The Real Story

The Story

When I was young, I like many Gen-Xers adored Sci-Fi TV shows such as Transformers, GoBots, Robocop, and Star Trek The Next Generation. Loving to draw and styling myself an "artist", I started to draw my own characters and write fan fiction loosely based on The Transformers television show. During my teenage years, I created over 160 different characters and wrote numerous stories about their world inside my head. They were the Zapbots, a variation on The Transformers with subtle inclusions of Star Trek storylines. The drawings, artwork and stories were my distraction and survival--my outlet of growing up in the 80's and 90's.

When I reached college in 1994 the majority of this work was placed quietly on a shelf as my academic studies occupied the majority of my attention and time. The Zapbots were occasionally brought out to show my references to perspective drawing or used as an inside joke amongst my college friends. On occasion, my references would be included in my artwork during my course work, but I had grown disinterested in Transformers by my early twenties. I slowly transitioned into other interests and priorities in life.

Parody Idea

Around 1998 South Park came onto the air. I was an instant fan of the show and the parody concept. I loved the use of colorful paper-collage, cheap animation, peppered with intelligent humor, and liberal views. I bought their T-shirts, saw the movie three times, and up until the 2000 Oscars thoroughly enjoyed the show.

I must also note that I have been a diehard Phil Collins fan. I have every album, every bootleg created, and numerous recordings of him on video. I was and, (to a certain degree) am still a fanatic. At this venture in my life, Phil Collins represented to me the average individual who enjoyed what he did but constantly got made fun of for being who he was. We were kindred spirits. I continuously endured numerous taunts and ridicule from individuals from high school and throughout college and beyond. I found myself defending my musical tastes in a time in my life where I was obsessed with what everyone thought of my nascent talent and I took my music quite serious--almost too serious.

The highlight of this period of my life was when Phil was asked to do the soundtrack for Disney's Tarzan. The movie and its soundtrack was the pinnacle of my redemption for my tastes amongst my friends, co-workers, and the world. My life was built around Phil's persona and I related to him just a little too much--but hey, I was a fan and there are far worse things to be interested in.

That was until Phil Collins won the Oscar for Best Song, beating out Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the South Park Movie. I knew Phil would soon be a target for Trey and Matt's parodying humor. This caused me much turmoil. Now the battle I had endured during my youth not only resurfaced but took on a global audience. No more than four weeks passed before South Park debuted a new episode where they completely bastardized Phil Collins, taking every cheap pot-shot they could to make fun of him.

Compared to today, where I am a bit more relaxed, more confident, and possessive of a "don't give a damn" attitude, this "attack" on a personal hero was like a massive punch to the gut, if not including a swift kick to the balls.

I thoroughly enjoyed South Park, but I adored Phil Collins, and I lost all respect for the show. I promptly took down all my posters, burned my mouse pad, and threw everything but the sticky foam book out.

I was frustrated but felt I had no recourse. I posted to message boards. I faxed Comedy Central, and I did everything I could to get noticed to proclaim that "Phil Collins deserved that award!" I perhaps took Phil's slight too personally; however, by attacking Phil Collins they had attacked me and everything I stood for.

A positive side effect of all my frustration was it allotted me much creativity. In between jobs and having a lot of free time on my hands, I was playing around with FLASH animation.

Then came my moment of pure imagination.

Why not create a parody of Transformers in the same cartoon style as South Park.

Suddenly I had a new idea for my Zapbots. Instead of trying to be serious (of which numerous friends of mine shrugged off that idea as 'being done before') why not make it comical.

It took a week of numerous nights late at the keyboard before I structured a pretty decent Animation featuring my Zapbots going to save Phil Collins. The animations were crude, there was no sound except for music and sound effects, and the plot was as bad as South Park could be. But it was fun, I was creating art and it gave me a chance to sharpen my experience of FLASH, which helped me in numerous jobs going forward.

I posted the animation to newgrounds.com and various Transformers fan boards. The reaction was almost instantaneous. Individuals from around the globe, some as far as New Zealand either loved or hated my little animation. In a very short time, the Zapbots had become somewhat famous on the Internet.

The moment of glory finally came when Phil Collins had a very successful Farewell Tour visiting Columbus, where I got the opportunity to get his attention during the show with my personally designed SouthPark shirt which had him bashing Cartman over the head with his Oscar. There’s a whole story to that night which you can read here.

My fifteen minutes of fame faded but I found rebirth in creating a Transformers Podcast (TFormers.com) and numerous fans of the show remember my Zapbots animation. Since then I have started watching South Park again. I ponder if I had more time, more energy, and maybe some voice actors I could have possibly had the next Homestar Runner. Alas, I let the idea die down again and once again my Zapbots were put into the confines of my closet and my computer drive for a while.

Rebirth

Around 2005 I started to revisit these old drawings. A friend of mine who was a fan of my Podcast inquired about them and I started to pull out all the various sketches I had drawn.

Besides being amazed at the amount of work I created in my youth I was actually surprised at the vastness of my imagination. There was a “Story” here, and it was actually not half bad. While a lot of the ideas were lifted from Transformers the stories were not. It was a whole saga I had created in my head and it was pretty darn good for someone 14-18 years old!

Since I had gained some fans based on my work in the Transformers Podcast field, there might be a way to actually present these ideas now. There is a forum for the stories and concepts fmy younger self had those many moons. I now have the ability to share them with those who would most appreciate them.

So this explains the purpose of this wiki. To provide the most basic information about the stories and ideas I had in my head from my youth. As well as the ability to publish the numerous drawings in numerous sketch books and pieces of paper that rendered many color pencil kits to nubs. I now present to you the world, the story of the Zapbots in their original format (with minor spelling and grammar corrections). This is all the original art, and soon the original stories and maybe this can be somewhat of an alternative view of The Transformers. If per chance Hasbro was run by a 14 year at the time.

Update 2020

Wow! How the years tend to fly by. (In Victor Corali voice) It is now the year 2020, and with a bit more time on my hands due to the CoronaVirus bullshit, I picked up the iPad and started drawing again.

With this I decided to started trying to catalog all the Zapbots again. I got so far with this, so I am going to attempt to at least get the information uploaded to the Wiki for historical purposes.

October 2020 Update

And SUCCESS! I was able to upload all the tech spec data I had for each and every Zapbot. I'm in the process of reviewing all my stories to add further details at we speak.

Update January 2021

So due to the large amount of time that seemed to be stowed upon us with the CoronaVirus I decided to finish rewriting the Zapbot Saga, picking up where I left off in Robot Trek II with Robot Trek III. The goal here is to complete the initial drafts of The Revised Timeline giving them at least a brush up with grammar and of course just finishing what I head in my head.