Autobot fanatics rolled out to the Comic Book Hideout on Friday as Downtown Fullerton Artwalk collaborated with the store to host the Transformers: Energon art exhibition.
Displaying everything from big paintings to smaller, detailed pieces, the little alley at the back of the store served as the exhibit for the Transformer-based pieces from 13 talented artists. Most of the artwork shown on the pale blue walls was crafted by previous Cal State Fullerton students.
Many alumni come to the shop often and participate in their events, including the figure drawing class. Mark “Funky” Garcia, event coordinator, curator of the exhibition and one of the participating artists, reached out to the community that he’s built to see if they would like to make pieces revolving around the series since all of them are fans of the franchise.
“We just all have a love for ‘Transformers’ and they were all amazing artists,” Garcia said. “Really want to figure out how to showcase them and that was just a perfect theme to bring them on and to bring some other friends of the store to also showcase.”
While all of them carried the same theme, each one was masterfully different in terms of how the artists crafted their pieces.
Few paintings on display were made from oil paint on either canvases or wood panels. Others were made from acrylic and pen on Bristol paper. There was even a wooden carving of an autobot.
Viane Londoño, a 2024 CSUF alumna and one of the artists at the showcase, is a big fan of the series and would come to the store every month to purchase the comics.
During her schooling, Londoño lost the motivation to make expressive art. But after graduating, “Transformers” helped to spark her connection with art again.
“When I graduated and I got into ‘Transformers,’ it brought me back to just wanting to make art just for the sake of making art,” Londoño said. “It influenced my art in a sense that it brought me back the joy of drawing and painting all those things.”
Pedro Maradiaga, also one of the artists and 2024 CSUF graduate, regularly visits the Comic Book Hideout to pick up “Batman” and “Transformers” comics, but is specifically a huge fan of the latter.
Maradiaga described the franchise’s influence on his art to be complex because there are particular angles and proportions to get right when drawing an autobot or decepticon as opposed to a human figure.
“So for humans, I feel like you can fudge and stylize a lot of how you draw a person. If you have good fundamentals, it’ll show,” Maradiaga said. “For a Transformer, you need every angle, right? You need to get proportion, perspective, get that all correct.”
Besides Garcia, Landoño and Maradiaga, the other artists previewed at the gallery were Nate Baesel, Erik Elizarrez, Brooklyn Hoobler, Yuuki Kurokoshi, Jevin Loop, Emily Mata, Phillip Quick, Bryce Rankins, Kevin Tran and Khuê Tran.
Whether fans of the franchise or not, the exhibition helps visitors engage in a community that might be new to them and open new opportunities for them to explore.
“You don’t have to be into anything super highfalutin or helpful to the world,” Maradiaga said. “Whatever you enjoy that is fun, find a community around it, get involved and then these opportunities will literally come to you.”
All of the detailed artwork will be displayed to the public through March 30.