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Riot Control

Okay, so who’s who?

The little guy sat on the floor at the front is Constable Whitesides; one of Pulsar’s former room-mates, and a relatively close friend and confidant. He’s a little unusual in that he’s a mech – in this class of gravity cycle, femmes outnumber mechs by about two to one, but then he doesn’t seem to mind (more targets for his affection?). He seems to have reinvented himself as the station bike, bless him; everyone’s had a ride, and I’m not just talking about the femmes. I'm trying to work out if he's trying to sleep his way up the chain of command, or is just a trollop. I think it's the latter. Mind you, he's finally coming across a lot more like I originally envisioned him (i.e. a bit of a gossip-hound, but otherwise pretty sweet-natured), before he got hooked on Prophet and turned all crazy-paranoid.

The two big girls (“the meatwagons”, to use the vernacular :P ) on either side are Chief Inspector Celerity and DCI Vector. They’re twin sisters, from an accidental double-fission when they were sparked – the original harmonic was derived from the initial sparking, but then it underwent a spontaneous secondary fission a few orns later. They WERE identical twins, when they were still little hover-cars, but then they accepted a promotion and the upgrade that came with it, and are sliightly different in terms of colouration and stature.
They’ve worked together most of their adult life, and currently share command duties at Quayside station; both hold rank of Chief Inspector, although Vector is a detective, Celerity isn’t. (Yes, Vector is fully aware how unfortunate her name is, but you try ribbing her about it and she'll trounce you, so go fig.)
Celerity is the one on the left, with the “bun”. She’s the more hands-on of the two, quite happy to use her bulk to subdue rioters, and has a sort of down-to-earth pragmatism about life and work. She holds something of a candle for a certain blue Seeker, but is far too shy/stuffy/proud to ever say anything to him about it. She looks like she’s just got back off duty, I think, because she's all scruffy-looking.
Vector, on the far right with the “bunches” (or whatever the heck they are), is a detective and the chief liaison with the forensics/scientific services. She’s the more the thinker of the two; more inclined to think way outside the box and try out unusual ideas to come to the solution to a particular problem. Since moving the Quayside she’s hooked up with Longbeam; no-one really saw it coming, least of all Vector, but the two hit it off from day one and have been ‘an item’ since then.
Their alts would be something like this or this.

Constable Longbeam (who I think is looking to get into investigative work) is the stretched looking femme in the middle – she’s a little taller than most others in her class because of a factory fault, but then she rather likes her unusual stature, because it makes her stand out a bit from the crowd, because gravity cycles aren’t the most uncommon of models and the police fleet look very “samey”. Aside from the longer legs and torso, and the yellow cheek flashes, she and Pulsar could be twins. I'm not sure why she looks so coy, here, because she comes across in my mind as a little abrasive, and quite blunt – probably just not been photographed with her girlfriend before? I don't know. She’s another of Pulsar’s former dorm-mates, although the two femmes never really got on too brilliantly until Pulsar got her promotion, then moved out to look after her sparklings.

Incidentally, the last of the four, who only recently got her name and I haven’t drawn yet, is a Police marksbot called Surefire. I get the feeling she’s an observer – quiet, happy to sit and watch everything and take it all in, and doesn’t very easily jump to conclusions; when she speaks, everything she says has been carefully weighed against the available data. She has yellow cheek flashes like Longbeam, but is pretty standard in terms of size and build.

And of course, last but certainly not least is Superintendent Hardline and his watergun. He's a riot tank/watercannon, ergo he's a bit of a beast, but he’s a gentle beast – subliminally reminds me of one of those really heavy workhorses, like a Suffolk punch. Takes an awful lot to rile him up, but once he loses his rag you better keep out of his way.
Alt mode would be something like this, although because this is Cybertron I figure he’d have gravity lifts/antigravs in place of wheels.

Whee. Lurid colours ftw?


Various types of art pen (Copic, Prismacolor, PITT pen) and ink on heavy drawing paper.