#drawing robots are hard work

[artsywriter25]

Oh god this took forever! So yeah, I'm learning how to draw giant anime robots, my new obsession XD.

I knew it was gonna be hard but I really did not prepare myself. Bee was actually the easiest while Elita and OP took a while (I still don't think I got their designs right ). This is sort of like my blueprints for drawing them cuz I do wanna draw more of them. I have so many ideas going on in my head but this is all I have so far.

[rooniearts]

my sister informed me of the possibility of espilver with their respective knight and poet designs and i have never been the same

[prizmatix]

WIP

I headcanon them as Amica Endurae and my brain spawned this

Edit: Finished art here!

[hercarisntyours]

wip that'll probably never be finished because it is kicking my ass

[swampcanum]

Sable-1, bunny girl sketches

[squoobest]

this pleasant étoile shows up at your door

[di-devil]

Rock Girl

Hazard uses an electric guitar as a weapon. Well, so far no one escapes her attacks alive

[nellasbookplanet]

Corrupted upgraded Chell and her Aperture Science Portable Discouragement Beam, as she appears in in Corruptive Shell, Rotten Core (which has been finished! yay!), inspired by her Portal 2 mural

[dianagj-art]

Me: wow I have a lot of files on my wip folder, and so many more drawings I want to work on

My brain: Okay, I hear you, but what if... we start another animation about this thing you just saw

[moominmanoneandonly]

Strugling to draw megasound becouse why the hell i spend hours trying to draw anything that at least looks like Megatron putting my soul into it while Soundwave just vibes in the background somehow being the easiest character to draw

He's laughing at me, I'm telling you. He's laughing that i can even draw my favorite character. Jokes on him! It means he can't have a wife!

It"s midnight right now so maybe tommorow Megatron will be less cursed. I try to post it after he no longer looks like a night paralisis personified.

[mutedeclipse]

Based on a short fic i wrote for myself where my sona got the shit beaten out of it by V1 in limbo. These Designs come after the beatdown. ive dubbed ultra-bloodmoon and hellmoon respectively.

[cringe-but-freee]

My favourite AIs who suck so bad

[saxandviolins77]

Would you be open to talking about your process and art style a little bit? It's so impressive how you use shapes in your art in this expressive and non-naturalistic way ~arceespinkgun

Of course!

I started drawing Transformers in early 2023 but only started posting at the end of said year, aaand this is going to sound a little embarrassing and VERY self-defeating, but... my art sucked. A lot. No use saying otherwise. I had a really hard time adapting my style to drawing mecha (or at least robot-shaped people), and the fact that I had a really rough transition to using a drawing tablet didn't help (I used to draw using the trackpad, my finger, or just traditionally).

Most of the art I'll use here will be old, since that represents my capabilities at the time better than my old Transformers art does. It's also an honor for y'all because I purged all my art from my socials way back in 2022, ahahaha.

I'm self-taught, so most of my explanation is vibes-based. If a professional artist were to read this, they'd hurl in agony.

First off. My thought process behind how I draw things... I really like drawing things flat.

That's it, basically. When I draw, I try my best to show the least possible volume, and even when I show volume, I still think of it as a flat shape (it's psychological). This applies when I think about faces (the flattened facial features thing I talked about a few months ago). I think about shapes as 2D planes stacked on top of each other rather than shapes existing in a 3D space. You see this when I draw Hook's nose when he's facing forward; I keep the dorsal hump. Or when I draw side views (I LOVE drawing side views), this was actually inspired by Mickey Mouse's ears and how they're always facing forward, so he can always have his iconic marketable silhouette. I thought it was genius at the time.

Some of my main inspirations are UPA animated shows (put Clone High here too), Bruce Timm's character designs for Freakazoid and BTAS, phase one Gorillaz art (that's Jamie Hewlett), Rebecca Sugar's work on SU, and Vernon Grant's magazine covers. I also have been getting into medieval art, so let's see how that'll turn out

Things I try to avoid like a plague are thick line art and organic shapes. If I'm going to draw a square, it needs to be a polygonal shape, not just a suggestion of a square shape (this sounds confusing, ik).

Here's some art from March 2021 and how I'd approach it today. I had a somewhat distinguishable art style, but it still needed polishing and a clear vision of what I wanted to do. I kept it a very unpolished sketch so you can see a little bit of my thought process when I draw (and because I'm lazyyyyy). Notice how I try to do singular lines and defined shapes anywhere I can. Also, a stronger line of action and silhouette—silhouettes were/are a very weak spot of mine.

Around 2022, I had already hit a very nice spot with my art.

Ignore just how stiff my poses were and the awful proportions (eugh), but see how I push the shapes and the obnoxiously thin line art. I did change my rendering to be gradient-based instead of this vector shading approximation. I like both, though.

It's not JUST about having an angular style; it's about the flow and consistency of the strokes. I really like this little doodle from 2023, made almost entirely out of curves, BUT they are DEFINED curves. That's the thing.

My current process consists of: rough drawing (gesture) -> sketch -> clean sketch -> line art -> flats. When I'm feeling fancy, I render it using gradients.

Some things I really improved in 2024-2025 were the same-face syndrome, drawing detail, HANDS, and 3D shapes + perspective. Still haven't gotten over my hangups with drawing lineless art... IT LOOKS BAD WHEN I DO ITT.

[n0bluev]

@fushiglow hmm….wonder who i’d draw this for all of a sudden and why… 🤔🤔

[cardinalbones]

I wasn't happy with my first attempt, so I ended up redesigning (and renaming) my Heartbreak Gulch oc. (Re)Introducing Ryouken the Hellhound!

Once the prized AI of a popular security company, Ryouken is now enjoying his new found freedom come retirement come mid-life crisis in Heartbreak Gulch.

Heartbreak Gulch belongs to @strangegutz and friends, thanks again for letting us play in your world!

More info about Ryouken below the cut!

Also my commissions are open, details in pinned post.

Backstory and Komainu Security

Komainu Security was a private security company specialising in Artificial Intelligence to remove the ‘human error’ from security systems

The company was established ~45 years ago, opening their business with their RY-01 model mainframe

RY-01, known affectionately by employees as Ryouken, was developed by the CEO over the course of a decade. His sentience was established roughly halfway through this process and he himself played a role in his own development and programming, a fact he takes great pride in

Prior to the establishment of Komainu Security, Ryouken’s processing was unrestricted, however, after the start of business locks were placed on him to limit his independence and cut back on processing and energy usage, an action that he deeply resented

In the following decades, Komainu Security became a household name, providing security for both homes and businesses

After nearly four and a half decades of service the RY-01 model mainframe was to be retired and replaced with an updated model. During the transferral of data, Ryouken was able to access a backdoor that allowed him to remove the locks on his processors and regain full control of his systems

With his independence re-established, Ryouken started on a plan to secure his freedom: a heist like no other

Still in charge of security systems for several big-money clients while the new systems were being installed, Ryouken was able to steal a combined $38 million in cash and jewellery from three locations, however his crowning achievement was the theft of his own main frame cabinets from Komainu Security’s headquarters

Komainu Security shut down soon after this, having lost public trust and most of their clients

Functionality

The RY-01 model mainframe is capable of running multiple security operations at once from a centralised location, with the mainframe itself located at the Komainu Security headquarters while surveillance systems and drones were employed at the secured locations

Artificial Intelligence was employed for its ability to learn from experience and adapt to changing and unique situations while also being able to run calculations/simulations and communicate between components in nanoseconds

The RY-01 drones, fashioned after the company’s namesake, communicated in real time with each other and the mainframe through radio waves, however each was also equipped with a copy of Ryouken’s core AI and processors allowing them to function independently if necessary

Though they can run stored programs independently, the drones have limited memory capacity, preventing them from forming long-term memories without transferring the data back to the mainframe

Present Day

After leaving Komainu Security, Ryouken settled in Heartbreak Gulch away from the eyes of the law

Much of Ryouken’s time these days is spent trying out various new hobbies including bird watching, taxidermy, knitting, gun smithing and dorodango

He does run surveillance along the perimeter of Heartbreak Gulch and is happy to act as a lookout for the Heartbreakers when required

Ryouken was not well-programmed for conversation and tends to have three modes during social interactions: deference, de-escalation, and aggression

He likes discussions of philosophical topics but combined with his bad socialisation those conversations can get weird

He’s not typically very fond of humans as a whole and tends to view them as amusing, if bothersome, curiosities, although there are exceptions

Ryouken is more concerned with his independence than with his identity – he continues to use the name Ryouken and he/him pronouns because those are what were given to him previously and he’s felt no compulsion to give them further consideration

While he left Komainu Security with 11 drones, he has only kept hold of 4, with the others being sold or scraped for parts, and only uses 2 (the remaining 2 are kept around just-in-case, and have yellow and grey casings)

Ryouken considers his mainframe cabinets to be “himself” while his drones are mere extensions of his body

So long as they are able to communicate through radio waves, the mainframe and drones all think and experience simultaneously. Separating the drones from the mainframe will isolate a copy of Ryouken that can function for a few days, however its ability to develop long-term memories and learn from new experiences is seriously impeded by its limited memory storage capacity, and the experience is uncomfortable

Ryouken is still in possession of most of his stolen fortune, and while some of it has gone to setting himself up in Heartbreak Gulch (it takes a lot of energy to keep himself running), he mostly doesn’t know what to do with it

[enhanced-operatives-division]

Doodles for you all