Thursday, January 8, 2009

Transformers

I listed this as "cover art" because it looks as though it could be a cover. But in fact I am not sure what it was used for. It has an open space at the top which looks like space for the title. Maybe it is a comic book that he did the cover only for. This piece never interested me very much; giant destructive robots are sort of on a different wave length from mine. But there is no doubt that Seth could draw them with the best. This page does have some interesting things structurally though. The action on it is shaped like an hourglass. Your eye first goes to the huge, menacing robot above, with his arms reaching out in exaggerated perspective,and especially to his grimacing face. Then you notice the "waist" of the hourglass, which is the smaller robot in the center. Then, when you are sure there is no real menace to yourself, you can take the time to go through the pile of mechanical parts below and see what Seth included there: a VW bug, various robot body parts, sundry parts of heavy machinery that boys may recognize but that this female just sees as Stuff.
His signature in the little box is his name as it is usually written in Japanese: セス, which is SE-SU, since there is no "th" in Japanese.

4 comments:

j_ay said...

Oh wow, I’ve never seen that before!

The appeal of Transformers (and anything like it) is well-lost on me too, but that’s one of Seth’s strong points: he makes ANYTHING interesting.

Unknown said...

Looking at this one on the main page, I thought it was a bad fit for Seth. Then, after clicking the picture to enlarge it, I saw the Cassette Tape in the pile. It really takes me back to watching Transformers after school when I was a kid. EVERYONE draws all the popular robots, but who draws the Cassette tape that transforms into a bird or dinosaur that goes into MasterBlaster, the transforming Ghetto Blaster.........? Seth Fisher! That's who. :-)

Vicki said...

Jon,
I'm glad you filled me in on this. So Transformers was a kids' after-school cartoon show? Nice that you found more of Seth's beneath the surface details in the picture, ones that I certainly missed.

j_ay said...

I never followed any of it, but if memory serves Transformers was first a toy line (early to mid 1980s?), then a comic (Marvel had a habit of taking toy lines and making comics out of them (Micronauts, GI Joe, Rom, etc)), then a cartoon on tv and recently a Hollywood (i.e. all special effects, light on plot) flick with occasional comic books (with non-Marvel publishers) in-between.