The official Transformers Youtube page has posted a new Designer Desk video, featuring the upcoming Combiner Wars Victorion! Unlike previous Designer Desk videos, the Victorion featurette showcases more of her personality as John Warden discusses her origins and what she’s like in the comics as a combiner and as a team. Warden also talks design process as he explains how the design team wanted to create an image for the team that would make their femininity clear, while straying from the generic build of Arcee or Chromia and giving her and her components a sense of toughness; much like Strongarm from RID 2015.
Check out the video after the jump!
Psychoshi
I think that the many different disney and loony toon cartoons have conditioned how we perceive what a fictional cartoon female character is supposed to look like. (not to mention magazine covers and actresses in movies/tv) Mickey Mouse, Pac-man, their designs are defaulted to male. Characters such as Ms. Pac-man and Minnie Mouse have exaggarated long eye lashes, a hair bow, wearing lipstick, basically with extra added features that are overtly stereotypical girly. Slender, more curvy, smaller hands, long hair, qualities that society has deemed what women should ideally look like. These are the markers that tell us that the character is a girl.
Mario, short, fat, constantly saving Peach, who wears a pink frilly dress, hyper feminine dainty character. These are the kinds of characters that we grew up with.
Arcee was designed with very much the same technique. Lipstick, predominantly pink, and hourglass figure.
The same thing applies to a cartoon characters' race. Living in a predominatly caucasian society, many will unconsciously interpret seemingly normal character's race as white by default. Mickey Mouse is white. Sonic is white, because, reasons. If a black man or woman provided their voice to the character, Sonic is still viewed as white male, because he doesn't have a bow and long eye lashes. he doesn't speak jive-talk like Jazz and Blaster.
When you see the yellow smiley face, most would default that face as a white male. Even though his face is yellow! Now, if the eyes on the face were drawn with slant lines instead of dots, then the face is now asian. Put a sombrero on it, and it's suddenly mexican.
T-Hybrid
The problem is, the mentality about what women are "supposed" to look like isn't exclusive to Transformers. It's a mentality that's causing problems beyond just our fandom.
So to see it in this fandom is embarrassing. Especially when it's directed at a character (or in this case characters) who are being introduced to try and open up the franchise to brand new audiences.
The last thing I, as a long time fan, want to see is a bunch of new fans being draw into the fandom by something like Windblade or Victorion…and the first thing they see on one of the bigger forums is "EW THESE AREN'T WHAT GIRLS LOOK LIKE!"
Because that just paints us all in a bad light. And it'll guarantee many of those potential new fans turn right back around and leave. So, yeah, it is worth fighting for. Same as this gross mentality coming out of the Hascon thread that men who like MLP are somehow not worthy of being in the same con as Transformers.
Goaliebot
Only reasons it bugs me is because I don't want the "NO GURLZ UNLESS THEY HAWT" club to push female fans away from Transformers, nor for some lousy ideas to be reinforced in some people's heads.
Outside of what's said on forums in that light, then agreed: yay for headcannon.
Autobot Burnout
EDIT: Disregard earlier statement, I actually didn't know that Windshear was female.
T-Hybrid
And Windshear is female but Centuritron is considered male. Again, what's the point?
As IDW's Combiner Wars (and even past fiction) has tried to point out…a combiner is typically considered a new persona born from the result of merging the minds of the components.
That's why Megatron himself was opposed to being the center of Devastator…because he doesn't want to give up that level of control.
It's also why it was important to Starscream to replace Scrapper w/ Scoop. The latter's loyalty to him would influence the combined persona of Devastator.
Also, look at Betatron. Or Ultra Prime. Or Galvatronus. From our understanding of the fiction, those three can exist by putting any four limbs on the core robot. However, if you put the rest of the Technobots on Scattershot, or the right four Autobots on Optimus…they become Computron and Optimus Maximus respectively. They are completely different entities from Betatron and Ultra Prime.
So if four male limbs joined with Pyra Magna…would she still be Victorion? Or would they create somebody new? Would she still be female? Likewise, what if the Torchbearers merged with Scattershot? Would it be Betatron? Or would it be Victorion? Would the resulting personality be male or female? We don't know because neither IDW (nor Hasbro) has dealt with that angle with combiners.
But it's what the Combiner Wars fiction tried to point out. The combiner isn't just whoever is the torso with some limbs plugged in. The combiner is an entirely new lifeform who's resulting combination can't be entirely predicted.
MnemonicSyntax
Sure, you're both correct. But when it comes to foaming at the mouth over the issue, it's gotta be more worth it to just sort it out yourselves than to try to dissuade another person into either agreeing or disagree with a stance that has clearly divided the fandom.
It's just not worth it to blow a blood vessel over, and it's at that point it becomes more than just a discussion.
goobahead1
yes we can make head canon and it can be fun… but it is incorrect…
T-Hybrid
They don't have the last word on head canon, but head canon doesn't overrule Word of God.
Example: People can call him "Take-Off" all day long, but it doesn't change the fact the CW Combaticon jet is officially Blast-Off.
Likewise here: The Torchbearers are female characters. It doesn't matter if they don't "look like women" to someone. That's what they are. You could call them men and rename them all to your favorite Beast Wars characters, but it wouldn't change a thing about what they really are.
MnemonicSyntax
Nah. If someone gets a character and wants them to be something different, they can be.
Hastak doesn't have the last word in regards to our own head canon.
Which is why I don't get most of this thread. Or the fandom for that matter. Buy it, move on. Don't buy it, move on. Make up whatever head canon you'd like.
Autobot Burnout
That becomes a problem with Armada Perceptor then, because minicon Sureshock is female.
goobahead1
when it comes to transformers hastak is God… If they say a character is male then he's male, if they say a character is female there there female. I don't believe that a character has to look like it's has bro given gender to be that gender, men can look feminine and woman can look masculin. To me it's their personality and background that matters and the gender is just icing on the cake in order to make for romantic relationships.
T-Hybrid
Right? They are what they are, regardless of what they may "look like" to us.
Haywired
Maybe Hasbro decided to finally go the Go-Bots route and stop paying too much attention to how male or female it looks?
Hey, it's only like… three decades too late but still worth a try!
Hanzkaz
I probably would have liked Victorion more, if they'd used all new molds. As it is, she reminds me of a recoloured copy of Defensor with a female head. It might have helped if they'd changed more of the aesthetic detailing.
SgtLemon
Why does anyone care if they look female or not, who cares the figures awesome
T-Hybrid
He decided how to use the color scheme we picked. I think the comparison to oxidized metal is a pretty good interpretation of the output paired with the sea of rust.
knoted
He picked three color schemes, for us to choose from. Therein lies the choice factor.
SkywarpsGhost
So John W. picked the colour scheme?! So much for Fans Choice
jamarmiller
there is a part of me that wants to buy this for my daughter but she has no attachment to characters that done show up in the cartoon. I wonder if she will show up in the machinma(sp?) series that is coming.