TRANSFORMERS MOSAIC REBOOT…


Well, sort of.

As the project quickly approaches its first birthday in June, the project team have decided it’s the perfect time to re-asses the project and how it runs.

Since its conception last year, the project has grown well beyond our initial plans / hopes, and now there are over 400 people involved with well over 250 pieces in various stages of construction.

These staggering statistics make it nigh on impossible to keep in touch with every member and keep things on track for all the pieces in production, and many people feeling concerned that their piece has fallen off the radar.

The Megatron Origin-based anniversary project has proven to be very successful, with the creative teams being set in place before work begins on a piece and all follow-up being performed each member of the creative team. This has kept things well on track for each piece. Also, we’ve found that specifying a specific theme/setting has really forced everyone to lift their game so to speak and has produced some simply amazing pieces of work.

Further to the issue, with 6 pieces being released per week (to combat the large backlog), we’re not pleased with the small amount of “air time” that each piece receives, as some do tend to get overlooked.

So what does all that mean?

Well, as of June 2008, we will no longer be accepting any scripts from anyone for regular mosaics and there will no longer be a “script pool” for artists to pick from. All Mosaics currently in production will still continue to be a part of the project and will be released as usual, though our plans are to cut down to releasing one piece per week, on Thursdays.

For any writer / artist / colourist wishing to work on a regular Mosaic, they will be required to organize the full creative team before work can begin. Scripts will need to be submitted to the Transformers Mosaic team for approval. The best way to gather up a creative team would be to send a call out on the IDW forums in the “Transformers Mosaic: Discussion” thread, or any of the other sites where Mosaics are posted.

Once we have been approached by a committed creative team, we will supply them with a (currently in progress) Transformers Mosaic Style Guide. This will be a .ZIP file that will contain a standardized TFM logo, layout templates/guides and lettering fonts.

The Anniversary pieces, which were originally intended to be posted all at once, will now be released 10 at a time, every Monday for 4 weeks, stating 7th of June.

For the whole month of July, Transformers Mosaic will be on holiday, so no Mosaics of any sort will be posted during this time and emails / queries will likely not be handled promptly.

After July, regular Mosaics will continue to be posted one every Thursday and to fill the gap on Mondays left by the Anniversary project, we will be running a similar project, but this one is to be set during the new Transformers Animated cartoon. The one downside we found from the anniversary project was that the theme was too “open” and resulted in more pieces than we had planned for, so we’re limiting the number of characters / pieces to be included in the project.

The following characters are to be included in the project;

DECEPTICONS:
1. Megatron
2. Lugnut
3. Blitzwing [claimed]
4. Starscream [claimed]
5. BlackArachnia
6. Lockdown (yeah, technically he’s not a Con, but…

AUTOBOTS:
1. Optimus Prime
2. Prowl
3. Bulkhead
4. Ratchet
5. Ultra Magnus
6. Sentinel Prime
7. Jazz
8. Bumblebee

DINOBOTS:
1. Grimlock

HUMANS:
1. Sari Sumdac
2. Isaac Sumdac

The same rules will apply for this project as the Anniversary one, though each person may only be involved in one (1) piece, and each piece may only focus on one (1) character from the above list, though multiple characters may appear in one piece. It will be first come, first choice with character assignments. You cannot claim a character until your creative team is assembled and committed.

When you have a creative team lined up, email us at transformers.mosaic@gmail.com. We will base character dibs on receipt time of emails sent to this address ONLY. We will update the above list for availability as often as possible until all slots are taken. If you miss your first choice, re-submit a message for your next choice and so on.

The Transformers Mosaic team will reserve the right to edit / reject scripts at their discretion.

All scripts, listing FULL creative team must be submitted to Transformers.mosaic@gmail.com by 30th of June, 2007.

Concerned you might miss out on getting involved in this project? Well, we’re planning on making these projects and ongoing process, so there’s always next time. Also keep in mind that you can still submit regular mosaics if your creative team would still like to work on a TFA piece.

We understand that these new processes may seem unfair to some people, but the project is just getting too sprawled out to manage, and we feel this is the best way to keep things moving smoothly.

We look forward to the next phase of Transformers Mosaic! Huge round of applause to everyone who made it the first year so amazing!

Cheers everyone!
-Josh and Shaun