CREATING NEW CHARACTERS
ILM INTRODUCES US TO TWO NEW TRANSFORMERS ON A HUMAN SCALE, COGMAN AND SQWEEKS, WHO ADD A DIFFERENT DYNAMIC TO THE FILM
Along with mainstays Optimus Prime and Megatron, this movie sees two new Transformers making an appearance: Cogman and Sqweeks.
“There’s a wonderful illustrator named Steven Messing, who I have been working with for quite a while, and he had this idea of this Jules Verne-type of character that came from the age of the later Industrial Revolution,” says production designer Jeffrey Beecroft. “We used elegant pieces to create him and looked at Breguet watches. The older watches have this wonderful movement to them.”
“Cogman is a beautiful design that is reminiscent of old firearms or old armour with brass inlay metal,” observes ILM VFX supervisor Jason Smith. “I hope that audiences get a kick out of him because he’s a fun character.” Cogman is a special robot known as a headmaster. “Michael and the writers wrote him into the film as a butler. We never see him become a car in the movie, so we don’t know what the vehicle would look like,” says Jeffrey.
Cogman is very physical with his body language. “He doesn’t have a mouth but has expressive eyes,” states ILM associate visual effects supervisor David Fogler. “When Cogman speaks, his face is performing around the speech but there are no lips; he can’t smile...r2-d2, expresses himself well, so we have a lot of other tools to work with in terms of the physicality of these robots.”
Serving as a best friend to teenager Izabella (portrayed by Isabela Moner) is Sqweeks. “We built two full-size versions that could move and be puppeted,” remarks Jeffrey. “Michael laughed ever single time he saw it. We needed to have a robot for kids and came up with a Vespa. I said, ‘Why don’t we make a robot out of that? It would be fun and cute.’ We started playing with that idea and Sqweeks became a companion of the young lady in the film,” he explains.
Some digital assistance was needed for the character. “Our task with Sqweeks was to give that practical puppet [constructed by Studio Art & Technology] a broader range of performances by replacing pieces of him. In some cases, our digital version takes over,” states ILM associate VFX supervisor David Fogler. “In previous Transformer movies, there might be a hand sitting around, but we’ve never dealt with puppetry to that degree before.”
“The fact that both Sqweeks and Cogman are down to human scale makes them relatable,” notes ILM VFX supervisor Jason Smith. “It also means that we can be in a lot of shots with them. That’s a fun challenge – to put a Transformer in a room and have it interact with the same things that the people are interacting with.”