Took some notes from watching this.
---
25 copies of the Binder were made.
Rik thinks it was Eric Siebenaler who came up with the name "Binder of Revelation".
Ugh, Rik is pronouncing Prima's name as "Pree-ma" instead of "Pry-ma".
Rik gives a confusing explanation for why life on other planets is so much smaller than on Cybertron. First he says Quintus is like a Johnny Appleseed type going around planting life on other planets, but then corrects himself to say that it's Micronus who did that instead, citing Micronus's smaller size for why life on other planets is human-sized, and saying that Quintus goes off and his descendants are the Quintessons. Yet, all media post-Covenant says it is Quintus who went and planted life on other planets
Rik says "if the powers that be had had there way", there would have been an animated movie based on the exodus from Cybertron seen in the WFC and FOC video games.
Rik claims they had pitched a show that comes after Prime that would have involved NAILs returning to Cybertron like in IDW. He claims the show would have focused on Thundertron and his 13 pirates each from a different colony world, with Cosmos from GoBotron. A panel of GoBotron's destruction was drawn with the planet exploding in the shape of the apple core, reflected in Cosmos's visor.
Rik claims there was a pitch for a Transformers show set at the very end of the timeline in a new universe with only two familiar characters returning: the ghost of Starscream, and "Iron Magnus", who is Ironhide with the Magnus Hammer as a cane. He says it was shot down quickly by Aaron Archer who said "We will never do a show called 'The Last Transformers'."
At the time, they were also working on two new play patterns that didn't take off. One involved rare earth magnets that let things hover over a placemat, and the other was glow-in-the-dark stuff involving break open energon cubes ("There's glass in that stuff."). Never really worked out because of safety issues.
Rik loves the Megatron redemption story that IDW did.
The 2015 stuff that was added to the Binder later was added by someone after Rik and Aaron left Hasbro.
The Cybertronian Zodiac was an idea put in there by "the other company" (which would be Starlight Runner according to what Aaron Archer told me back at BotCon).
Regarding the Zodiac thing:
Rik: So, that was actually, there was another company involved in this that had developed the brand bible for Halo, and they kind of took that idea and put it in there. And, when you're working with a company that has lots of moving parts--you have licensing, you have marketing, you have design, and then you have your licensors--you kind of have to pick and choose your battles. And that was a battle I didn't want to fight. I'm like, "You know what? That's interesting. Leave it in. I'm not going to fight that battle."
Windblade was never in the Binder when Rik was there. She had just been created at the time. So, her entry in 2015 version was one of the later additions. It is not known who wrote and added in the 2015 updates to the Binder, but whoever it was, they recreated the same format and font faces used by the original pages and even kept the Polarities idea for the characters despite their never being used in anything outside the Binder. Rik and Jim wonder if the Polarities picked for the 2015 character additions were chosen at random. A lot of the art from the 2015 pages is foreign to Rik.
Drift originally had very different pages from the AOE-inspired one found in the 2015 Binder, with art taken from IDW instead of AOE. The IDW-based Drift pages were removed and replaced by the AOE-based ones found in the 2015 PDF.
Regarding the Aligned Ironhide artwork:
Rik: That's Transformers: Prime Ironhide. And someone said, "But Ironhide dies in Dark of the Moon." Yeah? "Well, kids are going to be confused." This is not a show based off Dark of the Moon. "Kids don't know that. Kids know that he dies in the movie, so you have to take him out." I'm like, "What? What? It's It's not even a show based off the movie." So, Ironhide came out. He was in all the concept art and we didn't have anyone to replace him. And I said, "Bulkhead." And I had to make an argument for Bulkhead because they understood Bulkhead as just being an Animated character. And I said, "No, no, no, no. Characters exist in many different iterations. Optimus has existed in all these different shows. We can take a character like Bulkhead and pull him out of animated and put him into the new show."
There were lots of battle Rik tried to fight and lost against the Hasbro design team, such as trying to get Ironhide and Breakdown's toys out in the Prime toyline, and trying to make a better toy for Airachnid where the propellers become legs.
Prowl's character bio artwork in the Binder was done by Eric Siebenaler.
Nick Roche had been working on a comic book that never came to fruition about the Minibots called "Secret Powers", wherein they all had different powers, like how the Autobots in the early G1 Season 1 episodes had different powers like how Brawn had a drill and Jazz had a grappling hook and how Mirage could become invisible. This led to Rik wanting to give Sideswipe the wheeled skater feet of his ROTF counterpart in his Aligned artwork so that he could have the power of wheeled skating feet.
Rik confirms that Hero Mashers Heatwave was the result of someone not familiar with the brand using Google for reference material, since it was indeed originally supposed to be based on Rescue Bots Heatwave.
Rik also confirms that the Aligned character art made for the Binder was supposed to be continuity-ambiguous amalgamated designs rather than specific versions of each character, which is what most of the 2015 additions have, be they the AOE, CW, RID 2015, or TR versions.
Rik thinks Starscream's Binder art was also done by Eric.
Rik really loved the Animated concept of Blitzwing having three different faces. The vibe I get from his gushing over that is that he really wanted that to be Blitzwing's thing going forward. Hence the Thrilling 30 toy he worked on with Joe Kyde having the three faces gimmick.
Rik and Jim are utterly confused about the Constructicon Hook's profile in the Binder being named "Hightower" instead, forgetting that this was back at the time when Hasbro did not have the trademark for "Decepticon Hook" and used "Hightower" as a substitute, like with the Universe 2003, Classics, and ROTF toys. They're also confused about Bruticus being named "Bruticus Maximus" in the Binder. They remember that being the name of the Energon combiner, but the G1 version also used that name for a time during Universe 2008 and ROTF. The Exodus novel even called him that.
Trypticon is the only G-Tier Decepticon character because they really wanted him to become the Nemesis, as they were knee-deep in Fall of Cybertron at that point.
Making the Binder took about two years.
Jim says the rumors about how much it cost to make the Binder was about $300,000 and asks Rik if that's within the ballpark of the actual budget. Rik says that sounds like a hundred grand short of what it really was.
Rik was the one who arranged the order of the Thirteen. He also got to name Alchemist, Amalgamous, and Onyx.
Jim asks Rik what he thinks about Alchemist being officially connected to Maccadam, and Rik really likes that. He was talking with Aaron Archer a few months ago, and they think it's amazing that toys of the Thirteen, as they never thought it would be possible to make toys of them based on these designs.
The art of Prima seen in the Binder is the original design they came up with for him before they decided to add the Matrix to the hilt of his sword.
Rik can't remember who did the Binder art design for Megatronus, but I myself found out some months back that it was Don Figueroa.
The Megatronus art was already there when Rik first came aboard.
Micronus's original "thing" was just that he was tiny. The Chimera Stone as his artifact was all "that other company".
The circular thing behind Quintus in his artwork is supposed to be the Oracle from Beast Machines.
At one point, Onyx Prime was originally named "Onyx Primal". And at a later point, "Feral Prime" was added as a possible alternate name after the change from "Onyx Primal" to "Onyx Prime". Rik's words hint that it might have been Starlight Runner who changed it to "Onyx Prime".
Rik says that the design of Alchemist Prime's face on his AOTP toy is perfect in how it resembles Alchemist's Binder art that's missing from this copy of the PDF.
---
Have to split the post in half. To be concluded below:
