Quote:

---

Written by Eric Giordmaina
News Source: Aint-it-cool

No visuals yet - but a hell of a lot of detail. Quint over at AICN had a chance to sit down with Michael Bay, who has let loose more Transformer information than we have ever had in the past. The first thing Bay said to Quint as they sat down was "I'm not telling you any of the story." So if your after a storyline, then your out of luck. But when Bay was quizzed about the recent cast list floating around on the internet, all he could do was nod and smile and say "Well, it sure is a big cast." So we know Bay can dodge a bullet - I'd say it's a pretty safe bet IGN's scoop was legit.

The best news I've heard so far is that Michael Bay intends to audition the original voice actors for the Autobots and Decepticons. This is something Bay said he wants the fans to know - however there is still no guarantee they'll make the final cast, but Bay will audition them to hear how they sound. (His main fear is the actors may be too old and may be noticeable in their voices)

Bay also showed Quint a rough design for the Teaser Poster. Here is how Quint describes it;

Bay then showed me a rough design for the TRANSFORMERS teaser poster. It was a robotic eye overlooking planet Earth, kind of peeking over the curvature of the globe. The eye was in a brow the shape of a right triangle and looked very mechanical, iris and all. The tagline was "Their War. Our World."

The Concept art shown to Quint was carefully chosen by Bay as to not show anything he didn't want him to see. One of the peices of art work was an early version of Optimus Prime....and YES! He is still a Mac Truck!

It was around here that I got my first look at Optimus Prime. I saw three concept art pieces on Optimus. The first was a headshot. He is blue, like the cartoon, but I noticed a lack of red in the early stuff I saw. Mostly steel gray and blue. Not sure what I think about that. His face is a bit longer than I remember the cartoon being, but the image I think of when I picture Optimus Prime is when his face guard is up. Bay was quick to point out that the Optimus I was seeing was him without his battle mask. Like the other robot I saw, Optimus was more angular than the cartoon, but he was still hulking. He was by no means lithe and skinny. Bulky, but not blocky.
The second piece of art I saw had him standing full size, head to toe , on the right side and his vehicle form on the left. Yes, it's still a Mac truck. The third piece was a close up on his eyes. The one I liked the most had the iris of the eye looking like a turbine engine. Very mechanical, but like a camera shutter it appeared that he could dilate the "pupils." There were metal slats around his eyes as well that looked like they could slide over each other to give the area around the eyes specific movement and life. The other option was exactly the same, but the iris had what looked like wires instead of slats (turbine engine thingys). It was very pretty and mimicked the look of a human iris a bit more, but felt out of place in the robotic skull.

Bay the discussed the beginning of the film;

It starts in the Antarctica with a man chipping away at a giant ice wall. Something happens, his dogs run away and ice wall opens, the man falling into an icy cave, sliding down into the earth. When he stops, the camera pulls back and shows him resting in a giant robotic hand, half in and half out of the ice.

Later, Bay revealed that although this is the beginning of the movie, it isn't the first thing we see. Bay's words were, "We will actually see Cybertron," which is the planet where the Autobots hail from.

Animatics revealed that there's going to be a fight between Megatron and Optimus Prime in downtown LA, fights between fully transformed Autobots and Decepticons which will have them plucking lamp posts out of the ground and smashing the other with the blocky concrete end, a freeway chase, with Optimus doing the chasing and as he catches up to the Decepticon he transforms as he gets close, keeping the tires on the ground and avoiding as many cars as he can. The transformation was everything Transformers geeks would want to see big. It was smooth and ended with Optimus crouching, the wheels still on the ground.

One of the last things spoken about was the teaser trailer. Quint says it starts off in space and it will be released this 4th of July. The movie starts shooting next month.

For the full article, head over to Aint-it-cool via the source link above.

---