Till all are one? Yeah, right.

Rodimus Prime has been one of the most controversial figures in the Transformers mythology since his first appearance in the Movie. It was then where we were robbed of Optimus Prime as the Autobot leader and this young upstart took over because he was the "Chosen one". However, it was further explored that he was uncomfortable with his role as a leader and found the burden difficult to cope with. That is the feeling I tried to convey with this image.

Here, Rodimus has given up on the Matrix of Leadership in frustration, while the "spirit" of Optimus Prime looms in the background with shame. This was made for a fan art contest with Rodimus having to be the subject matter, and so rather than just whip together a "cool" drawing of Rodimus in some random pose, I tried to tell a story with one shot.

There are a few compositional issues but ultimately when it came time to fix them I decided to just let it go. When you change one thing, you have to change everything, and I didn't want to get caught up in all of that. One really annoying thing was that every picture of Rodimus that I used as reference was coloured differently. And yes, I do realize that if Rodimus has given up on the Matrix he should have gone back to being Hot Rod. I didn't think it was that important.

This was completed during the Summer of 2002 using Photoshop to colour my pencil lines. It was one of the last pieces I did before I got a digital drawing tablet.

© Hasbro/Takara.

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