The Terminator. let's face it, the endo-skeleton special effects were so groundbreaking for the time that it set the standard for realistic robots in western entertainment. the endo-skeleton became so iconic that now it's generally accepted that in order for a robot to look realistic, it must be designed in such a way that it doesn't look like metallic armor that a man can wear.

hmm, i see your point, it doesn't mallo for realistic transformations though or armour on the form

Oh, don't encourage him. He's just randomly rambling at this point. I'm just waiting for him to burn out sometime between now and July 4. Terminator... :tflaugh Yeah.

Nah, think of the designs in this way. What if, in the movie universe, the Autobots became well known and someone decided to make a kid's cartoon series about them. Now, no animator, even if it's good, tv CGI, is going to bother putting all of that detail into their TF animation models. Those designs would get simplified for easier animation. This would, then, result in robots that are closer to what we have been familiar with when it comes to Transformers. Simplify them even further, add some easier to see, humanoid faces, and you get the designs from the G1 cartoon series.

 

So, the movie designs are evolved from the cartoons, and further complicated by the need to use the all of the alt-modes in making the robot mode. Couple that with toys that can't possibly look like their on screen counterparts and a story that's no different that what might have been in the Marvel comics, and the Transformers movie is pretty much G1.

G1 Transformers - skin = movie Transformers

Oh, don't encourage him. He's just randomly rambling at this point. I'm just waiting for him to burn out sometime between now and July 4. Terminator... :tflaugh Yeah.

what are you talking about? it's a valid point. for the record, i like the movie designs. i'm just explaining why they look like what they are.

Oh, don't encourage him. He's just randomly rambling at this point. I'm just waiting for him to burn out sometime between now and July 4. Terminator... :tflaugh Yeah.

what are you talking about? it's a valid point. for the record, i like the movie designs. i'm just explaining why they look like what they are.

I think it's the same idea, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that there was a direct influence. The movie bots aren't all covered up like the cartoon/toy versions are, so yeah in that sense it's the same thing.

i'm not saying that there's direct influence, i'm saying that the Terminator completely altered the western perception of a realistic robot. prior to the Terminator, western robots were based on the armor of medeival knights(like C-3PO, for example). after the Terminator, realistice robots were designed to be emaciated and skeletal so as to show that there's no human actor underneth the armor. Terminator raised the bar.

I think part of that was the limitations of technology. There were a lot of droids in Star Wars who had that skeletal look, but they were mostly in the background b/c foreground characters needed a level of realistic movement that stop motion & puppeteering couldn't provide. Terminator was a pretty daring movie in that respect b/c all they had to work with was... stop motion and puppets.

exactly, Terminator exceeded the limitations so now the bar has been raised.