My most memorable moments in Transformer conventions moments PART 3: When you say Bud(iansky) you've said it all

Being four years old going into the eighties and being fourteen when they ended was like getting hit by a ten year long freight train of heavy metal and robots. At the end I was left wondering what the heck just happened. As a kid I knew what crazy cartoons and movies I liked and I ate it all up without paying much attention to where it came from. Part of this was because I really didn't care who was making up all this crazy stuff about robots and Darth Vaders and part of it was because at four years old I was hardly a sentient being. But I hit a point in my post-childhood life where I wanted to know just who exactly was responsible for all the craziness and how it all came about. These were the mysteries of the universe for which I wanted answers when I was a teenager. I was never really concerned about the meaning of life or man's purpose on earth, I just wanted to know who made Optimus Prime and R2-D2.

Thanks to the opening credits of Star Wars that boldly state it's by Lucasfilm and was filmed in LucasVision with LucasSound by LucasCorp at LucasRanch I was able to figure that one out. But Transformers was a bit trickier and it's only been over the past five years or so that the answers have started coming out. One of the people most closely involved with the creation of the Transformers was comic book writer Bob Budiansky. I never realized how big a role he played in the creation of the line until the last five years or so when the online fandom started asking these sorts of questions. It turned out that Bob Budiansky was arguably the George Lucas of Transformers. What is even more amazing was that Transformers was just one of his many projects. He worked on more..much more!

Back in 2006 I went to an unofficial Transformers convention where Mr. Budiansky was a guest and hot damn he told the story of the creation of Transformers as if it were yesterday. I stood slack jawed as he recounted the most minute details of the creation of the Transformers. If the eighties hit me like a freight train, Bob Budiansky was the guy driving it.




I don't normally record video and audio of just anybody talking about anything, but that day I recorded his entire 30 minute panel and even took video of him telling his story. Since I was dumb about computers I didn't ever upload the audio to the internety but I did write down pretty much every word he said. I look back now and I'm amazed at how much time and energy I spent doing that, especially since I just put it out on Usenet for free and I wasn't getting paid to write that transcription by anyone. It was pure blind fan insanity. I was able to do this because those were the days when I was suffering from full blown RoboPlasti-bergers, also I was unemployed.

Now that I am less dumb about computers I have figured out how to put the audio portion of this panel right here on the internet!


Or download it directly

So if you're into that sort of stuff, check it out. It was a good time and sitting up there in the front row as Mr. Budiansky told his story ranks as one of my favorite moments in Transformer convention moments. Of course there is still a chance I am dumb about computers and the link won't work, making this post a huge shameful embarrassment and effectively making me the Star Wars kid of Transformers.