The 40-plus-year history of Transformers involves more than just the robots themselves. There’s a whole history to the fandom, as well. From alt.toys.transformers, to organizing early BotCons, to the modern massive complex of YouTube reviewers, certain important things have left an outsized impact on fandom culture. Randall NG and DR. SMOOV’s collaborations are one such thing, especially when it comes to fandom in-jokes, though, as a word of warning, the brand of humor in them runs rude and crude. There’s a good chance you’ve seen the good Doctor’s Rude Awakening of Optimus Prime, or perhaps one of his many other re-dubs and edits. And teaming up with animator Randall NG resulted in more elaborate spoofs like the Energon-O’s commercials. The pair have even done official work here and there, netting them Transformers Wiki pages.
But that was then, and this is now.
Their most recent project is more serious-minded, a longform CGI movie entitled Transformers: Dawn of War, retelling the past and present of the Transformers conflict, and featuring official voice and musical talent, among other things. But before we live in the now, let’s go back to the past, and figure out how it all got started.
Let’s talk about your history with Transformers. Where did you start with the franchise?
Randall: I started from the first day it aired. I also collected and own the original 4-part Marvel Comics series.
The true original text.
DR. SMOOV: When I was a kid, I had seen some commercials for GoBots toys, and a kid would bring a GoBot into school every once and a while and everybody would be so excited and dying to get a chance to play with it. Shortly after, I remember seeing these early animation ads for the Transformers comic book on TV, and wanting to get that comic book, but never could.
DR. SMOOV: I could tell it was some kind of thing like GoBots. Then, one Saturday morning the cartoon came on TV and it was the very first episode of the mini-series! It appealed to me right away and I remember being in awe of Soundwave’s vocoded voice. I begged my parents for a Transformers toy, and for my birthday that year I was the happiest kid alive when I got Bluestreak!
What do you like best about Transformers? What keeps you coming back to it?
Randall: Robots are cool, but they would be nothing without the characters. The voice actors brought the scripts and stories to life, along with the cartoon. I, as many of you, would read the comics with the cartoon voices. The toys were amazing, too.
Sure, the toys are cool, but it’s their personalities that keep us coming back.
Dr. SMOOV: I think the G1 line was so perfectly developed at the time to establish the personalities of each of these “transforming robots” and the cartoon created the relationship dynamics. It really made these characters relatable to us humans, and exhibited the thrilling stakes in the war between the 2 alien robot factions. The talented writers and extraordinary voice actors really made those characters memorable. What was set up in the original is absolutely why there was interest in Transformers getting a live action movie in 2007, and why the franchise is still relevant 40 years later. So for me, I may not like every new incarnation, but if there is enough good source material elements being utilized I’ll usually enjoy it.
A good use of the source material elements, in this author’s opinion.
How did Dr. Smoov first get into voice acting?
DR. SMOOV: I’ve always had kind of the natural “mimic” gene that some people seem to have, so I always did different voices growing up and would even do the voices from the cartoon when playing with the toys. I did a little bit of acting in student films and public access and stuff in college, and then I worked many years as a freelance video editor for various production companies. Sometimes I would do a “temp VO” for the edit and producers would say “who’s doing that voiceover? That’s great, leave it in!” So I ended up doing a bunch of my first voiceovers that way, and then after I started making overdub mashup videos on YouTube I started getting contacted by all kinds of productions that wanted to hire me to do voice acting and voiceover work.
Pictured: ACTING!!!
How did Randall first get into 3D animation?
Randall: I actually got into 3D animation after college. It was still in the early stages and my school barely had anyone qualified to teach 3D. I was lucky enough to befriend an industry professional and get into it.
We were a long way from Beast Wars by then.
What made Dr. Smoov decide making funny edits of Transformers on YouTube was going to be your thing?
DR. SMOOV: Back in the early 2000’s, there wasn’t really a great way to put your videos up on the internet. You had to either host them yourself with a low file size and very limited bandwith, or maybe submit your video to a site like ebaumsworld.com, and hope they’d choose to add your video.
Dramatic Re-Enactment.
So when YouTube came out in like ’05-’06, my friends were telling me it’s so easy to upload videos there and encouraged me to do so. So I had a decent collection of cartoons on DVD’s and even VHS at the time, and I digitized those into my computer and just started making music videos and mashups with 2 of my favorite cartoons, G.I. Joe and Transformers.
How did Randall’s collaborations with Dr. Smoov first come about? What made you decide, again, to take it to YouTube?
Randall: I had seen DR. SMOOV’s mashups and they had me in stitches! They were so well written and his voices were spot on. It was like watching episodes we weren’t supposed to see. At the time, I didn’t know any of the original voice actors so I asked DR. SMOOV if he would be interested in providing some voices for my existing video. As you can see, we both liked the result, and one video led to another.
Out of all of Dr. Smoov’s Transformers comedy videos, I’d call “The Rude Awakening of Optimus Prime” the one that’s spread the most far and wide within the fandom, so I’d like to ask about its creation. What inspired it, and what went into its creation?
DR. SMOOV: I was a big fan of the Fenslerfilm GI Joe PSA’s. I just thought those were so hilarious and it was the kind of thing that I had ideas about and thought that I would like to try to make some stuff like that someday. Then a couple years later when the MyWay guys did the “I’m the Juggernaut Bitch” overdub video, I was cracking up so much over that and inspiration really hit me at that point to make some of my own videos.
He’s awoken, and it’s about to get rude.
DR. SMOOV: The inspiration for “The Rude Awakening of Optimus Prime” came from the kind of stuff my brother and my friends would joke about when we watched the cartoon as kids. We were so excited and overjoyed to have Optimus Prime come back to life, and with that came a giddiness of thinking about the world he was returning to in Season 3 (post 1986 movie.) We never thought Rodimus Prime was an adequate replacement, and isn’t Prime sad/shocked that all his Autobot closest friends are dead? Who’s he got to work with now? Wheelie? Blurr? And we totally thought it was very strange and funny that he had just renamed Bumblebee on a whim. Hence the creation of the S***piece joke about Kup. This was a scene I was dying to bring to life, so I made it with my friends in mind.
A fan just called him that for the seven thousandth time.
DR. SMOOV: I had no expectations that it would blow up and go viral the way it did. I based it off the scene in the G1 2-part episode “The Return of Optimus Prime.” I had to add Rodimus into the scene (because he wasn’t actually there at that moment in the episode) and I used a lot of footage from “Dark Awakening” where Rodimus does have one on one scenes with Optimus Prime, (although Prime’s a zombie).
Listen, I’m a big Rodimus Prime fan, but “you’ve run this organization right into the ground” still gets me.
DR. SMOOV: But that’s part of what’s fun with a mashup video is that you have to use any found footage you can to build the scene. I write the scripts for the mashups first and then find the footage to match the script. Also, the title is actually a mashup of those 2 episodes, “Dark Awakening” and “The Return of Optimus Prime.” Both are episodes where Optimus Prime came back to life.
I’d call the “Energon-O’s” videos your most well-known collaboration. How did that come to be, and what can you tell me about the creation of that series?
Randall: Energon-os is a funny story. It was literally supposed to be a one off. I sent the script to DR. SMOOV to voice and he wrote an alternate longer version. My version was a quick couple of lines and then the punch line. He wrote an extended commercial version. Both had their humor beats so we made both. You can see Take 1 and Take 2 as what these two versions were. The rest is an ongoing string of ridiculous commercials!
Before he did commercials, he peddled energon as a street vendor.
DR. SMOOV: Randall had the idea about a Transformer doing a cereal commercial and having it go awry, and I thought that was a hilarious concept. We both realized very quickly that we had similar senses of humor and could brainstorm and bounce ideas off each other and punch up each other’s writing very well. So we’d work on these scripts for the cereal commercials and keep sending them back and forth and they’d just keep getting funnier. I loved doing those.
What creation of yours is your favorite, and why?
Randall: Everything that we’ve done has led to my bucket list project of making TF: Dawn of War. After G1 ended, we never got a follow up that I personally wanted. Even the origins that we cover in our movie are directly tied to G1, the episode War Dawn (with some changes while keeping the spirit of the episode intact).
Some changes that occur in Dawn of War.
DR. SMOOV: Our “Dawn of War” movie really is the ultimate collaboration of ours, and my favorite that we’ve done as NGSMOOV Animation. It was a much larger scale project than we had ever done. I voiced some 17 characters in it, had other professional actors involved including 2 original G1 voice actors, I did all the sound design, sound effects, mixing, made some of the music, we worked with some additional composers and have music from artists in the Transformers community, Randall did all of the animation and the modeling of the characters himself which was an amazing feat, Randall got to have a couple of great assistants help him out with some of the environments, Randall wrote the majority of it but I did get to consult and contribute some writing on it. We both knew the story we wanted to tell from the very beginning. It took us 3 years to do it in our free time, going hard for 2 or 3 months at a time and completing small sections until it was finally done. Randall and I are both artists and craftsmen, so to take on a big project like this and put in a ton of hard work and see it through to completion was a huge challenge and a complete joy. I’m extremely happy with the finished product, but the journey of making it was equally as satisfying.
A deleted scene from the film.
Both versions have appeared in the duo’s works, but the original got the original voice.
Cybertronic Spree has a couple tracks in the film, too.
As veterans of a really specific online scene (Transformers comedic fan content), how have things changed since when you first started doing this?
Randall: Wow, “veterans?” I guess what we’ve seen is many different interpretations of the lore since. Some which are inspired by G1 but deviate from it, lots of retconning, and newer fans who are honestly confused about the lore and what is canon.
They’re all canon!
DR. SMOOV: Well, YouTube used to be a lot smaller. There used to be category rankings on the front page of YouTube and whenever I would post a video, I’d rank in the top 10-20-ish for animation or comedy for that week. The number of videos and users has grown every year exponentially, so the YouTube landscape is completely different now. It’s way more saturated (oversaturated!) now but some artists do stand out. I have enjoyed seeing newer artists over the years creating content where I can clearly see my influence in their work, and then hearing from some of them about how I inspired them as they add their own flavor to it and so on. So it’s just really cool to have sort of created a wave and to watch it keep rolling on and on amongst people that love Transformers or Joe or even just love editing and doing mashups or mashup music videos.
How’s it feel to have Transformers Wiki pages?
I think this is the goal of every fan.
Randall: Being on the Transformers Wiki pages was a shock to me, and a nice surprise. For years it was all about fan work and dreaming of working on an official show or movie. I did some official work here and there, but finally was able to work on Transformers Rise of the Beasts.
Got a whole table of contents, and everything.
DR. SMOOV: All I can say is that I’m just totally honored to be recognized by that community. I’m just an artist and a fan that has so much love for Transformers and I’ve tried to do a good job making videos that make people laugh or using whatever talents I have to make content that celebrates the greatness of the TF characters. So to be listed there is truly a privilege.
Can you tell me a bit about Randall’s work on Rise of the Beasts, and how that came about?
Like this, but much cooler.
Randall: My online portfolio is constantly updated along with fan work of Transformers. I had a friend who was a former coworker who told me about the project. I got an interview, shared my extensive knowledge of the franchise, and apparently, they liked what they heard and saw. I’m very proud of the movie and the team I worked with was incredible.
If there’s anyone looking to start out on the creative path the two of you have walked, what advice would you have?
Randall: Be true to your vision but also be realistic with your scope. There are many people who start with an idea, get excited, then burn out when they realize how much work it actually is.
Artist’s rendition.
DR. SMOOV: If you have an idea for a video or content you want to create, best thing to do is just start doing it. Even if you start slowly or don’t think you’re doing well at first. You’ll be doing it. The opposite of doing nothing. You will attract things to you that you never expected. See where that takes you.
Do you have any current or upcoming projects you want to plug? Where can people find you?
Randall: I’m honestly exhausted after TF Dawn of War, but I do have various ideas floating around in my head. Nothing I would be starting anytime soon.
An idea for a break.
DR. SMOOV:
@dr_smoov on instagram
DR. SMOOV on YouTube
ngsmoov on YouTube
If you like Transformers, please check out our movie on YouTube, “NGSMOOV’s Dawn of War.” It was made with great admiration for the original G1 toys and characters, and is based on the original origin story of how Orion Pax became Optimus Prime. We didn’t have a $75 million budget, but we put a lot of heart into it and hope that people that like a good old school Transformers story will enjoy it.
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