TFW2005's Dinobot Nuva has posted a scan from an article in the current issue of Nick Magazine that has comments from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen lead animator Shawn Kelly were he talks about eyes and the complexity of Devastator and merging seven vehicles. This is, to my knowledge, the first time someone directly associated with the movie has confirmed that seven vehicles combine to form Devastator. Previous mentions were second hand information in articles, a toy, and novelizations.Devastator
Says Shawn, "Devastator is easily the most complicated character we've ever done because of his size, which is absolutely gigantic. Just trying to figure out how he might form into this giant thing and then walk around was a huge challenge." Animating Devastator required so much computing power that one artist's computer overheated and its insides melted!Emotion via the Eyes:"We tried to make a scary transformation for [Devastator] where things are slamming together and getting pulled around. All seven vehicles are shoving themselves together and clicking into place as he grows into this giant, scary dude."
An important part of making the robots look real is their eyes. According to Shawn, "We had to pay a lot of attention to the robots' eyes because a lot of them don't have much more to their face. As long as we can bring the eyes to life, it works pretty well." To do this, animators spent time studying real eyes to see how they move and blink. They also filmed each other and studied the eyes of different actors as they recorded their lines.
