‘Transformers One’ Gave Optimus Prime and Megatron a ‘Youthful Naivete’ in Their Origin Story

variety.com:

Carolyn Giardina To make Paramount and Hasbro’s first fully CG-animated Transformers movie, Academy Award-winning director Josh Cooley (“Toy Story 4”) turned to Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects studio behind the franchise’s live-action movies.

The first challenge to making “Transformers One” was defining the overall look, which in this case involved a design philosophy that was more rooted in the original “Generation One” toys and cartoons than the live-action series.

VFX supervisor Frazer Churchill elaborates that it’s a “more simplistic look than the Transformers live-action movies, like humanoid faces and simpler lines. … Somewhere between animation and live action.” He adds that working with Cooley and production designer Jason Scheier, they coupled this with a “cinematic” look — for instance, with shallow depth of field and backlighting. “We [leaned] into the sort of live-action techniques for lighting and camera,” he explains.

Set on Cybertron, “Transformers One” is the origin story of how Optimus Prime (voiced by Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) go from the closest friends to sworn enemies.