Galvatron by Trecathlus on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

DESIGNATION / CLASSIFICATION
Galvatron / Decepticon

FUNCTION
Decepticon Leader

LIFESPAN
THE MOVIE - SEASON THREE - SEASON FOUR

BEGINNINGS 1996 - 2000

Because I had painstakingly done an image of him in Windows Paintbrush™ over the summer of 1996, GALVATRON became the second TRANSFORMERS character I ever made into an icon, completed only a couple of hours after the original BUMBLEBEE was completed. It was a bit of a cheat as the Microangelo™ application is able to import bitmaps and render them icon-sized -- which is how I started. I tried that several times in '96 and '97 in 32x32 and 64x64 (the largest possible dimensions it allowed in those days), editing colours and details because the imports tended to be a bit asymmetrical, but it never looked very convincing. The first "real" avatar came in 1998 and he towers head and shoulders above any other character as the most difficult guy to fit into the icon format. Angling all those angles and curves correctly, recreating his very specific colour scheme, and simply fitting everything in there that needed to be seen was simply not going to happen. It got a little better in 2000 when I removed my own size restrictions, but although I liked a reference sketch I did based on the episode THE ULTIMATE WEAPON, it was somehow a little off-model and that was reflected in the avatar.

SECOND WIND 2007 - 2009

GALVATRON was one of the first characters I attempted to make ultimate renditions of in 2007, but my shading skills were only beginning to improve at the time, which was only one reason I tried one update after the other without ever being truly satisfied. I tried again in 2008, realizing that this devil of a design simply would never conform to anything less than the size I had given him by 2009. He is far and away the winner of the all-time Number-of-Details-I-Kept-Having-to-Tweak competition and that very status kept me away from him for a striking number of years. I believe I have finally struck the right balance, even without having to resort to some future vector graphics update.

CURRENT EDITION Sunday, January 10, 2016

PREVIOUS REVISIONS
Logged iterations: 21

09.03.1996