Transformers Earthspark - Blog Posts

Transformers and Female Body Types (Rant/Essay)

(I wanted more images in this, but tumblr has a limit and it was a lot of pictures anyway)

Anyone who complains about female transformers having “robot boobs” needs to shut up. Unless it’s a case of critiquing a design that’s genuinely caricatured, this complaint only serves to protest against robots looking too feminine, as if all robots by default should have broad, masculine shoulders and flat chests instead. The problem is that people look at a masculine transformer and say, “Ah yes, an anthropomorphised robot.” But the moment it’s one of the female transformers, it’s “why do robots need boobs?” as if a male-looking body type is anthropomorphizing, but a female-looking body time is suddenly “too human” or “too much.” As if all humanoid robot aliens should look male by default.

That being said, for a long time transformers did have a glaring issue of their female transformers having a generic, Barbie-doll like body type. This especially became problematic as male characters appeared with several different and varying heights and builds, while female characters all looked the same.

This eventually improved with newer media. I’m going to go through different transformers series, giving my opinions on various female Cybertronians designs.

Transformers Animated and Transformers Prime are the cases where we see the very few female characters that there are being designed with this more Barbie doll look, especially in comparison to the male cast, who each have strikingly different silhouettes. I maintain that there’s nothing wrong with having this stereotypically feminine figure as long as it’s not caricatured or designed to sxualize the character (in TFA’s case, Black Airachnid was extremely sexualized, but Arcee wasn’t at least) it’s just the lack of variety that makes it painful. If all female characters were designed with a stocky, square body type, it would be just as bad; the problem is the lack of diversity in representing how each woman is different.

I think Arcee from Transformers Prime gets some of the most comments about how she has breasts and hips and is most often faced with the question “why should robots have boobs?” In response to this question, I propose: why shouldn’t they? The shape of their chassis really doesn’t matter in the end. I like Arcee’s design and acting like she’s inherently caricatured for looking like a woman is just a way of alienating femininity.

TFP Arcee is also unfortunately sexualized a lot by the fandom. Primus forbid a woman exist in peace.

The problem with these ‘Barbie doll’ designs isn’t that they are oversexualized— while this may have been a problem with Black Airachnia, the true problem, as seen especially with the treatment of TFP Arcee, is the concept that any female body traits are inherently sexual, which both creators and fandom spaces feed into.

It’s not as prominent, but I’ve also seen a trend of attempting to give female transformers more diverse body types by giving them… male body types.

In Transformers Cyberverse, the Seekers all have the same body type, whether they are male, female, or genderfluid, the only differences being that the female models have lips and the male ones have facial-hair like chin stubs (and Acid Storm switches back and forth). However I would hardly call this progress, because the body type is more male-leaning, not truly gender neutral.

Often to make something appear gender neutral, people will just remove anything too obviously feminine. This treats masculine traits as the “default” and female traits as a deviance from this. A truly gender-neutral design would incorporate both masculine and feminine traits at the same time.

(What if we just made all the Seekers look like women and gave the dudes chins. What if we did that. Huh.)

Shadowstriker from Cyberverse is a better example of this, having a female body type but a chin stub and generally gender neutral face.

I like the look of Alpha Strike as well, she feels actually gender neutral and isn’t too exaggerated like most muscular (and especially muscular female) characters are.

For example, Clobber’s design is good, but I do think her lips were strangely exaggerated.

Once the IDW run of the Transformers comics actually introduced female characters, they eventually gained a large cast with a variety of different body types. Take Windblade, Nautica, Pyra Magna, the Mistress of Flame, and Aileron.

These aren’t all examples, but IDW certainly had a unique design for each of their female characters, with different heights, width, mixing and matching the proportions of their bodies and displaying diverse body types. Aileron is also a stand-out character design for me, as one of the few heavy-set transformers to be designed in a way that looks more rounded than bulky, implying weight over muscle. We need more weighted transformers in general.

I have many positive feelings about Transformers Earthspark’s choice of character design for their female characters.

Earthspark has the most consistently diverse character design for its female characters.

And it shows that the key to designing actually good female Cybertronians isn’t necessarily to make them not feminine, but to show diverse depictions of femininity. All of the female characters in this show are pretty feminine, but they all look different. Twitch is small and slight, Hashtag is tall and boxy. Each one has different proportions and are easy to tell apart by body type alone. Even better, they each have drastically different facial structures. Twitch has large eyes, Hashtag has a strong chin, Elita-1 has a straight nose and pronounced lips, Arcee has small eyes and a very slight nose, et cetera. Earthspark is definitely a win in this department.

My point with all of this is to say that femininity isn’t a one-size fits all. Every woman is different and everyone should get to express their gender in whatever way they see fit. Transformers gradually diversifying the look of their female characters represents this, and I hope they continue improving as the franchise continues.

Earthspark is um it’s really good

I JUST REALIZED THAT THE AUTOBOTS THINK THE TERRANS ARE SPARKLINGS. BECAUSE THEY TECHNICALLY ARE!! They were born what?? a year ago in the timeline, so they're like babies to them!! Which is why they're always referred to as "Young ones" or "kids." Thank you for coming to my tedtalk.

I think that Hashtag totally would stream FNAF

First post here on tumblr OwO I ❤️ earthspark

ES Mamawave taking care of his emo baby

My first post on Tumblr, yay!

TFE Soundwave for @aleksgivanov dtiys

Earth Spark Soundwave is basically the sex symbol for me

my entry for @aleksgivanov ‘s DTIYS on Instagram!!!Happy 900✨🥳✨

AUDIBLY YELLED when I saw this prompt. any excuse to draw the Deception’s Finest 😤👌✨

GGRGRRAGHG GRGRRKKH RHHHG ROUGGHROUHGH RGGRKKKGRRRGGGGH

I was thinking that maybe on Cybertron the one who chooses to carry is usually the strongest partner, the one who can potentially protect the progeny better. And big frames usually make better parents. So basically Megatron is just the walking -best mum ever-

this megatron is just so sweet and gentle with the kids it absolutely. DESTROYS ME.

Funky dancing

This is what happens when I listen to footloose while I am drawing things

Help

New Transformers OCs

Earthspark Edition

These are two OCs that I made for other continuities originally, but these EARTHSPARK versions are the first ones if finished digitally.

Skyline is essentially Skywarp’s spark-twin, and she has the same outlier ability as them. She is in a trine with my OCs Overcast and Stormraiser. Their trine is all outliers and all female, and depending on the continuity they might all turn into a different type of aircraft. (Example, on one continuity skyline turns into a 117-nighthawk, stormraiser into a yf-17 cobra, and Overcast into an f-22 raptor)

And Contrail is originally for the MTMTE and Lost Light comic lines, and is essentially a human that got turned into a cybertronian by mistake. (She turns into the dragonfly ship from dune cause they look cool).

I’ll have versions without the names under the cut.

New OC

——Transformers earth spark ——

———Info below the cut ———

She’s the kid of another one of my OCs along with Knockout and Breakdown (I’m sorry but I love them; also I will introduce the other oc— Skyline— soon)

You can read some of her basic info in the first pic, if you have any questions feel free to ask (in comments or asks)

So far I only have her Protoform, I haven’t designed what she will look like once she gets her alt forms, but she is gonna be a triple changer

Also, have her and nightshade as a bonus

(This is when they first met)

They’re just a couple of little nerds who like to info dump to each other about their special interests/hyper fixations

(Also I’m thinking that her ground alt is gonna be a Lamborghini Siam and her flight alt to be a B-2 Spirit)

The consequences of pulling every baddie

Noticed I haven't drawn him in weeks... had to draw my huzz

ES!Wavewave to protect me from art block (+ original image)

I'm his number one fan 😇

I CANT STOP DRAWING HIM

Still trying to find an art style...

Was watching Earthspark and Soundwave's design reminded me of a lynx cat

Human Megatron and Optimus | Earthspark spoiler out of context:

Sketchs TF and Robbie Brown(?)

MegOp YES

literally they

have a WIP l’m working on

Working on some art so have some sillies l made

my entry for @zorangezest, this is my OC Firefly

my Transformer OC Firefly (this took so long)

Es Soundwave mini comic (WIP)

Mini comic l’m working on this is a wip right now