Transformers Coloring Pages

The best part of a Transformer is the moment it is neither car nor robot. These Transformers coloring pages catch that moment, and then follow the Autobots everywhere a giant robot can go: highways, forests, canyons, lakes and city streets.

Optimus Prime, with his truck-cab chest and twin smokestacks, gets the most pages. He towers over a highway overpass at sunset, walks through a pine forest that barely reaches his knees, kneels in an alley to hold out his hand to a child, repairs his own forearm at a workbench, stands in heavy rain, crouches in a garage bay, sits on the edge of a canyon, wades through a lake full of fish, fixes a windmill, stands among skyscrapers under construction, rises from the sea as his lower half becomes a submarine, and shields a bunny, a fox, a squirrel and a bird from a hailstorm.

Bumblebee appears as a chibi on a stack of tires, crouching on a frozen lake with cracks spreading from his knee, and at the front of a line of Autobots marching down a runway. Starscream lands on a desert mesa in a cloud of dust and perches on an offshore platform at dawn. Arcee stands at a mountain lookout with a motorcycle wheel folded on her back, Ratchet, the ambulance, kneels beside a stranded hiker, and Grimlock, the Dinobot T. rex, stands in a valley of lava while a robot stegosaurus drinks from a river. Around them are robots without names: one caught halfway between sports car and robot, a car robot in a scrapyard, a helicopter robot on a helipad, two robots arm wrestling, one leaping between freight cars, one carrying a fire ladder down an avenue, a giant hand lifting a tiny robot out of a puddle, a robot fixing a satellite dish, a cute little robot on a workbench, a race car on a mountain pass, and a squad of chibi Autobots piled onto one skateboard.

Robots in disguise, since 1984

Transformers began in 1984 as a line of toys: small robots that folded into cars, trucks and planes. Most of the first designs came from Japanese toy lines that Hasbro brought to America and gave a story, two factions of living robots from the planet Cybertron. The Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, protect people; the Decepticons, led by Megatron, want Earth's energy for themselves. A cartoon came out the same year, then comics and, from 2007, the live-action films that gave Bumblebee a yellow sports car and Optimus a blue and red truck with flames.

That history explains the shapes on these pages. Every robot is built from the parts of its vehicle: Optimus Prime's chest is the front of his truck with the windows still in it, Bumblebee's door wings stand up behind his shoulders, Starscream's wings stay on his back.

Coloring a robot so it looks like metal

The classic colors are easy: Optimus Prime is red on top and blue on the legs, with gray arms and hands, Bumblebee is yellow with black stripes, Starscream is gray, red and blue, Arcee is pink and white, Ratchet is white with red crosses, and Grimlock is silver-gray with a gold head.

To make any robot look like metal and not like plastic, use three shades of the same color for each armor panel: the lightest in the middle of the panel, a medium tone around it, and the darkest along the edges and in the joints. Leave a thin white line on the top edge of each large panel where the light would catch it. Windows, like the ones on Optimus Prime's chest, look best in a pale blue with a white streak across the corner.

Why robots take longer than cars

Almost every page here is detailed, and that is the nature of the subject: a Transformer is a machine made of panels, joints, vents and windows, and each one is its own shape. They suit a fan of seven or eight and up who likes a page that lasts. The least crowded are the ones with a single vehicle or a single hand in the frame: the race car on the mountain pass, the giant hand lifting a tiny robot, Optimus Prime rising from the sea.

The busiest put a robot in a full setting, a city avenue, a rail bridge, a crowd of watching robots. Lots of detail opens on:

• Robots arm wrestling
• Robot leaping between freight cars
• Robot with a fire ladder on the avenue

Draw your own transformation

The page of the robot halfway out of a sports car is the best one to start from. Ask a child to pick a vehicle they know well, a school bus, a garbage truck, a tractor, and to draw how it would turn into a robot: which part becomes the head, which the arms, where the wheels end up. Color the finished robot in the colors of the real vehicle, and name it. Most children will need a second sheet of paper, and several will want a third.

A robot party

For a birthday, give each guest a different robot to color and let them pick a side: red and blue for the Autobots, purple for the Decepticons. The chibi pages are the easiest for young guests, and the lineup on the runway makes a good banner once each Autobot in it has been colored by a different child.

Printing a garage full of robots

Download any page as a free PDF, laid out on A4 at 300 dpi. A4 prints at 100 %; US Letter wants "fit to page", and the robot comes out about six percent smaller with every antenna intact. Where browsers hide that option is covered in the printing guide. Pick a squad with Add to pack and it prints as one document. The vehicles before they stand up are in the truck coloring pages and car coloring pages, and the animals behind the Dinobots are in the dinosaur coloring pages.