Optimus Prime Body Part Mock-Ups

AICN.com post the above pics, which they got from the tfw2005.com forums, who in turn apparently got them from a Don Murphy message thread. The idea is they might be actual mockups of Optimus Prime's face and arm. The below pic is a fan's mockup of what he total picture possibly might look like. I doubt any of it is real. More then likely its all fan made designs using existing leaked information (the colors and fire streaks) but I noticed doesn't really add anything new. Any case they are fun pics and help give an idea of what might be coming. Below is also something that may (but probably not) from an aspect of Brawn.

Longer Access Hollywood Piece and November Trailer?

Seibertron.com has posted up a few pieces of news today about Transformers. The main event is a fairly long 4 and a half minute piece showing Michael Bay directing Shia LaBeouf as he is trying to escape a Transformers claw. Its also shows a little footage of Bay directing Shia and Megan Fox. No spoilers really, just a hint of some of what is planned involving the human cast.

The footage is here.

The other piece of news is Michael Bay's official site, ShootforTheEdit.com, the site admin Nelson indicated "...come November people will be forgetting the Mars Rover announcement", indicating that the plan is to release the trailer for Transformers in November. This of course assumes the special effects etc can be finished and prepped by then. Be a close schedule to keep but doable depending on what the plan is to (or not) reveal. My guess is if they are going to do that, then James Bond's Casino Royale will be the film its attached to.

The thread is in regards to the Paramount fan-made teaser trailer and how people think it should be used for the next trailer. I can't disagree with that notion and feel free to share your opinion about the trailer here.

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Bay Reveals Sequel Hopes in MTV Interview

MTV has posted a little behind the scenes bit for Transformers. The involves brief blurbs from the majority of the Transformers cast and director Michael Bay. No new animatics where revealed but some information was shared.

- 6 million hits in 8 hours when the trailer was first released a month ago.
- Usual "I am so excited to be doing this" type sound bites.
- Megan Fox, showing some lovely cleavage, reveals that Megatron is a "scary dude" and "Rachet, who is the nurse". I guess with the red cross, it could be confused with nurses since they typically wear those symbols more often then docs. I assumes she is referring to the movie but for some reason I think she is talking more about the cartoon.
- Shia LeBeouf declared that Starscream is his favorite and that "He is the sickest jet ever seen."

Probably the biggest bit comes at the end when Michael Bay revealed some possible long term expectations for the newly minted movie Franchise. In regards to what old favorites Transformers might see, Michael Bay says "We have added a few new ones. We got a lot of the old favorites and we will see a lot more on 2 and 3. The only ones who know [that will be in the movie] is me and the CEO of Hasbro. The actors don't know. But there are still a lot of great stuff. The transformations are awesome."

So there you go, nothing in the spoiler department, but a little reveal of the long term potential that Paramount has for the franchise. Sounds like a plan we can all get behind.

To see the video, click here. Its the second story for the "Idol, Korn, Pokemon, Transformers" video.

Pic above is Megan Fox. I freely admit to choosing the most cheesecake shot of the piece cause, well, look at her.

Access Hollywood Transformers Clip

AccessHollywood.com has a about a 1 and a half minute video clip online that shows a brief interview with Michael Bay. Its provided a brief explanation of what the Transformers are, shows a little filming of an attack sequence involving Shia LaBeouf, vehicle mode Bumblebee, and a construction arm. Its also has a mostly covered up, hard to tell animatic of a Transformer. I can't tell what it shows but then that's probably why it was okayed to a brief display of it.

The clip is here.

AICN also reports about the clip and extracted just the animatic sequence from the piece at a larger size which you can find here.

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Transformers vs Die Hard IV in 2007

20th Century Fox has announced that a sequel to the Die Hard franchise will be released on July 29th 2007, just five days before Transformers plans to take it bow. The movie, titled "Live Free or Die Hard" stars Bruce Willis and is directed by Len Wiseman (Underworld).

The plot is retired John McClane must stop terrorists from disrupting the countries computer intrastructure over the course of three days, with the July 4th holiday being a component of the story.

This is probably bad news for Transformers producers who, until now, had virtually no competition for their release date, especially after the Fantastic Four sequel caved a few weeks earlier and bumped their desired release date to a few weeks after.

for these expensive "tent-pole" films, usually the companies like to only have one per 7 day period whenever possible. We already saw this year with the July 28th release of Superman Returns followed by July 4th release of Pirates of the Caribbean, that the market can bear to huge releases in the same one week period, but one does have to wonder that if those two titans hadn't gone head to head, how much more money would each have made? In this case, Pirates won the fight hands down, but that doesn't mean that could happen next year. I doubt neither Fox nor Paramount will blink first. I think that Fox will decide to release Die Hard 4 on Wednesday 7/27/06 just to squeeze a few more buck out before Transformers drops the following Wednesday. Next year should be an interesting fight for box office supremacy.

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NEW Transformers Teaser Trailer

JesterJJZ over at Don Murphy's message board has gone all multimedia for us fans by posting up his fan-made Transformers teaser trailer.

Jester's post:
Alrighty...This is something that's been in the works for a long time...just never got around to finishing it. Initially I wanted this to come out right before the actual teaser was supposed to be released, but since they blew it and launched early, well that kinda put plans on hold. So with a bit of re-tweaking, I give you what the teaser should have been and how the actual film should start.

Special thanks to Tasty Crisp for his awesome Ark model and animation. A nod to Raymond T. for help with the Cullen sample.

Its completely different then the officially released version, and he has three versions that have subtle differences in each. One is the straight up trailer, the second as a nice voice treat at the end, and the last uses the Transformers title sequence from the trailer released in theatres.

Description of the second version:
The posted teaser opens with a hilarious version of the "The following preview..." card. It then changes to what at first seems like the usual Dreamworks moon. Except look closer. As the screenshot to the left shows, damn if that doesn't look exactly like the TF: The Movie version of Cybertron in some CGI glory. This is then followed up with the familiar Paramount clouds and stars rushing at the camera. Wait, check out the first two "stars". Sweet! The Paramount logo finishes its star arc, formation, Viacom bit, and then you get a shimmy followed by the Arc smashing into the paramount mountain. This is then followed by title "Transformers" which switches to 7/4/07, with the dates separations changing to the Autobot and Decepticon logos. Oh and listen to the music, some of those chords should rings some bells. At the very end, well listen for yourself.

I love this trailer. Its all geeked out for us Transformers fans. I would love to see it in a theater. Having said that, I think the previously released trailer, while not as great, probably worked better for the average laymen who wouldn't recognize Cybertron, the faction insignias, and so forth.

Still, please, Don Murphy and powers-that-be, release that trailer in some big screen glory. It really deserves it as the person did an excellent job on this. Maybe incorporate it in the next trailer that gets released.

Also with the links to the trailers is something called "Anatomy of an Ark Crash". All it needs is some music ala the Superman Returns behind the scenes bits from AICN to complete its coolness. It shows that even for just a quick 5 second part of a teaser, just how much work, tweaks, experimenting, planning and effort can go into CGI to give it that final wow factor.

Click here to enjoy the all the other goodies including mp3 of the music.

If only want a quick drive by on YouTube: trailer and Anatomy of an Ark Crash.

JesterJJZ's website is here.

- Thanks Shan for providing the link.
At this point wish was good at photoshop so could use some up that stuff on this site.

Update: Made changes to remove the seemingly official aspects and credit to Don. Its my understanding that this trailer is fan made by JesterJJZ over on Don Murphy's website and is not an official release from Paramount, Dreamworks, Don Murphy or any of the cast and crew of the movie. My apologies for giving any wrong impressions. Either way, impressive job (and someone might want to think about giving him one for the movie).

Another CG Optimus Prime Demo

YouTube.com has another demo of Optimus Prime's upper body transforming from the Peterbilt truck that may be used for the movie. As the picture show, its not very detailed and pretty basic. Its also clearly fan made, but still these are fun to see.

The demo is here.
The OP/Ultra Magnus Fan made clip that is really sweet is here.