As the third Transformers movie gears up preproduction this month, we've learned that Optumus Prime and Bumblebee will get a makeover. The Industrial Light & Magic team is hard at work updating the robots in disguise for their third big screen adventure. "Our two lead characters, Optimus and Bumblebee, needed to be updated for the next chapter in the Transformers series," said animation supervisor Scott Benza in an exclusive interview Sunday at the Visual Effects Society Awards in Century City, Calif., where he and visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar were nominees. "Bumblebee's matured a little bit, so I would just say look for subtle changes to his physique that have him look more mature."
Subtlety might not be what you expect from a Michael Bay movie, but Farrar suggested the changes to Prime would be of the easter-egg variety that only true fans would notice. "[Prime will have] little tiny things that maybe the average viewer isn't going to notice but probably the fanboys will," Farrar said. "You actually will run into pieces that are maybe always in the way, and wouldn't it be nice if that part wasn't there? Maybe you make a shift in the shoulder, in the chest or what have you. So it might be proportioning, but it also might be for usability, so [the animators]' task could be easier, too."
Benza added that Prime's updates would be badass. "We always want the robots to look cooler than they did the last time, so he's going to look a little more heroic, I would say," Benza said.
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