Unseen Gen1 concept & colour chart images revealed

[Paulbot]

I was always fascinated by how different the designs for G1 characters were in all the old merchandise type books. I couldn't figure out why there would be a different design, hadn't the artists seen the show?

They probably hadn’t. Even the artists on the comic book didn’t have access to the cartoon models when they started drawing it.

Depending on the book/merchandise you can usually figure out if the artists were given the box art, the toys (or photos of them), or the cartoon models.

And in cases like the example above where they were only given some of the reference material.

[UltraMarginal]

And in cases like the example above where they were only given some of the reference material.

reference material from a failed gobots spinoff?!