2023 Year in Review

2023 was an interesting year for the Sunbow Marvel Archive. Thanks to the various contributors, material from a wider variety of shows is now available and also helped in demystifying a series that has previously been considered "lost media."

In terms of general organisation, the website has been streamlined to collect the material for 24 shows on 6 pages.

For Transformers, the march towards series completion continued with full or partial storyboards for another 10 episodes, over 100 audition sheets from voice director Wally Burr's collection, plus various model sheets, backgrounds and the script for The Killing Jar.

The biggest Transformers-related item saw release in August. Three years since it was found by Flint Dille and scanned by Jim Sorenson, the very first script for The Transformers: The Movie is available to the public.

G.I Joe saw its first newly-revealed scripts in over a decade, with Flint Dille's Skeletons In The Closet and Doug Booth's My Favorite Things

An unexpected surprise came in the form of over a dozen My Little Pony storyboard sets, sold from the estate of artist Wendell Washer. Including the first special Rescue At Midnight Castle and a selection of episodes from the main series, spanning from the first episode Ghost Of Paradise Estate to the final one The Prince And The Ponies.

Beyond paper material, a selection of dialogue reels from various Marvel Productions' series came to light. Among them was audio from The Young Astronauts, Marvel's ill-fated series about space exploration that was cancelled in mid-production due to the Challenger shuttle explosion. The reels covered dialogue for the episode Ghost Ship, as well as auditions for the series narrator, featuring a who's who of 1980s voice actors.

 

With 2024 marking the 40th anniversaries of Transformers, Muppet Babies and My Little Pony making their television debuts, who knows what untold stories will be uncovered in the year ahead.

My Little Pony N Friends: Storyboards for 13 episodes, model sheets and more

Thanks to yanchagraffiti, the Sunbow Marvel Archive now hosts a large collection of storyboards and other material from My Little Pony N Friends.  

All of the material was formerly owned and mostly drawn by artist Wendell Washer, who sadly passed away in 2022.  Here is what is available so far:

• 4012 Rescue At Midnight Castle: Sunbow press pack, 2x partial Act II storyboard, full Act III storyboard
• 185 page model sheet pack, broken down into Attitudes, Turnarounds, Mouth Guides and Construction Model sections.
• 01 Ghost Of Paradise Estate, Part 1: full storyboard
• 22 The Return Of Tambelon, Part 4: full storyboard
• 23 Baby, It's Cold Outside, Part 1: storyboard samples
• 29 Would-Be Dragonslayer: partial storyboard
• 38-47 The End Of Flutter Valley: Part 2 song sequence, Part 3 full storyboard, Part 4 full storyboard, Part 9 full storyboard
• 54 Quest Of The Princess Ponies, Part 1: full storyboard
• 58-59 Somnambula: Part 1 full storyboard, Part 2 partial storyboard and sketches
• 61 The Prince And The Ponies: full storyboard

View them all in PDF form at My Little Pony N Friends or in viewing gallery form at the Storyboard viewing gallery index

As a taster, the Witches from the Volcano of Gloom are cooking a Dark and Dirty tune below:

(VIDEO) Transformers dialogue recording audio: The Revenge Of Bruticus

Thanks to the winner of a recent audio reel auction, who has supplied digital files, I can now present the full dialogue recording audio for Transformers episode The Revenge Of Bruticus.

54 minutes in total, the recording is effectively split in half, with one group of actors doing pickup sessions, and then the main ensemble from beginning to end.

For those wanting to follow along with the available written material, links are provided below

Dialogue script
Full Script (final)

Timecodes:

0:00 Bruticus 
3:08 Kickback and Shrapnel 
05:00 Tracks
05:45 Walla (people screaming in terror) 
06:40 Inferno 
07:07 Shrapnel, Kickback and Ramjet (underground parking lot) 
07:53 Walla (refugees), Woman on rooftop (Morgan Lofting) 
09:21 Bruticus (final fight) 
11:01 Insecticon voracious eating 
13:35 Red Alert 
13:57 Ensemble recording (start to finish)
54:13 End

Transformers: storyboards, unused premises, briefing material and more

Added to the Archive this month is a plethora of Transformers material, with storyboards from the following:

• Unproduced pilot miniseries/Season 1 intro sequence 
• More Than Meets The Eye, Part 2
• More Than Meets The Eye, Part 3 
• Transport To Oblivion 
• Roll For It
• The Ultimate Doom, Part 3
• Countdown To Extinction
• Unproduced Season 2 intro sequence
• Unproduced commercial bumper
• Autobot Spike
• The Immobilizer

Additionally, a quartet of story premises, written by storyboard artist Wendell Washer during early Season 2, have also become available.  Along with the early version of the 1985 New Product briefing he was given for reference.

All of these can be viewed at The Transformers, Part 1

Below is an animatic edited by me of the unproduced season 2 intro sequence:

Storyboard animatics

A couple of home-made animatics I have made using recently-revealed Transformers storyboards, combined with episode broadcast audio.  If these pique your interest, then please follow the links to the full storyboard galleries.

Firstly, Attack Of The Autobots.

Full storyboard gallery

And secondly, Sea Change

Full storyboard gallery

Transformers: Deleted dialogue audio vs storyboards: S.O.S Dinobots

In 2016, the Mapes brothers found an assortment of Marvel Productions cassette tapes containing dialogue recorded in the summer of 1984, principally Season 1 of The Transformers.  Deleted dialogue from those tapes is available on the Transformers At The Moon YouTube channel.

At the time of the recordings being found and made available, only one episode had a complete storyboard set available: Heavy Metal War.  Animatics utilising the deleted dialogue from that episode were created and presented by Chris McFeely for TFNation 2017.

Since then, the number of full episode storyboards available online has grown to seven.  Including a second episode for which a dialogue tape is available: S.O.S Dinobots.

To view the scenes in full context, head to: S.O.S Dinobots storyboard viewing gallery

Below is the video containing deleted recordings, along with the relevant storyboard pages and time indexes.

0:22 to 0:46

Scenes 8-15 cut

Brawn scene 13 dialogue moved to scene 18, scene 14 dialogue moved to scenes 17 and 17A

1:00 to 1:22

Scenes 31 -34 and 36-38 cut

1:25 to 1:40

sc. 44 and 47-50 cut, dialogue laid over long Truck In of sc. 45 and continues through sc. 51

1:52 to 2:11

sc. 56 and 57 cut

4:17 to 4:30

sc. 166-170, 174, 177-180 cut.  Sc. 175 and 176 moved between actions on sc. 173

5:20 to 5:35

sc. 240 to 243 cut

5:40 to 6:06

sc. 272 dialogue cut, sc. 273 visual cut, 273 dialogue over 272 visual.

6:14 to 6:23

sc. 304-306 cut, sc. 303 revised

7:19 to end

sc. 338 dialogue cut, sc. 342-351 cut.

Note - sc. 343-351 scripted to be re-used for MP 700-07 War Of The Dinobots, but deleted from that episode as well

Elita One's debut: The Search For Alpha Trion

With the character's imminent return to TV screens in Transformers: Earthspark on November 11th, it's time to take a look at the script where Elita One made her debut: The Search For Alpha Trion.

Written by Beth Bornstein with a view to promoting Female Autobots ahead of Arcee's inclusion in The Transformers The Movie.  This script was among 19 kindly scanned and donated to the Archive this summer, by owner Marco Van Leeuwen.  Telling the story of Elita and her team as they ba.ttle Shockwave's attempts to destroy them.  As well as delving into her relationship with Optimus Prime and, via flashbacks, the pair's younger days under the mentorship of Alpha Trion.

The script can be read in full at The Transformers, Part 1 page

The Flint Dille Collection

(Updated 12/03/22 to include Five Faces Of Darkness outline, scripts and other material)

In late 2020, Sunbow Productions alumni Flint Dille began auctioning off items from his nearly 40 year career in animation, RPG and computer game writing.  Listed below are the items that have been contributed by owners to the Sunbow Marvel Archive.

If there are owners of relevant auctioned items not listed here that wish to contribute.  Please let me know via the following email: simon.letch42@gmail.com

Listed in chronological order.  Click on the links below to be taken to the relevant show page.

Mister T (cartoon, Ruby-Spears)

Mystery Of The Forbidden Monastery full script

Bigfoot And The Muscle Machines

Ron Friedman 15 segment version - first outline, character descriptions, additional story ideas, plot and characters breakdowns by Elise Goyette

Ron Friedman 15 segment version - second outline, additional story premise by Doug Booth

MP 700 The Transformers, Part 1

35 Megatron's Master Plan, Part 2 - Additional Material section storyboard

MP 700 The Transformers, Part 2

Five Faces Of Darkness partial outline (parts 3-5)

86 Five Faces Of Darkness, Part 1 full script, model sheets

87 Five Faces Of Darkness, Part 2 full script

88 Five Faces Of Darkness, Part 3 full script

89 Five Faces Of Darkness, Part 4 full script

90 Five Faces Of Darkness, Part 5 full script, call sheet

MP 5206 Inhumanoids

05 The Evil Eye full storyboard (final revision, missing pages 101-106)

06 Primal Passions full storyboard (final revision, complete)

870108 Visionaries: Knights Of The Magical Light

Show Bible

Unproduced script 01: The Magic Unloosed

Unproduced script 02: The Powers Bestowed

Unproduced script 03: The Dark Hand Of Treachery

Full scripts:

01 The Age Of Magic Begins

02 The Dark Hand Of Treachery

03 Quest For The Dragon's Eye

07 The Overthrow Of Merklynn

10 Trail Of The Three Wizards

11 Honor Among Thieves