TRANSFORMERS BOTBOTS: Bonz-Eye
Way back in 2016 I had the honor of pitching a spin off Transformers IP along with my manager, John Warden, to Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner and the rest of Hasbro Senior Management as a part of our internal “Grand Idea Fair” competition. It’s a radical departure from the super G1 designs that we were doing on Generations and I’m super proud of Hasbro for going through with something so bold.
Once we pitched the concept, the Transformers RID team took the concept to the finish line, but these are a few of my early designs. At the time, we had a ton of artwork from outside vendors that were spot on, but most had traditional G1 faces. My goal with these characters was to bring in more personality, while still maintaining some key Transformers design elements.
For Bonz-Eye, I was exploring a character that was cute AND tough. Design lead Sean Carmine-Isabella knew this character was my favorite so he was kind enough to put Bonz-Eye into the core cast of “Lost Bots.” Sadly, the katana didn’t cost out, but since then, our other samurai inspired characters have kept theirs. I'll chalk it up to a win!
