Silas Zee: IGNITION!!!

IGNITION!!!
My Galaxy Force Tribute

2025.08.29

Transformers Galaxy Force will always hold a special place in my heart. The line came out when I had gotten my first real jobby-job and I did what any other responsible adult would do and started importing the toys from Japan before the Cybertron figures came out stateside. Galaxy Force was also the first fan-subbed anime I actively downloaded and watched week-to-week (big shout-out to TV-Nihon if you're still around!). I absolutely love the show and the toys are some of the best around and I think the whole thing still holds up super well. Galaxy Convoy remains one of my favorite toys of all time and CALL YOU is still an earworm all these years later. When Cybertron came to our shows I eagerly lapped up the domestic exclusive decos and meticulously cherry-picked the pack in product guides to laminate into one giant poster (which I still pour over to this day).

All that said, obviously I wanted to draw my own tribute to Cybertron/Galaxy Force to celebrate 20 years of this awesome line. I've been working on this idea going starting way back in 2022. I knew I wanted to do some sort of collage and included sketches of all the ideas I ran through in the "Pencils" link above. "Full figure over big heads" was the obvious motif and obviously I really like the Ligerjack combined forms as I stubbornly tried to make that work for quite a while. Try as I might, nothing quite stuck for a while until the Galaxy Force compilation manga was announced. Seeing Yoshihiro Iwamoto's amazing art of all the Convoys together inspired me and I opened a new Photoshop canvas and started scribbling my own take on it.

Looking at this all finished tells me that it's proof that there's a higher power looking over us as I don't think I could have pulled this off on my own. I'm super hyped with how this turned out and don't think I could have tackled anything like it even a year ago. It's still "full foreground figure in front of big heads" but I changed it up from my previous pics by moving Optimus Prima to the front and made her the hub of all of the other Convoys/Primes. Once I had the layout set the other figures got fleshed out surprisingly fast, namely Nitro Convoy as I decided to take an "it-ain't-broke" path and re-draw this previous pic I did. Vector Prime also came quite naturally ask I've always had a lady version in the works for a while in almost the exact same pose. Though, due to the amount of detail with her portion, I actually worked on "Vectra Prime" in a separate file and imported her into the assembled piece once she was finished. Flame Convoy was tricky as I went back and forth trying to decide on a pose. Once I thought to incorporate the dragon heads (I always wanted to give them another go as my first pass at them wasn't the best) this profile view seemed like a nice fit.

There's always a point during my art process where I don't like where something is going and I want to quit (usually during the inks because I find that the most tedious), but this project is one of the few cases where I don't think that ever happened. I worked on this for over two weeks solid and the entire time I was super excited with how it was turning out and how far I had come in my own little corner of fan art. Being a tribute to one of my favorite universes of my favoritist thing also didn't hurt. I hope you dig this as much as I do. For all of you who have stuck around with my crazy art journey thus far (and also read all of this gobbledygook) thank you so much! :D

I'll have more details soon, but I'm planning on running this as an 18" x 24" print. The price will probably be $45 shipped within the United States and $55 shipped anywhere else in the world, with some sort of custom inked sketch included. I'll need a minimum run of 5 to do this so please let me know if you would be interested! ^_^