#Alt Modes

[smatterbrained]

Trine jet designs for prop practice (cybertronian alts) Skywarp inspired by the Dune jets, Thundercracker kinda inspired by Star Wars vibes :)) Root modes for those who are curious

[jei-rifni]

I spent months on this im SO HAPPY YAAYYY

Inspired by the Nami One Piece colour spread

This one!

[kaontic]

That’s it, I’m continuing the meme.

Or 4 volumes hopefully.

[theangrycomet-art]

TFA: Ariel/Elita 1's Squadron, Team Orthia

I fell down the wiki rabbit hole last night and now I have these.

Everyone's heights are off/going to change in the future because I wasn't sure on everyone's alts when I was first drawing out the line up.

I mostly just wanted to get ideas down on paper.

Edit: Updated Designs

COMMISSIONS OPEN

Transcript of my Handwriting Plus Other Lore:

Nothing here’s set in stone I just wrote down ideas/compiled thoughts as they came to me.

edit: Changed Lancer’s Profile Info to match new ideas I have

TFA: Sheild of Solus

Operation: Failsafe

Purpose: To sabotage any and all Decipticon efforts of gaining any headway in this war. First, start off with the infiltrators, next, hit them where it hurts.

After discovering a spy had infiltrated their ranks, Alpha Trion took it upon himself to assemble a team to sabotage any Decipticon efforts to gain a foothold on Cybertron, hoping that they would be able to counter any threats on Cybertron.

Ariel/Elita-1

Commander and the Leader

High-ranking member of the Elite Guard

Alpha Trion’s inside eyes

Alt Mode: Cybertronian Heavy Duty Truck -> Monster Truck

Special Upgrade: Classified

Good-Morningstar Mace: Morning star with detachable head

Laser Kusarigama: This weighted chain serves Elita well when she needs to tie up the enemy (or retrieve your teammate as her gravity fluctuates again)

Tidbit: One of the few of the Elite Guard to not have gone to the Academy, Elita rose through the ranks through her skill and ingenuity, despite other’s misgivings. A bit rough around the edges, she is always there for her fellow bots. When her former mentor requested her aid in his mission, she had no hesitation joining. (It helped that it got her away from her more tiresome coworkers)  

Chromia

Second in Command

Recon Specialist, Infiltrator

Former Intelligence Officer; she retired when she was not allowed to investigate Highbrows abrupt disappearance and opened a private investigator business.

Alt Mode: Cybertronian Trike -> Trike (like Harley-Davidson Tri Glide Ultra)

Special Upgrade: Lockpick: with enough time she can pick any lock and hack into any systems with the extensions in her servos. However, this can takes a lot of her processing power and leaves her vulnerable.

Laser Sabre: Good for clashing blades and slipping between the seams of an enemy’s armor

Tidbit: Despite her worrying over her teammates, Chromia has a habit of diving helm first into her work with little disregard for herself, whether that be forgetting to refuel and recharge or tempting fate with more self-sacrificial tendencies. She’s been working on it, but bad habits die hard…

Novastar

Search and Rescue, Transportation and Retrieval

Served in the tail-end of the Great War

Worked previously in Search and Rescue with her partners Inferno and Red Alert

Through this line of work, she developed extensive connections.

AltMode: Cybertronian Truck -> Narrowbed Truck

Special Upgrade: Furnace: Nova is able to generate massive bursts of flame, and she has refined the practice into an art. The flames on her head are no only an aesthetic choice, but an outlet for the excess heat she generates. These are easily extinguished; a fact Inferno took great joy in abusing the damn firetruck bot.

Blowtorch: During her time in field during the Great War, Nova lost her left servo to a Decpticon when retrieving soldiers from behind enemy lines. She had it replaced with a blowtorch prothesis that allows her to pinpoint flames to temperatures that can cut through even the toughest of materials- temperatures that otherwise would melt her frames

Tidbit: Novastar has been trying to locate Inferno, who has recently gone MIA after responding to an off-planet distress beacon with a new recruit with little to no luck. She is hoping the new job title will grant her greater resources to expand her search.

Greenlight

Engineer

“The Miracle Worker”

A student of WheelJack’s

Greenlight’s inventions can be brilliantly or devastating (or if she’s lucky) both. She tends to get attached to her devices, however, and gets rather despondent when they are broken or do not work as intended.

Aloof, she doesn’t see the need to waste much time with small talk. It requires a bot with a lot of patience (and ability to pester) to get her to come out of her shell

Alt Mode: Cybertronian Offroader

Special Upgrade: Tasers: Though not a combat bot, Greenlight saw fit to mod herself out with some decent defense. The tasers stored in her arms can generate enough volts of electricity that can through bots thrice her size flat on their backs.

Boom Cannon: A weapon still in its testing phases, she has been building it up from stolen Decepticon specs in her free time.

Tidbit: If asked, Greenlight will say that she agreed to sign up to get out of community service for accidentally demoing a perfectly good lab with one of her inventions. While partly true, a larger part of why she joined was because she didn’t want Lancer doing this alone.

Lancer [Edited]

Researcher

Unofficial Medic

Student of Perceptor

Alt Mode: n/a, missing T-Cog

Special Upgrade: FlipScreen: her “skirt” doubles as computers, monitor and keyboard included. This grants her access to ALL of her files and more importantly allows her to run any necessary scans, analysis, or algorithms she needs when or wherever she needs. It is also a bold fashion statement

BackPack Variety Hour: She has a variety of “backpacks” each serving different purposes, though if you ask anyone but Lancer they all look identical. Despite their incredible weight, she carries them with ease.

Backup Generator: Via the generator on her back, she could keep a city fully powered without straining her spark. Most of this energy goes into the powering the extra processors she has stored in her “skirt”

Star Splitter: a powerful laser spear, though she more often then not uses it for pole vaulting than actual combat

Tidbit: Lancer has been a researcher for the Autobots for longer than many bots have been alive, mostly regarding projects Ultra Magnus would rather not go public. Despite the JetTwins being by far the most successful of these endeavors, Lancer quit shortly after. When Alpha Trion offered her a more savory research position with Twam Orthia she was quick to accept and get out from Ultra Magnus’ thumb.

Moonracer

Sharpshooter/Sniper

“Best in the Whole Galaxy!”

Graduated top of her classes at the Autobot Academy but has struggled to keep a longterm position due to her impulsive behavior, with her last job being messenger-bot for Security.

Alt Mode: Cybertron Compact Car -> Vector W8

Special Upgrade: Internal Gravity Manipulator: As labelled on the tin, she has the ability to shift her gravity, decreasing AND increasing. Typically, she uses this to “float” or “moon walk”. The change in gravity can be extended to objects she comes into direct contact, but maintaining it drains her very quickly.

Velicotron Build: Speedster Though not as fast as the infamous Blurr, Moonracer is incredibly quick both as a bot and her alt form. Combine this with her gravity-defying abilities leads to some devastating results.

Custom Ion Pistols: Dual pistols that can combine into her sniper rifle.

Tidbit: Moonracer is a good bot with a good head on her shoulders. She will always do what she thinks is right- but she tends to jump the gun on things which gets her into trouble. With inexperience comes naivety, but how is she supposed to learn anything if nobody gives her a chance to do anything?  

Individual Shots

[quibbs126]

I think motorcycle Transformers are cool and I want more of them, but I also don’t like when they make female Transformers motorcycles as like, an excuse as to why they’re smaller and slimmer than the male characters. Not that a female bot can’t be a motorcycle, it’s just that it feels like that scenario happens too often with motorcycle bots

I think the solution is that we need more male motorcycle Transformers. The only ones I know of are TFA Prowl and Thrash, let’s expand that list a bit more

[smoked-salmon-official]

What if I made boat mode megatron

Would they kill me with hammers for that

[bluespider008]

Finally actually drew Mayhem's alt mode

[butterflylullaby-lie]

Do you think that cybertronians (after the war) have a lot of political/social discourse about the erasure of cybertronian alt modes?

Like with how many bots have traveled to colonies, other alien planets, and earth that they’d adopt different alt modes. Some prefer it to their og ones, some didn’t even have a og cybertronian alt modes cause they weren’t born there. So there’s a big discourse over cataloging and preserving og alt modes. There is also spiritual and/or religious ties to that concept as well. So it’s a big deal with the rebuilding of cybertronian society. I was just thinking about how it’d go over with how important alt modes were, and how the cybertron of the past is being slowly overwritten over the years because of the war. How would they cope with losing parts of their history or culture, or someone choosing to not be apart of it and choose something else?

This is also from me considering the fact that a lot of the transformers community wants to see more og cybertronian alt modes.

[weirdlookingsnakewithlegs]

I may be getting ahead of myself. i might lose interest, no promises. But. I’ve been learning blender, and I want to animate a fly by of him in an Antarctic glacial field then hopefully a loop de loop through a glacial arch.

Easiest will be rendering the scene itself (and downloading Starscream bc I found a good model of his jet online… as well as Starscream himself lol).

Year end project likely. or at least summer.

Initially, I considered Skyfire in it (bc Antarctic), but I'll need to model his shuttle itself and I'm too much of a beginner for that.

A massive IF but if i were to somehow add Skyfire, or heck his trinemates (2yr project lol) then what IRL jet modes do you think they would be?

Again NO PROMISES!! But it’s something I want to try

A lot of people have different opinions on what the trine’s alts are and different continuities have different alts as well. For example, the original G1 cartoon had Starscream’s alt mode as the F-15 Eagle, the F-16 Fighting Falcon in Prime, and the F-22 Raptor in Bayverse. It’s common though that they’re all some sort of fighter, aka a multi-role military jet more specifically used in dog fights.

When is comes to Thundercracker and Skywarp however, they never really specify their alts but I’ve seen several theories.

Personally, I like to believe that Thundercracker is an F-35 Lightning. The F-35 Lightning is a supersonic aircraft capable of electronic warfare and while it’s fantastic in dog fights it’s good for reconnaissance too. It also failed its landing tests eight times during its development and in early development testing showed it developed premature cracks(of which these issues have since been ironed out of course), which aids my reasoning to assign this to Thundercracker.

However! For Skywarp I like to take a twist and make him an MiG-25 Foxbat, one of the faster fighter jets. The MiG-25 Foxbat is capable of reaching speeds up to Mach 3.2, only limited by the possibility of over heating engines, however it does hold the record for highest altitude reached.

I’ve never thought about Skyfire’s alt, of which I’m assuming he would stay a cybertronian shuttle, but let’s say he did have an Earth variant alt mode. The only logical choice would probably be a An-225 Mriya(also known as the An-225 Dream). This is an outsize cargo aircraft, developed during the 1980’s. Only one was ever built and it was sadly dismantled and destroyed in 2022 on February 27th.

But that’s my take on alt their alt modes, you may not find the correct models for your project but then again we all take creative liberties when it comes to the wildfire of transformers. Just make sure you’re still having fun with the project! :D

Also I didn’t mean to ramble lol I could’ve just given you a list but I love aircrafts <3

[theangrycomet]

I found the perfect earth alt mode for G1 Moonracer

Seriously, if she ever got to earth she would've been an 1985 Ferrari 308 GTS.

[kaontic]

When your nephew got this book and you wanna create a TF oc:

[theangrycomet-art]

Playing with my ferrari!Moonracer idea.

COMMISSIONS OPEN

[quibbs126]

You know I really do have to know what all the TF One Primes turn into

Because we know they had cogs, so they can transform, and Alpha Trion turns into a weird lion/kirin thing

It’s like, what the hell did everyone else turn into?

Sure some of them might have conventional vehicle modes, someone had to start that, but there’s not doubt in my mind that ones like Quintus, Amalgamous and Onyx had to turn into some weird stuff

I really do need a prequel focused on the Thirteen, because why did they make all these striking, unique designs for characters that are barely in the movie and only 3 of them actually matter to the plot? And it’s not even like the miners or High Guard where they could end up being important in later movies, they’re already dead by the start of the story, save Alpha Trion

[logbookqwerty]

Personality Quiz Help?

A while back, there was this very well done Transformers Alt Mode Personality Quiz. However, it has since been deleted and/or destroyed. Therefore, I have taken upon myself to recreate it and make it better to the best of my abilities.

How does any of this relate to you? I can hear you thinking.

Well, I am not super knowledgeable about alt modes and the personalities / stereotypes connected to them, and although I can simply spend hours researching the subject, I thought it would be fitting if I asked Tumblr. (That and I am low-key curious about what you all think)

So, uh, help me out and type out some of your thoughts about alt modes and any facts about the subject. Anything will be appreciated

[gillsoffish]

I love how Starscream is trusted with so many people in alt mode, like most murderous and backstabbing bitch you know is also the one who holds and uses you during battle. if your alt mode needs to be hand held your going to him at some point.

[themhformessyheadcanonfactory]

My opinion on electric alt modes (Transformers Headcanons)

(09/06/2025)

Inspired by a post about Cybertrucks being a torture technique for cybertronians, please tag them if you see the person who posted it first!

I personally think alt modes are only an “outer shell” and don’t impact the inside of the transformer. Although…… it impacts the speed at which they drive…

They can only go as fast as their alt modes allow… for example if they take a lambo as an alt mode like for Sideswipe and Sunstreaker they’ll go as fast as this classic 80s supercar. Although if they take a truck like Optimus or an ambulance like Ratchet, then they’ll be significantly slower.

But I feel like it’s different for electric vehicles… because they don’t have any exhaust pipes for their vent systems, any engine where they could store their spark, and electric cars rarely and I mean RARELY win races against fuel-powered vehicles (NOTE THAT I COULD BE WRONG ON THAT YOU CAN CORRECT ME BUT PLEASE BE CONSTRUCTIVE IF YOU DO)

Sure they could use the battery as a fake one and put their spark in it, but a battery is smaller than an engine, like… SIGNIFICANTLY smaller and I doubt that a spark can be stored in a 12 inch square cube. Or at least it’ll feel trapped.

And good luck with the venting system, no exhaust pipes means less efficient cooling, they could literally start coughing out of nowhere the same way Optimus did in Age of Extinction (I know it’s Bayverse but it’s the only time it clearly happens)

Also… in colder climates it was proven that, like a phone in the cold, the battery of electric vehicles runs out faster especially when it’s not moving. So maybe transformers with electric vehicles would have less resistance to the cold.

But I HIGHLY doubt any transformer wants an electric vehicle as an alt mode tbh