Title: Transformers: The Ark 
Subtitle: A Complete Compendium of Character Designs
ISBN-13: 1-978-160010-080-2
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Authors: Jim Sorenson, Bill Forster
Publication Date: May 2007
Series: Transformers: The Ark
Price: $19.99
Pagecount: 208
Color: No
Breasts: No
Short Impression: An excellent reference for the cartoon versions of G1 
     characters.  Not sold as a "how to draw", but more useful in that role
     than many that claim to be.  However, a major drawback is that it's 
     only the line references, no color.

     We can thank Bob Budiansky's packrat nature for this book.  He saved
every piece of reference art that Hasbro and Sunbow sent over to him while he
was editing Transformers for Marvel.
     This is not sold even remotely as a "how to draw" book, but I'm
including it here because, frankly, it's incredibly useful for anyone who
wishes to draw animation-style G1 characters.  These are the model sheets
provided to Marvel, after all...good enough for paid work, eh?  It has every
G1 character from the U.S. cartoon, including non-toy characters and several
who never got into the cartoon (like Topspin and Twin Twist), with occasional
trivia notes about the characters.  It also has a bonus section at the end
with unused alternate designs (like the original Megatron that made it onto
the famous TF #3 cover with Spider-Man) and a size reference page with
everyone lined up at the same scale.  There's also a full page each of
Autobot and Decepticon symbols as seen from various angles, incredibly useful
in the days before Photoshop, and still helpful for those of us who like to
draw on physical paper.
     There's a good table of contents, arranging everything by season and
faction...unfortunately there's no indication of season in the actual pages,
making it a little less useful.  However, there's also a complete index at
the end that helps make up for this.  Mostly.  It's not always correct.  For
instance, it lists Thundercracker as being on page 37, when it's on page 36. 
     If I have a legitimate beef about this book, it's the lack of color
references.  Sure, as a full color book it would have been at least twice as
expensive, but even text notes would have been helpful.  Still, even just the
line art is very helpful for, say, making heads in kitbashing.  :) Most of
the earlier model sheets include multiple head angles.  And there's always
online resources like tfu.info for color help.
     They hope to create a volume 2, using post-1987 models and any 84-87
models they hadn't found yet.  They might also want to re-edit this volume at
some point, to fix the index and things like "Onslought" or "Octain".
     [Later note: volume 2 ended up being Japanese characters, rather than
U.S. toys that didn't get into any cartoon.  There's a lot of crossover
between the two groups, though, with most of them being at most recolors.
See http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/HTD17 for my review of volume
2.]