Digital artist Diamonddead shares his own fan posters for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, teasing Beast Wars characters, Optimus Primal and Cheetor. The two Maximal characters are set to appear in the 7th film in the Transformers franchise. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts follows the story established in 2018's Bumblebee.
Continuing on from the new continuity established by Bumblebee, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is set to bring in characters from an era that as-of-yet has not been tapped into by the Transformers film franchise. In the upcoming film, the Autobots will face three new factions to the film series: the Maximals, the Predacons, and the Terrorcons. Inspired by the 1996 3D computer-generated animated series, Beast Wars: Transformers, the new Cybertronian factions are Transformers who arrived on pre-historic Earth and chose to disguise themselves as animals such as Gorillas, Rhinos, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. While these characters have been kept secret, Ron Perlman has been cast as Maximal leader Optimus Primal, reprising his role from Netflix's Transformers: War for Cybertron. While promotional material for the upcoming film has yet to be released, fans haven't had a glimpse at any of the new Transformers' appearances, though one fan artist has shared his own vision for two of the Maximals.
Digital artist Diamonddead shared two fan-made posters on his Instagram account that highlighted two confirmed Maximal characters, Optimus Primal and Cheetor. The posters depict portraits of the two robots' animal forms, with half of their faces being their animal forms while the other half features various mechanical details shrouded in shadows. Diamonddead designed Primal's poster first, before creating Cheetor's, after the initial poster's reception, due to it being a Transformer he owned when he was younger. The artist also released clean variants of each poster without text. Check out Diamonddead's work below:
Click here to view the original Optimus Primal poster.
Click here to view the original Cheetor poster.
After filming concluded in October 2021, the Transformers: Rise of the Beasts' director shared an image that teased the design of the beloved Autobot leader, Optimus Prime. While the image only featured Prime's vehicle form, the design was incredibly close to the character's original "Generation One" design seen on his original toy and in the first animated series. The seventh installment in the Transformers franchise continues Bumblebee's approach to the robots in disguise's designs, in which they are primarily inspired by the "Generation One" aesthetic seen in the original series rather than the more intricate, alien designs first pictured for Bay's 2007 movie and subsequent films. Bumblebee director ,Travis Knight, confirmed that he wanted to evoke the feeling the original designs brought when discussing his prequel film in 2018.
While future Transformers films have already been confirmed, fans have yet to see many of the latest Cybertronian characters set to join the universe in the upcoming movie. This is likely due to both the robot and animal form being heavily reliant on computer-generated imagery, meaning a first look at the characters will only be released either when merchandise is revealed or more complete footage is presentable enough to be used in promotional materials. Despite this, Diamonddead's artwork is a good visualization of how Optimus Primal and Cheetor may appear in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, swapping out the original late '90s computer-generated animal designs with a more realistic aesthetic.
Source: diamonddead
