact: If you saw some of the concept sketches for the Matrix, it originally looked like a Holy Hand Grenade. You gotta admit, it would have been ten shades of awesome if the movie ended with Rodimus pulling the pin out of the Grenatrix and saying “ Prime wants to say hi, butthole!” before lobbing it at Galvatron and blowing up Unicron.

FRENZY: AKA Rumble2. He was a pretty pointless duplicate of Rumble who appeared in the first season. The show often mixed up the two’s color pallets. Since Rumble was my favorite for comic relief, I guess I liked Frenzy too. In the movie, I actually found myself liking Frenzy the most out of the Decepticons. He was pretty much the only one who had time to develop his personality quirks.

BONECRUSHER: Isn’t that romantic, Prime’s “axing him out”. Bonecrusher was from the first season as part of the Constructicons, who could form Devastator.

OPTIMUS PRIME: Sword? Pssh! How badass is it that a good guy would use an effing AXE to maim his enemies? I was always a little bummed that the Transformers could produce any item within their wrist…but apparently could produce that item only one time. I would think you’d produce a stop-megatron’s-heart device and call it a day. The American show started with Prime, and it ended with Prime.

BUMBLEBEE: There’s Bumblebee, being yellow, being worthless. He’s been around since the first season, until for whatever reason he decided to get ‘silicon’ implants in the third season which resulted in a face that would scare children and small woodland creatures.

BARRICADE: Barricade’s putting the smackdown on Fumblebee and trying to get the…Matrix of…AllSparkership. Shut up they can’t all be clever. Barricade was from the Micromaster toy set and was a fabulous combo of fuchsia and turquoise racecar that struck fear and insecurity into any Homophobot.

MEGATRON: I ALWAYS THOUGHT HE WAS COOL BUT THIS IS RIDICULOUS LOL!!!1!!11123! Fun fact: can you imagine Megatron not looking like Megatron? Blasphemy, right? There were early concepts of him that made him look more like Crasher from the GoBots. In fact the earliest toy commercials animated the concept art of Megatron…which I think might have been showcased on the twentieth anniversary DVD. He’s been around since the first season, until he got ‘upgraded’ into Galvatron.

RATCHET: Ratchet may have been a likeable and caring character in the cartoon, but in the movie he should be sued for malpractice. I’ve stated it before, but what exactly does a Cybertronian doctor DO? He can’t fix Bumblebee’s voice box, can’t put two pieces of Jazz back together. Shoulda brought Wheeljack instead. Ratchet’s been around since the first season…but he sure wasn’t around after the cartoon movie.

JAZZ: Jazz thought he was too hip for health coverage. Now he doesn’t have hips. Learn from his mistake people! Jazz debuted in the first season, survived the autocaust from the original movie, but didn’t make it out of the live action film.

BRAWL: I’m sure even casual fans know of the debate, but I’ll go ahead and inform the three people in the dark. Brawl was the original name given to the tank Decepticon in the movie. There were stage names given to Bay and co. until the official names could be finalized. Devastator was Brawl’s stage name, but some yokel in post production had the robot refer to itself as Devastator.

Oddly, this wasn’t corrected for the DVD release. I’m kinda curious, because one would hope that Devastator and his ilk would combine and accost planes in midflight for the sequel. Anyway, Brawl, an actual tank, appeared in the second season of the animated series. He was part of the Combaticons and helped in combining to form Bruticus.

STARSCREAM: Gorillabot has grown on me. It was weird, because despite his toy’s packaging and media reading that movie Starscream was a coward and conspirator, he kicked some major booty during his screen time. But I adhered to the description, and so he’s just chilling back there waiting for the danger to subside. He’s been a fan favorite since the first season.

SCORPONOK: Imagine Blackout having to give birth to this thing! Scorponok was one o’ them city robots like Fortress Maximus and Trypticon, and was the only highlight to the incomprehensibly ADD-esque fourth season.
DANIEL IS IN A COMA!
ALIENS TALKING IN 70’S JIVE LINGO!
I’M PUNCH/COUNTERPUNCH AND I’M AN AUTOBOTICON!
RODIMUS, DUDE, THERE’S LITTLE PEOPLE LIVING IN MY HEAD!
I GOT A GIANT ROBOT SCORPION JUST SITTIN’ IN STORAGE!

IRONHIDE: Ironhide found a Matrix of his own, and is Keanu-ing Brawl’s shells. I’m kinda glad I never received Ironhide or Ratchet’s G1 toys as a kid. Most of the toys were redrawn and redesigned for the cartoon, but some kind of genius had to create those characters out of the calliope of random joints that made up their toys. I don’t even think the toys had heads! Anyway, Ironhide was around from the first season, and had one of the worst deaths in the cartoon movie since the poor bot dies effing TWICE!

Ahh, all done. I had a ton of fun doing this, and I hope you had fun looking at it…assuming you could figure out what you were looking at. Lots of robots in there.
-The “It Looks Pretty Goofy, Huh?” Cappitron

For the copycats: Micron Pigma pen 05 (linework), Prismacolor markers.
References: IDW’s “Transformers: The Ark” (essential for character sheets), Wikipedia links, Google image searches, toy sites, YouTube videos for color schemes.