Hey, thanks Ray! I appreciate that. It is really nice to have him on the shelf. The next one we worked on was recently announced. Another one I had as a kid, Prowl. This official image isn’t the best view for him, but some of the details are really nice.
Sophie, sorry I missed you question. I talk about the process a bit in the video. Basically Mic and John (who you might know since you are working at Hasbro now) get me a simple story brief and I do some exploration sketches. Very loose gestural stuff, basically like the sharpie sketches I was posting for awhile in my 2017 sketch a day thread. Then then down select or combine elements and one of my guys here and I start working on very tight 2D drafted views of the alt mode (vehicle mode) only showing detail views and sections as needed. That is taken in house to be sculpted. That sculpt is then given to a Japanese guy at Takara to work out the robot mode. If you think of the G1 series where they were starting with a real car and Takara made them into robots, basically my small team and I play the roll of the car designers in the process.
It is definitely a different way of working for me, but one of the things I pride myself on is adjusting the process for each individual client and project. There have been a few times working with start ups where I’ve brought on MEs and we are taking component specs from EEs and building tight CAD, there have been times where I’ve been doing ethnographic research and providing more strategic insights and design language system deliverables, then there are projects like this where I just do a few hot sketches, some tight oaths and the client can take it from there. Working with Icon is pretty similar. Honestly I love that variety of not only subject matter but also project scope and length. I worked on a program this year that was 2 quarters, vs these which are a few days.
Anywho, here is Prowl 
One of the fun parts about these G1 style toys is that the car parts are such a huge part of the robot design.
