Interviews – Jim Sorenson & Bill Forster

Hi, this is Bill Forster. And this is Jim Sorensen.

And you're listening to the GeekCast Radio Network.

You're listening to All Things Transformers,

version 2 .0. For some strange reason, I want

to say, that's Jim and his hetero life mate,

Silent Bill. That's pretty much how it works,

yeah. I'm extremely secure in my masculinity,

so go ahead. I'm completely secure in my silent

-ness. and welcome to All Things Transformers.

I am one of your hosts, TFG1 Mike. Joining me

is Peacon Court Michael. Hello. Hey, how's it

going? It's going. And in this latest All Things

Transformers slash TFG1 slash TFG2 interview,

we welcome the writers and artists Jim Sorensen

and Bill Forrester. Hey guys, how's it going?

Hi, how are you? I thought this was great. You

thought it was what? TED Talks. That was a Ted...

We're lacking the stage. Oh, okay. Ah, yes. No

staging. You don't have the big, huge Ted stage

here. Although that would be cool. I actually

do. Is this not a video interview? No, it's not.

Damn it! I paid so much to rent this! Jim lives

on a stage. Nice. Yeah, I could... I kind of

see that. He lives on a stage inside the Ark.

All right, so coming up, I believe it's in June,

you guys are releasing Transformers Legacy, the

art of Transformers packaging, correct? This

is the first I'm hearing of it. Funny. I just

want to make sure I have the date right. We're

actually not 100 % sure of the date. The last

we'd heard was April 30th, but I believe that's

getting pushed back a little bit. I think that

the plan is to try and get it out certainly before

Age of Extinction. Yeah. According to the TF

wiki, it says May 6th, but that could be, you

know, could be incorrect. Who knows? I would

think that we know more than we would know. Yeah.

Those guys who know are updating the wiki. Yes.

They have a source for their info, but I think

it might get pushed back a little bit. Yeah,

it'd be fine if it got pushed back like a week

or two before the movie. That would be great

for us, actually. Kind of makes sense. You'd

actually get some publicity that way. Anytime

someone went to go review the movie or talk about

the movie or the movie came up somewhere, it

would say, oh, also, there's a supplemental material

being released. Go buy that. Yeah, because that's

going to... It could happen. You never know.

If I were writing it, I would totally put it

in there. Or you could say, if you didn't like

the movie, here, go read this. It's better. If

Michael Bay did horrible things to your childhood,

maybe you should revisit your childhood in the

way of legacy. I got to say, I never quite understood

the idea that Michael Bay is doing bad things

to our childhood in that. I can tell all the

G1 stuff still exists and is still out there.

And it's actually probably easier to find now

than it was in like. I don't know, 1997 or so.

So I, I can get people not enjoying it. I don't

quite get the, you know, that you're ruining

it. Well, he has a time machine. I just don't

quite see intellectually how he can do that.

And I tend to think that if he did have a time

machine, he'd probably use it for other things

like ruining Casablanca or something. Well, you

know, I will say that as the movies have progressed

and Michael Bay is still in the director's seat,

that he has slowly been paying attention to fans.

Because at least with Dark of the Moon and now

Age of Extinction, we have a lot more G1 influence

in the films in certain places. I'll buy that.

I think the fear is that Michael Bay is trying

to replace... the things that you loved in your

childhood with his own stuff. And the fact of

the matter is that he can't really replace your

childhood. He's replacing your child's childhood.

My kids only know who G1 Optimus Prime is because

I shove it down their throat. They're immersed

in the current culture. Like him or not, he's

still bringing in more fans and more money into

the region. I've been having this debate over

on the G .I. Joe forums because Bill and I did

a couple of the Joe books and it sort of reignited

my interest in G .I. Joe. I liked it as a kid,

but it wasn't something I stayed with as a fan

as an adult. And one of the things that, at least

I believe, G .I. Joe is sort of lacking is...

their version of Beast Wars. And if I can explain

what I mean, Transformers came in 1984, and it

was brilliant, and it was the hot toy for two,

three years, and the movie was a little disappointing

by movie standards, but it certainly changed

the trajectory of the show and the toy line.

And it sort of faded away, drifted into concepts

like Pretenders and Action Masters, and then

left U .S. shells altogether. And Hasbro waited

a couple of years and then tried to revive it

under Generation 2. And I think as a toy line,

from a fan perspective, it was actually very

successful at reviving the toy line. It was quite

good, I think, at taking... some of the classic

characters and reinventing them with much better

toys, I think objectively, than a lot of what

we'd had in G1. But it wasn't a big commercial

success, and it wasn't a big creative success

in terms of there wasn't much fiction to support

it. There was a little bit in the comics front.

There was the TV show that was the old show repackaged.

And then Beast Wars came along. And I have an

article about this in the Transformers Collectors

Club that's going to be out next month. But it

sort of proved that Transformers could be Not

just Generation 1, not just cars and trucks versus

jets and tape cassettes. It proved that it could

not necessarily be Autobots and Decepticons.

And I think it was so strong. It was such a strong

toy line. It was such a strong cartoon. You know,

the characters are so vivid. The storylines were

so well produced that I think despite itself,

the sort of nascent Transformers fandom had to

accept. that this existed and was quite good

and was a legitimate part of the Transformers

franchise. And ever since then, Transformers

has rebooted itself every three to five years

or so, sometimes with a couple of soft reboots

in between, sometimes not. And we as fans sort

of have been conditioned to accept that Transformers

can do that, can sometimes be very different,

can sometimes be... The Mirror Universe can sometimes

be based around minicons or the concept of power

linking. It can sometimes be Optimus as a young,

inexperienced commander with a new art style.

It can sometimes be very kid -focused. It can

sometimes be very sort of adolescent -focused

with lots of explosions and boobs. And they're

all sort of valid expressions of the Transformers

brand. And I think that Beast Wars really did

that. And I think that Joe, which is where I

started with this, For the most part, it hasn't

had that. If you want to get technical, it sort

of has had that in that there was the 12 -inch

Joes for a long time, and then Hasbro reinvented

it quite radically as the three -and -a -three

-quarter -inch line of Real American Hero. But

I think since that, they haven't been able to.

And I think it's because Real American Hero hasn't

really had its beast wars. Little reboots, things

like G .I. Joe Extreme and Sigma Six and even

Renegades. But it's never really gotten that

far away from the real American hero concept

in a way that succeeded. And I think until they

do, it's going to be hard, which is why on the

G .I. Joe 50th anniversary this year, Hasbro

isn't doing very much at all, whereas the Transformers

30th anniversary, they're celebrating with books

and toys and media. a gigantic tome of Transformers

box art, which is what we're here to discuss.

Yes. I did that. I'm good. Yes. Right back to

the beginning. We, I was going to say, uh, we

should totally have Jim on our, uh, Transformers

retrospective. He knows. Yeah. Yeah, we could.

Let's talk about this after the show. Yes. Yes.

Um, say, so Jim, Jim, how about me and you reboot

G .I. Joe then? And that would be our next project.

If Hasbro is willing to let us do it. I actually

felt that... To the G .I. Joe adventure team

roots? We wouldn't call it that because I don't

think that's a super marketable name in the 21st

century. But kind of go back to those roots and

maybe have the villains don't use the name, but

the villains kind of be this sort of Cobra Law

secret society of monsters. Get away from terrorists

and get into sort of more of the supernatural

and super science. I think that might be a lot

of fun. All right, let's do it. Okay. I would

watch that. You've got to keep the tanks, though.

Tanks versus monsters would be cool. I think

that, and I know this is pretty far afield from

a Transformers book of box art, but to me, the

core of what makes G .I. Joe, G .I. Joe is the

idea of action figures interacting with vehicles.

Because I think G .I. Joe has been many things

over the years, but that's always been an important

element, the important element. That's sort of

what it's all about. And I think that... You

know, the military -themed stuff, the heavily

military -themed stuff, it hasn't been selling

recently, and I don't think you necessarily have

to be married to that. I think you might want

to nod to the sort of concept and origins, but

move away from it a little bit. Well, you know

who's playing for that is Obama's manless drones.

Actually, I think that some of the most popular

G .I. Joe vehicles were the ones that could never

actually exist. Do you think so? Like what? Oh,

yeah. Oh, like Destro's Dominator. That was a

fun one. You can never build that in real life,

but it's really cool. Sometimes G .I. Joe is

very much about realistic vehicles, but sometimes

it's very much about the sort of the fantasy

and the sci -fi. I mean, there have been lines

of G .I. Joe that have been about, you know,

the eco -warrior type stuff. There have been

lines that have, you know, they're fighting zombies

in the club this year for the G .I. Joe con,

which I think is a really cool thing. I do think

zombies are quite overplayed, but in this context,

I think it's a lot of fun. Well, the neat thing

is, though, is during the same time that Transformers

was having their G2, where everything was very

strangely colored, Dayglo, if you will, G .I.

Joe was having the same, I don't want to say

the same design pattern, but they were also very

Dayglo color and very different. And they were

using different themes, like... uh let's try

ninjas or let's try echo warriors or let's try

you know just different um gimmicks and now you

see those coming full circle like wow what do

they do you know we got echo warriors well what

does echo warriors fight zombies sure why not

zombies are popular kind of makes sense yeah

i mean i was i was honestly expecting something

like cobra law to be vampires and we'll have

vampires. Sure, G .I. Joe versus vampires. That

would rock. Yeah. Well, I kind of think that

that might be certainly a good direction to explore,

even if only to just prove to the... You'd have

to do it well. You'd need really good toys, and

you'd need a really good show. Get, like, Marty

Eisenberg to write it, because I think that guy

kicks ass. Yeah. And I thought Renegades was

really good. I just... Renegades might have been

enough of a reboot if there was... enough sort

of momentum behind it. I would have really loved

to have seen a second season of that, and I would

have loved if the toys had been able to get out

on shelves in time to sort of have the virtuous

cycle, the toys supporting the show, the show

supporting the toys. I mean, that was a fun concept.

Yeah, but that didn't happen because of that

movie. I don't... Any time a movie comes up,

oh, let's cancel everything else and promote

the movie. That's a shame, because I think G

.I. Joe could handle two lines, you know, one

for collectors and one for movie. We see that

time and time again with Transformers 2. Not

to be too cynical, but I'm not sure G .I. Joe

can support one line right now, or at least Hasbro

seems to have their chance. I feel that at least

in that line and that franchise, I think they're

kind of shooting themselves in the foot a little

bit. Well, they are, but let's face it, G .I.

Joe are just the upgraded version of the old

Green Army men we all grew up playing with. All

right, let's get back to the questions here.

Jim, where did you grow up? I grew up in North

Babylon, New York. Wow. I'm sorry, it's not a

very open -ended question. What about you, Bill?

I grew up in Queens, New York, and then I moved

out to Bayshore, Long Island, which is where

I met Jim. We kind of grew up on the island together.

Oh, really? So you guys have been friends a long

time. Since I was about 17 and he was 15, I believe.

Yeah, about that. Yeah, so over 20 years, I think.

Oh, yeah. Just while we're on the subject, my

wife, Ming Lee, she's from Taiwan originally,

but she grew up in Bayshore as well. Yeah, we

actually went to the same high school, me and

his wife. Oh, cool. That's something I never

knew. Here's a slightly funny story about that.

I don't think Bill was there, but we had another

friend whose sister was in the same class as

Ming Lee, my wife, and she was the valedictorian

of her own school that year. So my friend actually...

And I met her at college, so a few months after

she gave her valedictorian speech. So actually,

one of my best friends growing up had seen her

and heard her give a speech about four months

before I met her and started dating her. That

must have been a nice icebreaker. He's like,

oh, I remember her. Yeah, a quarter of her speech

was in Chinese. I couldn't understand a word.

That must have been rough. So when you guys were

friends, In high school, was that like your dream

and aspiration to be writers or illustrators?

Well, I think I always wanted to be an artist.

And I eventually went to art school and I wound

up being the art director of a museum in New

York. I don't know what Jim's goals were, but

it wasn't really our plan to do books together

now. No, and I got to say, the writing was something

that came a little bit later. I was more interested

in science when I was in high school and college.

I studied applied mathematics, and I worked for

years in consulting. It's like a super brain

computer in a jar. Well, what had happened was,

I got really, I was always interested in Transformers,

and I found the Transformers fan community online

in about 94. alt toys transformers was pretty

much where all of it happened at the time i mean

the web barely existed at the time and I started

conversing and eventually started contributing.

I think the first sort of real contribution,

aside from just debate to the fandom, was that

I cracked the Beast Wars language like a cryptic

quote and figured out what all the symbols meant

and eventually posted that as TrueType fonts

online. So that was about 1997, 1998. That was

you. That was me. You could figure out what all

the hidden messages were, and some of them were

just, like, shields are failing, and they would

say shield failure. But then sometimes it would

be, you know, the computer saying, it's been

a long time since I've had sweet thistle pie.

Stuff like that. Including one in Beast Machines.

Beast Machines didn't have a lot, but there's

one in Beast Machines that I think was directed

at me personally, which was, if you can read

this, seek out. I've been posting translations

online for years. Skeer has that kind of sense

of humor, I think. Well, presumably that would

have been done by the production department.

Yeah, by the artists. That's true. I remember

when the translation first started appearing

online, and I was like, wow, that is really cool.

And I just assumed that somebody in the art department

leaked it. I didn't realize that some weird cryptographer

was decoding all this stuff. It's actually not

that hard. And then the reason I mentioned shield

failure was because that was the first... sort

of clue that that something was going on with

the uh with the language to me i was watching

the show i had the laser disc i picked them up

in japan i was living in japan at the time and

uh so i was able to freeze frame them and get

them really quite clear and a very early episode

maybe four or five uh you know they're talking

about shield failing and and there's you know

two words flashing on the screen they said i

wonder if that's shield failure and i just looked

really quick and it's like okay well the third

letter in shield is i All right. Oh, look, that

would be the I in failure. Okay, well, that actually

tracks. So then that would be S -H -I -E -L -D

-F -A. And then from there, I just went looking

for other letters and then numbers. And sure

enough, there's enough straight ones that you

can find that you can reverse engineer the funny

ones. Yeah. That's cool. And also, sometimes

they'd have in B stories, they'd have just big

blocks of text scroll by, and sometimes those

were just the alphabet in order. That also makes

it. a lot easier. So that kind of gives you an

idea of the general shape of the letter, and

then you look for another one where you can see

that letter more clearly, and you say, oh, okay,

that's what's going on here. It helps when the

Rosetta Stone scrolls by. It does. And the nice

thing about, or maybe the interesting thing about

that is the Maximal and Predacon languages, they're

both just straight, you know, Roman character

substitution fonts, but they're so different

from each other. The Maximal is all squares and

half circles, and it's very sort of computery,

but the Predacon looks like a handwritten language.

It's got lots of serifs. It's sort of very jagged

and violent, and I thought that was clever that

they did that. Jagged and violent, like most

of Waspinator's deaths. I can see that. first

episode so it was something that they'd done

when they were making the pilot so uh tell me

uh i'm thinking like so you're you're helping

out with the fandom you're involved how does

that transition into you know what what you guys

are doing now well oh yeah i think i started

to tell the story and got sidetracked but i i

been a part of the fandom and tried to contribute.

And one of the areas that I became very interested

in was animation models. I saw scans of the old...

Can I stop you a moment? Go for it. He gets involved

with animation models because Jim collects every

one of the toys, and then he deciphers all the

fonts, and he just kind of goes through these

little areas where he finds one aspect of the

fandom, and then he just consumes all of it,

and then moves on to the next part of it. So

at this point, he had like every G1 toy. He had

all this artwork. And it just kind of led up

to this point where he was collecting these animation

models. Wow. That's fair. And I found online

scans of the Megatron Laserdisc box set. And

they had the convoy box set, the laser disc box

set, then the 2010 and Headmasters. They had

four of them. Unfortunately, they stopped. They

didn't keep it up with Master Force or Victory.

But they had these booklets called Planet of

Cybertron. And in those booklets, they'd start

with a picture of the back of the box art. And

then you'd go through and they'd have some trivia

about the episodes. And then in the back, they

had all these... animation i didn't really know

what they were and i at the time i didn't read

any japanese so i couldn't even read it i just

thought they were this really neat black and

white artwork with the turnarounds of the characters

and the head shots and sometimes the transformation

i said oh these are really cool these production

designs didn't know what they were and i started

trying to figure it out and first i just looked

for the other laser discs and then eventually

i i was able to figure out enough to say okay

well that's what they are they're the animation

models and i started trying to track those down

And I wound up getting on eBay, I wound up splitting

with Fumihiko Akiyama, who's this sort of Japanese

super fan, really nice guy. You know, he doesn't

come out to the States as much as he used to

because of sort of family reasons. He has kids

now, which I can sympathize with. I have a five

-month -old. But, you know, I wound up sort of

splitting this Transformers comic Bible that

we bought that had lots and lots of the animation

models because they had shared. The work that

sort of had been done for Sunbow and Marvel was

sort of done, in many cases, it was sort of the

same work. And for the animation models, those

wound up going to the Marvel artists for reference.

And it was just about everybody from the first

probably two, three years. I think it was the

first two and a half years. They were missing

a bunch of the movie stuff, unfortunately. In

fact, I think a lot of the movie characters that

we wound up using in the ARC books came from

scans of the laser discs, as it turns out. But

I tracked down all these animation models, and

I said, ah, I really want to share these. And

I had spoken to Bill. Bill was the art director

over at the Intrepid. sierra space museum in

new york so he sort of had firmly established

his credentials as an art type person and said

oh you know maybe we should you know try and

put these up on on the web or something and bill's

like you know we could do it as a book and we

pitched it to you know we we cleaned up some

of the images and we made a five -page pitch

to iuw and we approached them at one of the bot

cons and said hey would you guys like to do a

you know you know, a hundred, 200 page book of

black and white, you know, designs. And they

said, no, that doesn't seem like a good idea.

So, um, so we, we, we went back to the drawing

board and we, uh, we refined the pitch a little

bit, but, but I think the big thing we did was

I had, I think Bill alluded to this. I went through

a phase and I still do this a little bit where

I was collecting a lot of the original artwork.

And I had, I had a few pieces from Don Figaro

who was really hot in this timeframe. And I,

I, contacted him and said hey you know we're

doing this project you know do you think maybe

you could do you know a cover for us you know

like a sort of a spec cover for us for this project

and and he wound up doing that and it's the cover

that that that we used for the book and we repitched

it you know again we we made the pitch a little

better but mostly we had this beauty and bill

colored it in this beautiful don figueroa cover

and that was enough for them to sort of take

us seriously enough to to give us that book deal

nice And that was very well received by the fans

and had strong sales, and that's turned into

– what are we up to? About seven or eight books

that we've done together collaboratively now?

Roughly, yeah. Yeah, seven. Legacy of the Art

of Transformers Packaging will be the seventh

book. You've got ARC 1 and 2. And I've done a

couple more with Hasbro, and Bill's done some

with IDW. Yeah, very cool. Which, of course,

when we first hatched this plan to put these

character models together, I think the first

night we came up with this idea, one of us said,

no, we should do this. Take all that airbrushed

artwork from the packaging and put it into a

book. I think we had that conversation very,

very, very early on. And, in fact, I think that

was the second book we pitched to IDW, and we

actually had had a tentative yes, and then we

hit the wall with Hasbro, and we said, hey, we'd

love to do this book. How much art do you have?

And they said, none. So, in a sense, we've been

working on Legacy since about, what, 2005? I

think maybe 2008. Okay. It'd be more apropos

if it was 2005. You know that, right? Yeah. It'd

be less accurate. I think we first pitched this

book around 2006. I think that's when we first

pitched IDW. What I like the most is that you

put the book out, and then, I don't know, Jim

comes across more art, and he says, you know

what? I'm going to put this out on my website.

I'm glad you like that. I love your blog. It's

awesome. Thanks. I pretty much have shared it

all, which is why I haven't done an update in

about three months. That and the baby. But I've

pretty much got all the Transformers stuff. I

have a tiny bit of Transformers animation models

that I haven't shared yet that I'm still waiting

for a good venue for, but not too much. The sort

of backgrounds and stuff I have, that's all shared.

I wish I had everything, but it's still hard

to find. And every time I go to a Transformers

convention, I always do a pass through the dealer's

room looking for that sort of material. Do you

ever find anything? Yeah, sometimes. It's hard

to find, but it's not impossible. I did, I think,

an eight -part series on WebWorld and maybe...

five -part series on another one of the season

three episodes, maybe six parts, but that was

stuff that I had gotten, the model packs for

specific episodes, and that was long after I'd

gotten most of the rest of it. Some of it, like

the backgrounds and whatnot, that I had gotten

while I was still working on the second arc book,

and a little bit of it makes its way into the

complete arc. We had a few extra pages, so we

made sure that we filled those up with some extras.

But most of it wasn't. I think it's really interesting

blog fodder, but most of it wasn't sort of the

kind of thing that would really be exciting in

a book. A few of them were. I think we had the

models for the crashed Decepticon ship that they

use as their base in season two. And I think

we gave that a page or two in the complete arc.

And that was really neat. That was some background

stuff. But most of the stuff. most of the background

sort of material we had just wasn't quite at

the level that we thought was appropriate for

a book. And also we always, I mean, every book

we've ever worked on, we've pretty much run into

our page counts. You know, we always have a little

more than we have room for, which is a good thing

to have. It means you wind up cutting the fat

and making a stronger book. You know, I don't

think we've ever had a book where we just had

to fill space. No. Yeah. No, it's really good

stuff. And again, if there's extras that can

bleed over onto the website, then hey, that's

just gravy. Yeah, I mean, I feel like in some

ways what we're doing is almost academic. It's

almost like research. We're trying to track down

the material, find it, understand it. Then make

sure it's published and then share it. And we

like to go through IDW or fund publications because

it helps us reach a wider audience. And frankly,

it's just a nicer format. But some material doesn't

make sense for that format. And that material,

if we're legally and ethically allowed to, sometimes

people give us material with conditions attached.

But if that's not the case, then I'm more than

happy to share it on the blog. Cool. So you must

have a massive toy collection then. You know,

it's not as big as it used to be. It's been shrinking

a little bit. I have all the G1 toys pretty much.

I mean, there's a few sort of... In G2, I'm not

as complete. I didn't get all the repaints from

G2. I mostly focused on original molds. But I

think it was G1, G2... Japanese stuff. I think

the European stuff I had most of, but that was

right around when I was starting to lose interest

a little bit. So I might have one or two gaps

in there. And then I have, I think I have almost

all the mini cons. There might be a couple of

the, the sort of really hard to find ones from

Japan that I was missing. But a lot of the other

stuff I had collected and then I said, eh, I

don't know. Like Beast Wars. I was really into

Beast Wars. I really liked the toys. I still

kind of do, but I only have finite space. So

I think eventually those wound up on the chopping

block. And I haven't been getting so many newer

toys, even though they're quite nice. I just

wonder where I can stop. Yeah. I feel your pain.

What about you, Bill? What kind of toys do you

have as far as Transformers goes? For many years,

I just went crazy and just bought anything and

everything. And recently, in the last couple

of years, I've been really, really smart with

it. And I said, you know, this is what I care

about. This is all I'm going to collect. I'm

going to get rid of everything else. So really,

the only two things I collect are Seekers and

Micromasters. And outside of that, it's one or

two pieces floating around. Mostly I keep to

that just because I need the limitations. I have

a very obsessive personality and it will bankrupt

me and I will literally drown in toys. So I like

having those parameters. It's funny you say that

your favorite is the Seekers because we should

introduce you to our mutual friend Brad Thorzine.

He has the largest Seeker collection I have ever

seen. It's amazing. He has all the originals.

He has every single knockoff you can think of.

I don't know if I have any knockoffs. I might

have some knockoffs of the world's smallest,

but that's about it. He's got all the knockoffs.

He's got a lot of the Jeff and these toys. I

have a pretty sizable collection. But the Japanese

figures are something that I really didn't get

into until Beast Wars Neo. So a lot of the G1

stuff, the Zone, the Japanese Micromasters, I

don't have any of those. But they are really

neat, though. Thorazine's got a pretty extensive

collection of that Japanese stuff. It's cool

to see. Yeah, he does. He very much does. I'll

try to see if I can find some pictures to show

you guys. Yeah, the other thing I like to collect

is I'm kind of a little bit big into army building,

which is why I found G .I. Joe very appealing

recently. And Transformers has been getting better

at it. So if I can reasonably justify army building

in my mind, I'll usually get two or three of

them. So that's kind of fun. So the most recent

one was the Viacons from Prime. Right. Oh, yeah.

Which are the only slime toys I have, but they're

quite nice. I want to say in Japan, they were

army building minicons. They would just release

them recolors and just... I don't know if that's

technically... Army building usually is when

you buy multiples of the same figure. And I usually

only do that if there are multiples of the same

figure in the fiction somewhere. Right. I think

there's lots of avid Minicon collectors. I just

don't know if I'd quite call them, you know,

army builders unless somebody just, with the

exception for me, I did army build on the dead

end figure that came with Unicron because those

are his antibodies. He's got tons of them. Actually,

Steve, you can see my Unicron antibodies on the

transfer's wiki on the army building page. Actually,

most of those are mine. Wow. That's cool. Yeah,

we don't have. I want to say, well, the Viacons,

but aside from the Viacons, there really isn't,

like, a generic Cobra soldier. Like, from the

early lines, where it's just, like, a guy in

a blue uniform with a mask. You don't have the

equivalent of that. Oh, yeah. I mean, probably

the closest you'd have in G1 Transformers would

be the Insecticons. And I guess you could probably

Scourge, too, with the sweeps. Or the Sharktacons.

Sharktacons. Oh, thank you. I forgot about them.

Yeah, so there's a few. There's a few. I've seen

people army build Sharktacons, and it is creepy.

Well, the Sharktacons themselves, along with

their Quintesson Masters, are also creepy. I've

heard of Sharktacons. I think one of the... I

mean, great tragedies is probably overstating

it, but for the purpose in this scope, the great

tragedies of the Transformers Generation One

line was that they never made the Alicon poise

that the Quintessons used, just the Sharktacons,

because I thought those were really neat. I'd

have loved to have, and I think there's some

third parties of them now, but I would have loved

a classic toy back in the day of that. I would

have been all over that. He was supposed to reciprocate.

Not now. Oh, boy. All right. So, Bill, who is,

out of every single aspect of Transformers, who

is your favorite character and why? Oh, Starscream.

Easily Starscream. I'll tell you the story of

how I got my first Starscream, and you'll appreciate

why I like Starscream. When I was a kid, my parents

went out and they bought me Thundercracker, and

they came back and they gave me Thundercracker.

And I said, I really want Starscream. And my

mom got kind of annoyed that she went out of

her way to buy me a toy. And I didn't appreciate

it. And I said, she didn't understand what I

was asking for. And I said, I want the red one.

And my mom said, why do you need the red one?

And my father turned to her and said, your son

likes the jerk. And the red one's the jerk. Because

your son relates to jerks. And I said, oh, OK.

That's why I like him. So I like Starscream because

he's a jerk. He has a lot of character to him.

Outside of G1 and Chris Lotto's performance,

who is your favorite version of Starscream? Oh,

I really like Animated. I got to tell you. Yeah,

he's great. But I got to tell you, I was really

impressed with Prime Starscream. I think he has

one of the most interesting. Starscream story

arcs of any Starscream that we've seen. He really

comes full circle and in such an organic way.

It's a lot of fun for me to watch. Yeah, Steve

Blum really knocked it out of the park. When

we interviewed him a couple years ago, we asked

him, do they ever allow him to go? into a lot

of impersonation and he said that uh they don't

do that often because they want to be my own

thing but when they do do that in the booth everybody

throws up jazz hands and he knows to go into

a lot of um yeah it's i've never really i don't

know i like i I agree with you, Jim. I do like

Starscream and Prime. It's probably the first

time I've ever really, truly liked and enjoyed

Starscream. G1, I liked him as a kid, but not

so much as an adult. I don't know what it is

about the guy. I don't know. Maybe I just don't

like jerks. I don't know why I've podcasted for

almost five years with Michael Wilson here, then,

if that's the case. Okay, so Jim, what about

you? Who is yours out of all of the Transformers?

Anything. It doesn't have to be the cartoons.

It can be anything. Probably Emuza then. Who?

You know, Kane's little talking bird bunny sort

of thing from Zone. Can I change my answer? Oh,

that thing. Yeah. Oh, Moon. Oh, okay. No, no,

not Moon. It's totally different than Moon. Moon

I thought was a jerk. Not a jerk like Starscream

jerk. Just like, why am I watching this guy?

I liked Artemis. I guess I'd say probably Shockwave.

Shockwave is the character I respond to. Especially

the Berman and Budiansky written Shockwave from

the comics. Have you been reading the current

IDW stuff? Oh, of course. That has to be the

best origin of Shockwave I've ever seen. Spoilers.

I haven't read the most recent one. I didn't

say anything. Thanks a lot. I just said it's

probably the best origin of Shockwave I've ever

seen. Now we know that Shockwave has an origin.

He didn't just spring full grown from Zeus's

brow or anything. Well, I mean, you mean like

aside from like Senator Shockwave or? That's

what I'm talking about. Oh, okay. Yeah, I read

those. I thought maybe like at the end of Dark

Cybertron. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Revelation

or something. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm talking

about back when we find out Senator Shockwave.

Right, right, right. Okay, okay. Not Dark. Why

would I spoil Dark Cybertron for you? Honestly,

I think a lot of the writing. from IDW has, has

really introduced some of the most inventive

Transformers backstory stuff that, that I could,

I've ever seen like Emperata. It's like, why

does everyone, why did these weird, you know,

we off, you know, Transformer guys have one big

eye and claw hands. That makes absolutely no

freaking sense. They made the reason for it and

it flows. It works perfectly. It's amazing. I

think invented is probably the exactly correct

word. No, I don't mean that in a pejorative sense.

I mean, they're not constrained by preconceived

notions, and they go back and re -examine some

of the fundamentals. Right, right. And, you know,

I hate to go back to, like, the Dreamwave stuff,

but, you know, back in the day, it was really

cool to get G1 art. Because there wasn't any

G1 art. It was floating around. It was like,

this is amazing. It may be a little blocky. It

may be a little too overly detailed, but it's

G1 stuff. This is really cool. But the stories

were awful. It was just, they were just really,

the writing was terrible. It was just, I shouldn't

say terrible. It was just more of the same. It

was, oh, look, Autobots and Decepticons are fighting

again. You know, okay, well, that's great. But

IDW has really shown us what can happen when

you become inventive. This is like Marty Eisenberg

-level inventive, you know? I think that was

baked into the DNA of IDW from the first or the

zeroth episode issue, if you will, because I

think Berman, in rebooting the universe, really

went back and put some thought into, well, why

are they doing it? Why are they on Earth looking

like cars? And the whole infiltration protocols

and those sort of aspects of the stories. Even

those, I think, are very inventive and quite

a big, if subtle, departure from what had gone

before. And I rather enjoyed that. I jumped on

board with more than meets the eye. I was like,

okay, Rodimus I know, Ultra Magnus I know, everybody

else I'll learn about. And hey, we're not just

going to stay on a dying planet. We're going

to just leave. This is the best thing James Roberts

could have ever done to those characters is make

them leave. Make them leave. And then make everyone

think they were dead. Well, you know, honestly,

the writing there, it's one thing to say, yeah,

they're all going to go on a quest, but the interpersonal,

intrapersonal, you know, the bickering, just

the witty banter going on is amazing. The writing

is, oh. I can't tell you how much I love this

stuff. I think in order for it to be intrapersonal,

it would have to be like a headmaster arguing

with himself. I think they've done that. Yeah.

Okay. All right. So let's go behind the scenes

a little bit. Now, be honest. Have you ever called

up or called upon one of the voice actors to

name a line of dialogue from one of the books?

No. No. That question, I don't know. I mean,

you've got to remember, we mostly do art books.

Right, but, well, with Allspark Almanac, that

was story -driven. We interviewed a lot of voice

actors for Allspark. Oh, and I interviewed, yeah,

we got to speak to... all the main voice actors

and some of the the guys playing secondary characters

in animated but i don't think it ever occurred

to me to have them go through the lines that

we'd written um oh no no what i'm saying is more

like you know you might see a line from star

scream and animated and you might not get it

translated so well and like you would ask them

is this the way that you would say it in that

voice that kind of thing oh not to the voice

actors but you know um marty eisenberg and matt

youngberg and derek wyatt went through every

i mean you know they had full drafts of each

of the each of those books and they gave us their

one marty uh i mean they all did but i think

marty especially had had quite a bit of feedback

for us. So if the voices are ringing true, it's

because we had help from the writers and then

the artists and creators responsible, but not

as much the voice actors, partially just because

the voice actors, we tended to do, you know,

half hour, hour interviews that were sort of

very scheduled, whereas we had a much more back

and forth relationship going on with Matt and

Ari and Eric. I remember us getting a note back

from Marty at one point where we had Optimus

Prime use a certain word and he said, Optimus

Prime would never use Yiddish. Do you remember

that? Yeah, I think so. The note that stuck with

me was about Lugnut. And he'd circled our Lugnut

dialogue and he said, it's close, but it needs,

he has to work in a praise for Megatron. Even

if he's not talking about Megatron, because that's

how he thinks. So we said, okay, we can do that.

So even if, I don't remember which, off the top

of my head, which characters Lugnut speaks on,

but if Lugnut is talking about Swindle, he still

has to do it in a way where he's giving glory

and respect to Megatron. He's praising Megatron.

If I remember right, back when the AllSpark Almanac.

came out. We spoke with, I think we had an interview

with Derek Wyatt. Yeah, it was with Jim. Oh,

yeah. We did talk to Derek Wyatt. Did we? Yeah,

but I didn't speak with Jim. No, I thought we

spoke with Derek Wyatt around the time. Yeah,

and anyway, he was telling us about how he was

collaborating with you guys. Yeah, I mean, I

think he more than, I mean, Matt and Marty had

their input, and it was and we definitely appreciate

it, but I think Derek was the one who really

spent lots and lots of time with us on those

books. Would you agree, Bill? I would definitely

agree. We'd go up to his office, and we'd spend

a great deal of time going over things, and he

very much holds it very close to his heart. Wow.

See, that would be awesome. He's a lot of fun.

I mean, you interviewed him, so you know. Yeah.

He's great. I actually met him at a BotCon. I'm

pretty sure he's going to be at BotCon this year,

so you can go up and say hi to him now, too.

Yeah, he still visits, even if he's not on a

panel. Yeah, well, he lives in the L .A. region,

so in BotCon in California. Now that it's only

in California anymore. Grumble, grumble. Well,

you grumbled, grumbled, but every time I was

in California, we get tons of writers, we get

tons of voice actors. Tons of actors. Not having

to fly them in, just having to pay their appearance

fee, makes it so much more economical to have

really, really good guests. I understand the

reason. I'm just tidily locked in the Midwest.

I'm kind of stuck here, nowhere near California.

Yeah, but I mean, you're not really all that

near to, where exactly are you? Chicago. Okay,

so it's not like if they hold it in Florida,

it's appreciably closer to you. Or Dallas. But

I get the benefit of going to Disney World while

I'm there. Los Angeles is one of the greatest

cities in the world. If you can't find something

to do in LA, it's not something wrong with the

city, my friend. Yeah, it's definitely me. You

can only go to Santa Monica Pier so many times.

Actually, I met Jim a couple... What was the

last botcon I went to? Was it 2010? It was weird,

too, because we just happened to be standing

next to each other at a table, and you were looking

at something, and I was looking at something,

and we ended up talking. Yeah, I do that a lot.

Yeah. It didn't occur to me who you were. I was

like, this tall guy. But... After the fact, when

I saw your name tag, I was like, holy crap, that

was Jim Sorensen. I could have asked him all

these things, and I had no idea it was him. It's

easier to find me because for the past three

or so years, I've been walking around with a

cowboy hat on, so it's not hard to find me at

comedy. It was never that hard, but now it's

like you can spot me from across the room. So

anybody who wants to come up and ask me a question

or chat with me or something, just feel free.

And by the way, this is only partially an affectation.

Partially it's for health reasons. My doctor

told me to start wearing hats when I had a few

not -so -great cells on the bridge of my nose.

So I actually have a medical excuse for my affectation.

There you go. But cowboy hat, that was my choice.

You could just tell people that you were copying

Scott McNeil and everybody would be cool with

it. I don't actually want to be caught. I mean,

Scott McNeil is awesome, but I don't, I feel

like a little weird if I'm just like emulating

him. Oh, I wouldn't. Good to know. Yeah. You

know, I mean, you could, you could do worse than

try to be like Scott McNeil, I guess. I suppose.

Yeah. Anyway, but yeah, no, that was very cool.

And I never got a chance to say, Hey, it was

cool to talk with you, but. You just did. Yeah,

it was just kind of this weird thing. I'm a legitimately

friendly person, and I love going to cons and

striking up conversations with random people.

What about you, Bill? How was your con experience?

I enjoy going to cons. I'm just not a socialist,

Jim, which I'm sure you've picked up on by this

conversation. But I tend to be a little quieter,

so I'm usually about 10 feet behind Jim, just

minding my own business. Where Bill comes into

his own at the cons, I think, is in the bar scene

afterwards. I mean, I enjoy it, but I think Bill

really flourishes there. And that's where he

sort of opens up and gets a chance to chat with

the other fans and creators. Oh, yeah. If I'm

drunk, then yeah, absolutely. Wow. Hey, look,

it's Bill singing karaoke. Awesome. I don't know

if that's ever going to happen. Now all I can

imagine with the two of you is Jim is Scott Farkas

and Bill is the other kid. Somebody pointed out

to us that our personalities are very much like

Tigger and Eeyore. I think that's pretty accurate.

You could do worse than Peter Cullen. Yeah, right.

Sure. Thanks for noticing me. I was at the BotCon

where he announced that he was no longer Eeyore.

And everybody was like, aww. And he's like, thanks

for noticing me. He's like, I've just been told.

I'm no longer Eeyore. It's like, oh, wow, that's

terrible. How did you get rid of him? I don't

know. Why? I mean, honestly, it's like if it

ain't broke, don't fix it. So, Bill, you want

to tell us about your television debut and the

fact that you have an official Hasbro license

tattoo on your body? I think it might be the

only official Hasbro license. The story goes,

I forget when it was, but quite a few years ago,

I was on a website or a forum or something, and

I was talking to somebody about getting a Transformers

tattoo. And I think it was a tattoo form. And

somebody contacted me and said, you should fill

out this form for LA Ink, which is this reality

show where they give you tattoos, which I was

familiar with. So I went and filled out the form.

Like a year later, they came back to me and they

said, what transformer? Can you send us an image?

Can you tell us anything about this? So by then,

we were working on the second art book. So I

sent them Nick Roche's cover that Josh Bertram

colored of Victory Leo. And I said, yeah, I'm

interested in getting this done. And they wrote

me back and said, well, can you get Hasbro to

approve this? And I said, I don't know. How the

hell do I do that? So I contacted IDW, who contacted

Hasbro, who contacted me, and it went back and

forth and back and forth and back and forth.

draw up a licensing agreement and they had to

speak to a bunch of lawyers but eventually they

got back to me and they said yes you can do it

and i contacted la inc and i said yes i can do

it and they said well it's too late so i said

oh okay so you're close to a year goes by and

they start filming for the following season and

they contacted me and said can we do it now so

hasbro agreed and i went down there and i did

like a It was a screen test. And believe it or

not, they actually liked me. So they said, okay,

we're going to do it on the show. And we're going

to tattoo your chest on the show. So come down

a certain day. And I come down on a certain day,

and they introduced me to everybody. And then

they had me walk outside the building and then

pretend to walk in and meet everybody on camera.

Right. And for the, I don't know, six or seven

minutes I'm on screen, I was actually sitting

in that chair for, I was actually there all day,

but I was in that chair for about six hours getting

that thought through. Wow. That had to hurt.

It took a long time. Yeah, what they would do

is they put rubber bands on the machine so it

would lower the sound of the machine. And you

would almost kind of just fill in areas. Talk

to me and then they say okay. We're turning the

cameras off Let me turn the cameras off the machines

will get louder and I go. Oh my god my chest

Don't weep openly while the cameras are on please

Okay, we turn the cameras back on that would

just kind of like get my composure So what got

me about it is is you know They interview me

beforehand and they asked me a bunch of transformers

question and I answered nerdy as possible and

I'm dropping names and I'm giving them references

and I'm telling them stories and all this other

stuff and apparently it was too nerdy for them

so when it aired they had cut down all my dialogue

so that questions like why did you choose this

transformer instead of the long -winded answer

I gave just came out like well he's a robot But

ultimately, it was a fun experience. Painful

experience, but a fun experience. Yeah, well,

you know, it gets you on TV. There you go. Yeah,

I get recognized for it every once in a while

still to this day. Wow. I think it's kind of

bizarre that Bill actually has a licensed tattoo

because I've never heard of that before. And

I don't know if you've seen the tattoo, but it's

giant. It's on my chest, and it's bright orange.

So girlfriend loves it. Oh, that's funny. You

know, what's weird is lately in the last couple

of years at like comic conventions, you see a

lot more of tattoo artists showing up and not

just, you know, just to show up to show their

wares where they've actually got a booth where

they do tattoos. Oh yeah. Oh, well in Chicago,

at least. That's great. That's cool. Not that

I'd get one, but because I'm a giant wuss. It's

definitely a crossover there. I mean, we're into

a very visual hobby. Same with comic books and

superheroes or G .I. Joe or not just Transformers.

It only makes sense that it would carry over

into the tattoo world. Yeah, that's true. You're

usually pretty jumping. My wife's like, hey,

you want to go get a tattoo? And I'm like, no.

And it's not just because I'm afraid of needles.

It has more to do with I'm just not sure if I

care about any one particular thing to have it

permanently scarred into my body. I think you've

got to be of a certain mindset to get one. I

just think it's either part of your personality

or it's not part of your personality. I think

I'm unique enough. Yeah. For me, I don't think

so. I need to advertise. I can just see Bill

now with his right arm sleeve. Transformers Legacy,

go buy it now. Coming down his entire arm. Honestly,

though, I think if I had seven Transformers books

under my belt, I would... probably have the covers

blended in on a sleeve. How cool would that be?

Here's an idea for you. Run that one by Jill.

What was that? I said run that one by Jill. See

what she says. They're just expensive. Tattoos

are pricey. Especially if you want a big one.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. A couple thousand dollars on

that sleeve. Do either one of you guys have any

crazy or interesting fan experiences that you

might have had over the years going to BotCon?

Any weird requests or anything like that? I got

to sign a girl's boob once. Who hasn't? I've

had a couple of people, usually younger people,

after the Almanacs came out, get very excited

over meeting me, and it became very strange and

unusual because, you know, quite frankly, I did

a couple of Transformers books, and to be treated

in any sort of, like I've been in a movie or

something, is very uncomfortable and very weird.

But I've had a couple of experiences where I've...

One time I was at a convention and this kid came

over and started talking to me over a toy. I

was looking at it. I forget what it was, but

for whatever reason, let's say it was Whirl and

I was looking at a Whirl. And he came over and

said, well, such and such and such, this will

be in the next All -Spark Almanac. And I said,

oh, no, it won't be. And he said, how do you

know? I said, because I wrote them. And the kid

reaches up and grabs my name badge, which was

turned up backwards. And he turns it around and

sees my name. And he just flips out on me. Oh,

my God. Oh, my God. I have so much questions.

I have to ask you this. I have to ask you that.

And it was so uncomfortable and so weird that

I just tried to get the hell out of there. So

little things like that happen once in a while.

But I don't know if we have any really crazy

stories, though. Jim, you got anything? other

than my boob signing, not particularly. I mean,

I tend to go to network and to chat with fans

and to promote the work and to hunt for toys

and artwork, and I tend to mostly do that. I

mean, not a whole lot very strange has happened.

Oh, I might have a good one. After the tattoo

thing, I kind of came up with this idea that

I was going to try to do... more publicity nonsense

you know and uh i went and i took a cobra commander

action figure when we had the gi joe books coming

out and i attached it to a camera and i launched

this thing into space and uh put it on youtube

so if you go to youtube cobra commander space

you'll see this action figure i've seen that

okay that was me i didn't realize that was you

how cool so uh So I did this, and some guy that

I know who's a weirdo, and long story behind

him, but a guy named Peter I know, who's a really

great guy, but he's a very strange guy, comes

to me and says, what are you going to do next?

So me joking said, I'm going to take a transformer

to the top of Mount Everest. And the next thing

I know, he's writing to me and says, can it be

a rector? Can you take a rector to the top of

Mount Everest? So I don't know if you know anything

about Mount Everest, but it's really expensive

and really difficult to climb. So I said, I'll

tell you what, if you pay for it, I'll climb.

You get $100 ,000 to climb Mount Everest. I will

go climb Mount Everest and put an erector on

the summit. There you go. You'll put it next

to the dead bodies of people who couldn't make

it back down and they can't afford to bring them

down. The next thing I know, this guy is making

me logos for the trip, and there's this logo

of me standing on top of Mount Everest holding

an erector above my head. And he's in Sweden,

I believe, trying to raise money now. This is

where Kickstarter was made for. www .kickstarter

.com. There you go. So while I sincerely doubt

I'm ever going to climb Mount Everest, Don't

be surprised if you see me climb something and

put an erector on the top of it. Empire State

Building, Statue of Liberty. Something. You may

not make it to Everest, but you can go to Paris.

I can see that. Maybe if I find a much smaller

mountain. There's some nice -sized mountains

out in L .A., right? Or you could just, you know.

Go to the top of Willis Tower. The Willis Tower.

I'm going to take Erector and put him on the

edge. And I'm looking down. That's right. You're

not afraid of heights, are you, Erector? Oh.

All right. Would you like to inform the fans

where they can interact with you online, Jim?

Sure. Probably still the best place remains my

blog at boltax .blogspot .com. And you can also

email us at transformersthearc at yahoo .com.

All one word? Yeah, I would assume. I'm just

asking. What about you, Bill? Well, you can look

for me on Twitter or Facebook under Bill Forster.

I also have a website with my artwork on it called

billforster .com. And that's F -O -R -S -T -B

-R. And while it is filled with ponies right

now, soon there'll be some more Transformers

stuff on it. Very cool, very cool. Yeah, check

that out. Or go to BotCon and look for the guy

in the cowboy hat. He'll be the guy standing

immediately behind him, yeah. No, the guy standing

10 feet behind him. Wow. aisles aren't that big.

It's kind of hard to stay that close. Jim could

have flashed his celebrity badge and got to the

front of the line and Bill was standing at the

back of the line. That's a celebrity badge. That

never worked for me. But no, I'm not a celebrity.

There you go. It's very cool. I just wanted to

throw it out there that the story here that you

guys have told is that you're big fans. Or at

least, Jim, big fan. Collectors of the toys and

such. But you made your fandom work for you.

And you have made something really, really cool

out of it. I've got to give you guys applause

for that. Thank you. Oh, yeah. I mean, seven

amazing art books. It's just awesome. It really,

really is. And what I was saying earlier about

the voices and stuff, like every time I read

the Allspark Almanacs, I can hear the characters

in my head as I'm reading those stories. I'm

like, I can hear Sentinel pontificating as he

always does. I have to say, Sentinel Prime. is

far and away my favorite character from Transformers

Animated. I just fell in love with him. He's

just fantastic. I think what I really regret

about the fourth season, and I think many people

were very upset that there wasn't a fourth season,

and I think I was less so because I thought the

third season really did quite a good job of wrapping

up almost all the loose ends. But what I regret

missing out on is the idea of... the sent you

know the the administration of cybertron by sentinel

magnus i really wanted to see that and you know

we we got to see a little bit of it but we would

have gotten to see a whole lot more and that

would have been a lot of fun i just wanted season

four for the proposed dark glass uh shattered

glass episode they were going to do and to make

sure that rodimus was still alive I thought that

Shattered Glass Sentinel Prime should be a headbasket.

Oh, wow. That would be a change. The real organic

partnership. Yes. Yes, it would be. Very nice.

All right. Well, we would like to thank Mr. Shorenson

and Mr. Forrest for taking the time to chat with

us here in this All Things Transformers interview.

We'll ask you to hold the line, and we'll be

back after this. Hi, this is Bill Forster, and

you are listening to All Things Transformers.

So, Jim and Bill, what can you tell us about

the new book you have coming out? I'm sorry,

we're not allowed to share any details about

the book. Oh, I understand. Damn lawyers. No,

let's see. It's going to be a 300 -page volume.

It's going to be oversized. So if you guys have

seen the Art of Prime that I did back in November

or so, or I think December, actually, it's going

to be that size. Really large. Well, what are

the dimensions, Bill? About what, 12 1⁄2 by 9

1⁄2, something like that? Roughly, yeah, roughly

about that. And that's per page. So the two -page

spreads are just absolutely stunning. The book

covers all of G1. All of G2, or rather the US

G2, all of the US G1, and then all the Japanese

stuff from G1 as well. And in terms of completion,

it's not 100%, but it's real close. It's maybe

95, 96 % of what's out there we found. And most

of the gaps tended to be pretty obscure. some

a few missing action masters a few missing from

the tail end of g2 and a couple of japanese guys

and that's it for for what's missing so almost

and we're really proud of that because um you

know i think we alluded to earlier hasbro didn't

have much of this material in their archives

when we first pitched the book we kind of hoped

that they would we kind of assumed that they

would and they want to being able to give us

maybe 20 30 images something like that including

a couple of unused images which were kind of

neat but they were missing a lot of just the

core characters so when we first pitched the

book we were working from scans from laser discs

and things like that and over the course of putting

it together you know we'd spent a couple years

on it i think uh you know off and on on the back

burner but over the course of putting it together

we wound up finding fans and collectors and some

professionals some of the original artists that

had worked on it that had you know a few pieces

here a few pieces there and and also working

with Takara through their design firm which is

called part one they do all the e -hobby exclusives

and with you know combining all those different

sources into something where we have virtually

everything and and we almost never were able

to work from a box scan. So these are scans from

original artwork, scans from first -generation

transparencies, chromalins, scans from first

-generation photo negatives, that sort of thing.

So the artwork is just amazingly crystal clear.

There's no print artifacts. None of the character

bits are cut off by anything. I mean, if you

look at the actual package art, A lot of the

time somebody's foot gets covered, somebody's

arm runs off the page, and that just doesn't

happen in this book. I think we're really proud

that we were able to find so many high -quality

sources. That sounds fantastic. I haven't seen

previews yet of the art, but what's the format

in? Is it just the picture of the character as

it appeared on the box? A picture of the box

or, you know, I've seen the boxes folded flat

so you can see like the sides, things like that.

I mean, what does it look like in the actual

print? It's the image itself in its entirety.

It's like Jim was saying, it's not scanned from

any boxes or anything, so it doesn't have the

background of the box. However, we did do some

backgrounds to it that kind of. represent the

box art and kind of give homage to that time

period in the toy's history. However, some of

the images might share a page with another character.

Other images might stand alone. But effectively,

we go through several chapters, I think 14 chapters

actually, and we break it down, separate them

by Autobot and Decepticon, and just kind of put...

the appropriate characters together with appropriate

characters. What Bill was alluding to about the

backgrounds, one of the, and I think I made a

Facebook post around this idea, but one of the

joys and occasional frustrations of working collaboratively

is that you can be surprised. And in this one,

most of what I did was locate the images. and

put them in the right context you know organize

them say who goes with who what goes in what

chapter builded most of the heavy lifting in

terms of cleaning up the images and laying out

the images and and and putting them in the visual

context and when i first saw the book what really

struck me was how he said you know there's 14

chapters each one sort of covers a different

era so you have Your classic era, the characters

that were introduced in 1845, your movie era

stuff, your pretenders, your micromasters, the

various different Japanese eras. But each one

has its own feel to it, its own background that

sort of calls to mind the packages of those era.

And it makes the book have this wonderful sort

of momentum. And it wasn't something I think

I would have come up with. It wasn't the sort

of idea that I would have had. So that's one

of the joys of working with somebody else who

has a different vision than you, but wants to

accomplish the same things, is that you can look

at your work and be surprised and pleased. And

that definitely is something that happened around

that aspect of the book. And I think it does

a great job of capturing the feeling, the emotional

feeling of looking at this artwork on a package

without being a picture of the package, the artwork

next to the toy and whatnot. But it feels like

that. So you're like, you know, it's not just

not a white background for the most part. I mean,

the last chapter is we call oddities and it's

all the sort of stuff that. didn't fit neatly

into one of our ears. So that's on a plain white

background. And I think Pretenders wound up being

on a plain black background because it worked

really well for them. But for the most part,

as you go through it, the background gives it

such a nice, such a nostalgic feeling. I was

really, proud's not quite the right word because

it wasn't really my accomplishment, but I guess

pride of authors sort of to look at that. I was

really impressed by that. And actually, we broke

the book into four rough parts, sort of overarching

eras. And each part has a two -page introduction

where we sort of talk about, put the artwork

into context. And there we do show some pictures

of packages and some scans of proof cards. And

you mentioned having a... a box that's folded

so you can see the flask. We have that. To also

try and set the right context. So if you're reading

the book, I mean, it's an art book, so you're

not mostly going to be reading it, but we did

want to make sure, and that was some input from

our editors at IDW, they wanted to make sure

that there was that sort of context for someone

that did want to actually learn more about it.

I think that was probably... the correct decision

because you know in the course of putting it

together we did sort of uncover some some interesting

facts and then i learned things about the process

of how they did it and why they did it and it's

interesting to share some of that i think but

but mostly i oh sorry it's okay okay I was just

saying, speaking of reading an art book, Jim

went and tracked down many of the artists that

actually did these pieces. And we've got interviews

and essays from them as well in the book. So

you can also kind of get their perspective on

it. Oh, wow. I was really proud of that. We were

able to find, I think we have nine of the original

artists, eight of them from the U .S. and one

of them from Japan who'd done. quite a lot of

the illustrations behind it and got them to share

their thoughts. And I was, I was really proud

of that because some of these names, many of

these names aren't known at all to the Transformers

fandom. So to first, anytime you uncover something

new, it's such a well -researched hobby. You

know, you get a certain pride from that, but,

but to not only find out who they were, but to

get their direct input. I was, I was really proud

of that. And that's the interviews are in the

book. Yep. We use them sort of as chapter separator

elements. So between each chapter, we'll have

a nice two page spread of sort of the back of

the package style artwork to sort of introduce

it. And then we'll have one page of either an

essay, an interview. Sometimes we'll have sketches

or other sort of slightly askew elements, these

other elements. And then then we start the chapter.

on the right -hand side of the page. There's

a lot of content. There's a lot of content in

this book. Well, it's 300 pages, and we use all

300. Yeah. So what you're saying is these interviews

are kind of like what you guys did with the AllSpark

Almanac, where you would have, like, Yadder and

all these other little interesting things. But

in this case, it's the interviews from these

artists. That's really cool. That is an interesting

way to separate the chapters. I thought so. It

gives it a visual break because the book is –

busy is not quite the right word, but the book

has a lot – it's dense. That's the word. There's

a lot going on in the book. The essays tend to

be on a plain white background, so it sort of

gives your eye a bit of a break as you're going

through this. Yeah. It cleans your palate for

the next chapter. Yeah, that's always good. Anything

else we want to bring up about the book? We could

probably talk about the book for hours and hours

and hours. Yeah. No spoilers. It's hard to spoil

an art book because no matter how much we talk

about an image, unless you're actually looking

at it. Looking at it, yeah. Well, one of the

things I thought was neat was, you know, we have

we have 12 chapters where we go through the era

of the various eras of artwork that was published.

Like I said, all of G1, all of G2 from the US

and then the Japanese material. We couldn't really

find we had a little bit from the UK, but not

a lot, not enough to warrant its own chapter.

But the last two chapters, I mentioned that the

last one, 14, is oddities. And there's a lot

of neat stuff in there. But, you know, things

like the UK artworks, a little bit of artwork

from Diaclone and Microchange, some of the variants

that had been used, some of the two page spreads

from Japan. So all that stuff is kind of a little

bit of catalog artwork. But the 13th chapter

is unused artwork. And that was stuff that was

produced. for the g1 or the g2 lines but not

actually used in a toy that came out and that

winds up being you know a good uh i want to i

want to say you know maybe you know 12 to 15

page chapter of artwork that wasn't used and

i thought that was just the neatest thing you

know to go through i mean a lot of it's from

g2 because there are various toys that were developed

for g2 and almost came out but didn't quite so

things like the cons and new color variants of

the jets and the Diaclone cars and the Dinobots.

But there's also some stuff from G1 that had

come out, like on the Micromaster Battlefield

Headquarters from 1990. On the front of the package,

you have the nice used picture of the truck sort

of rolling with the two Micromasters in it. But

if you look really, really carefully on the back

of the package, you'll see that... they have

the headshots of full barrel and overflow, the

two MicroMasters that came with it. And they're

not the same as the headshots that were used

in the artwork of the truck, of them driving

the truck. And we actually, in the course of

putting this together, this is something that

Rick Alvarez, who worked at Hasbro at the time,

had dug up for us, found the actual full -bodied...

illustrations of these two micro masters that

that all you ever see in the package is their

heads but we have the whole thing and i it's

elements like that that i just think are um that

really help kind of push the book over the edge

i mean it's it's already a very yeah i mean i

mean people love this style of artwork i love

the style of artwork i really respond to it emotionally

so it's neat just to have you know if all we

had was you know 95 of this artwork in one place

that would be an accomplishment But to also have

stuff that was made in the 80s and in the 90s

that was never used, stuff like the full barrel

and overflow bodies, stuff like a potential U

.S. release of Multiforce, stuff like the unreleased

GoBots from G2, or the stuff that eventually

got released as spy changers, but not for years

and years and years, part of the robots in disguise

line years later. That sort of material, I mean,

I'm just incredibly proud to have found that,

and I think it really makes the book feel special.

Because a lot of the stuff, I can guarantee you,

you've never seen before, because nobody's ever

seen it before. That sounds amazing. Recently

they had a... uh oh what what what resurfaced

it was like a uh a sears christmas catalog from

1980 oh whatever whatever year um i want to say

whatever year like the g2 stuff was coming out

at the time maybe a little bit later but uh they

showed pictures of a lot of the stuff that hadn't

come out yet and the fandom was just flabbergasted

like just amazed like wow this was coming out

or these were the repaints of this was coming

out um so i can only imagine what people are

going to say when they get a hold of your book

oh yeah yeah it's going to be pretty epic looking

forward to it i'm looking forward to the reaction

certainly yeah well one of the great joys of

doing these books is to read the reviews on amazon

to look at the forum posts about the book and

and to be asked questions about it you know i

mean it's it's definitely we go on the podcast

and talk about the upcoming projects because

you know we sort of have to sing for our supper

and and and make sure that that the books that

people get the word uh that these books are are

coming out you know we want to get the word out

but um it's it's also Very gratifying for us

to have the opportunity to interact with somebody

who enjoys the work and wants to know why we

did a certain thing or how we did a certain thing.

That's a lot of fun for us. Very cool, very cool.

We're two years away from Beast Wars' anniversary.

Do you guys have any plans for a Beast Wars book?

Book number eight. There you go. Sorry, Bill,

you can take this one. We have plans for everything,

is all I was saying. Yeah, I mean, if you've

had an idea for a Transformers art book, there's

a pretty decent chance that we've at some point

or other at least mentioned it to IDW. You know,

the trick is there's basically three questions

that have to be asked that we need, yes, well.

Does the material exist in a way that we can

get access to it? If the material doesn't exist,

we can't do the book. Does it make commercial

sense for IDW? Is it a book that if they publish,

people will buy in sufficient numbers to justify

publishing it? And does it make strategic sense

for Hasbro? So if the answer to those three questions

are yes, there's a pretty good chance that that

book can come out. And really, those are things,

the Hasbro question. Jim, you cut out. I think

what he's saying is, over time, the answer to

those three questions changes. If we pitched

something two years ago, it might be different

this year, and it might be different two years

from now. So two years from now, when we're looking

at the anniversary of Beast Wars, who knows where

we'll be. Certainly we'll be there pitching the

idea, but it's always a matter of what we can

or can't do. Yeah. I personally would love to

see a Beast Machines art book. I love Beast Machines.

I think a lot of the Beast Machines art would

end up being, I don't want to say scans from

the TV show, but if the original art The original

CGI art could be dug up, and that would be interesting.

Package art would be interesting. But specifically

now, I think we're seeing more Beast Wars stuff

show up in the toy line. You've got a rat trap

coming out. You've got Tankor coming out. That's

because they got shoehorned into the comic. I

still have no... I have to go back and read Dark

Cybertron to figure out how the hell Waspinator,

Rattrap, and Tankor fit into Dark Cybertron.

I still do not get it. Do you think they showed

up in the comic because there's a toy coming

out? Or do you think the toy coming out precipitated

them showing up in the comic? Probably both.

These toys are on the drawing board years in

advance. Yeah. Jim, what were you going to say?

I tend to think that you might be confusing cause

and effect. I tend to think that if the toys

are showing up in the comic, it's because the

toy is coming out. Yeah, that's true. At least

in those cases. There definitely are cases of

a character becomes popular in a comic or on

a TV show and therefore gets a toy, but the lag

time does tend to be a couple of years. making

more money than the comic is. So that's, what's

going to drive it. Yeah, that's true. All right.

Well, we appreciate you guys taking the time

to talk with us and we will catch you later.

Thank you very much. Thanks guys. One more time.

This is going to be juicy. All right, there you

go, folks. The, um, Interview with Jim Sorensen

and Bill Forrester. It was amazing talking to

those guys. It was a lot of fun. It was great

fun. You know, like I said, Jim, I knew, I know

of Jim. I've spoken with him. Did not know of

Bill. And I'm really happy that I got a chance

to talk with him. And, you know, I hit him up

on Facebook. Very cool, very cool. Very nice

guy. Yeah, very, very awesome. The funny thing

is, when I was looking at the TF wiki for both

of them, because that's the best place that I

could find for their actual information, because

they're not on wiki as far as I can tell, the

link that I found with Bill's tattoo actually

goes back to Jim's blog, Disciples of Baltax.

Oh, yeah, that was a link you sent. Yeah. You'll

have to put that link online, too. Oh, yeah,

I will most definitely put it in the post, yeah.

Or we could just, you know, do Google search

for ball tacks, you know, tattoo. All right,

well, that's going to do it with this second

interview for TFG1, all things Transformers,

all that good stuff. Second interview of the

year so far. First time around we talked with

Abby Collins, so that was really, really awesome

talking to Starscream's daughter. Yeah, you missed

out on that one. Yeah, that sounds like a good

time. Yeah, no, it was hilarious. It was awesome.

She told us stories of how basically Cobra Commander

and Starscream were every time that her dad was

going to discipline the kids. Oh, you're kidding.

No, you'll have to listen to it. That must have

been hell growing up. I can't imagine that. All

right, well. Thank you for listening to the TFG1

podcast, all things Transformers interview of

Jim Sorensen and Bill Forrester. Be sure to check

out Transformers Legacy, the art of Transformers

toy packaging, coming out soon from IDW Publishing.

And we will catch you next time. Transform and

roll out. I love when a plan comes together.