Customer Reviews

Complete Transformers Ark

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First time readers may be disappointed that all this book contains is just black and white pictures of the various Transformers, locales, weapons, and miscellaneous from the early years of the franchise's cartoons. HOWEVER, what readers have to take into account is that what this book contains are animation models that aren't seen often outside of animation or broadcasting studios, short of certain types of magazines. ESPECIALLY the fact that the other half of the book contains animation models from the Japanese-exclusive Transformers series such as "The Headmasters", "Masterforce", "Victory", and "Zone". Why such importance? It's extremely useful as reference material, whether it be for those looking into the animation industry, graphics, comic artists/writers, and even writers that focus on words only! Another factor is the condition on some of the models, sometimes those from 1984 where depending on how it was store, could take hours to clean up so it can be presentable. English-speaking fans were less likely to see such material, even today, whereas Japanese fans were luckier as they have several magazines and various artbooks to showcase the models.

If you already have "The Ark" and "The Ark II" that came out prior to this, it's a good idea to pick up the Complete Ark as it has additional pages that weren't in either volumes. If you haven't picked up the first two volumes, then it's still highly recommended to pick this up.

What Jim and Bill did here is a something of treat for Transformers fans, because Transformers isn't just about the toys - it's also about the characters and how each new generation changes over the years. You don't see this type of transforming history often in the West.

A lot of the criticism this book is getting fails to recognize what the book's supposed to be in the first place. This is a historical document. We're getting to see the actual animation models used for the Transformers characters in the cartoons of the 1980s. That may not be everyone's cup of tea, but as an archive of information not previously collected elsewhere (except, arguably, in the previous Ark volumes done by this very pair of authors), it does the job admirably well.

This is a great book of animation models from The Transformers animated series from the 1980s. It contains exactly what is in the product description: animation models. I'm not sure what the negative reviewers were expecting.

This is an awesome drawing reference for those who want to be future Transformer artists. The scaling was a surprise--I hadn't realized Ratchet was bigger than the Lamborghini brothers! The Autobots and Decepticons are exactly as I remember them, and there is even an alternate reference sheet for those characters who, apparently, had reference changes during some of the episodes, namely Hauler/Grapple and some of the combiner members. The Dinobots even had both their comic references and the more simplified episodes' reference.

Heck, they even have an extremely detailed and ironically beautiful Unicron, his planet form, and some details of his insides, too. They have The Ark, the Autobot's control room, a detailed reference of the Decepticons' underwater base, and some parts of the insides of The Victory (the Decepticon Base). They have details of Cybertron, Iacon and Shockwave's base, the Ark before it crashed, after the crash, and scenery of the mountain they crashed in (they do a lot of crashing, don't they?).

My only complaint: the missing female transformers. No Elita-1, no Nightbird, no Chromia, no Firestar, no Moonracer only poor lonely token Arcee and the Japanese character Minerva (the second half of this book, Ark II, has all the Japanese characters from those series, as far as I know). Seriously, they put in Slugfest and Overkill (do you know these two off the top of your head; they're cassettes and they showed up for two seconds in the episode 'The Primatives'), and Twintwist and Topspin, yet they left out Optimus Prime's love interest? Fangirls should feel insulted.

This book is for either hardcore Transformers fans, or artists who would enjoy a detailed reference guide. Not only does this book contain the character/animation models of every Transformer from the Generation 1 (G1) era from the US/UK series, it also contains the Japanese exclusive Transformers from later series.

Each Transformer is shown from multiple views, in both robot and alt-mode, and special notations are made when there were differences between the cartoon and comicbook models. For example, I had been unaware that the Dinobots had different rear designs - more detailed for the comicbook models, less so for the cartoon. Many human supporting characters also are featured in the book, along with more obscure characters, like Kremzeek.

The book is in black and white, which did not take anything away from the enjoyment factor for me, but I got the book more for a reference guide, as opposed for entertainment purposes.

I would highly recommend this for any artist and/or diehard fan of the G1 Transformers franchise!

All the pictures are in black and white, which is perfect. I remember being a kid and pages like these can be copied so you can color them. The problem with most coloring books is finding your characters. This book has them all. It even shows how some of them transform so you can even go as far as making your own transformer one day. The second half of the book has many Japanese transformers and alternate modes.

I found out there were 2 Ark books and this is apparently both. Save some time and money. Besides the first one is so hard to find and that's the one you really want.

sick reference guide! I highly recommend to fans of TF and design in general.

A HUGE reference, that is MASSIVELY interesting and invaluable.

Get it before it goes out of print..... IT WILL.

5 big stars and my highest recommendation.

This book is fantastic. It's stuffed to the brim with black and white reference material from the G1 cartoons. It flows logically from the original American cartoon through the new movie characters into the japanese exclusive follow-up cartoons.

I'm a fan of the tranformers and any kind of reference "bible" like this. You can really feel the effort and passion these guys put into this massive book. It is a bit larger than I was expecting which is always a bonus.

Great work guys. Now, if we could get something like this for Beast Wars, I would be pumped.

The book is a great resource for artists who want to get into drawing Robots.
It won't tell you how to draw, but it'll show you what a great number of robots look like.
And even if you don't want to draw, the book is still great for the regular Transfan.

The book is in black and white only, so if you're looking for colors and a lot of text, I recommend you buy Transformers: The ultimate guide instead.
But this book is still worth the money you pay for it.

this book has every character model from the original transformers cartoon, as well as its japanese continuation.