Donald Allan Figueroa is a
Filipino American comic book artist. He is best known for his work on many different
Transformers designs, for both the defunct
Dreamwave Productions and with
IDW Publishing.
Figueroa has been a longtime fan of Transformers, going so far as to write and illustrate his own comic (Macromasters) and even built working models of his own characters. Soon after Dreamwave acquired the Transformers license to produce comics, Figueroa was tapped by Dreamwave as a penciller. A character in the live action Transformers movie was named after him.
Dreamwave Productions
One of Figueroa's projects was to illustrate Dreamwave's first
Transformers: The War Within miniseries. In the series, Figueroa was tasked to design new alternate modes for the
Generation 1 Transformers, based on the fact that the series is set long before their arrival on Earth. For the sake of realism, Figueroa was asked to design his alternate modes so that they could actually transform. He did this so skillfully that fans clamored for
War Within-based toys, which ultimately happened in the
Transformers: Titanium line of
die-cast toys. Figueroa worked on the designs for all the six-inch transforming figures in the line.
Figueroa was later brought on to pencil the "Worlds Collide" story arc on the Transformers: Armada comic book series, which featured some notable G1 Decepticons. He eventually became fully entrenched in the Generation 1 universe when he was named as the penciller for the ongoing Generation 1 comic. He also contributed heavily to their More Than Meets the Eye 8-issue volume of character profiles.
IDW Publishing
After Dreamwave went out of business, Figueroa was brought into IDW Publishing's Transformers franchise along with
Guido Guidi, where he worked on the company's
Beast Wars: The Gathering,
The Transformers: Stormbringer, a comic adaptation of 1986's
The Transformers: The Movie, the official 2007
Transformers movie prequel and a
Spotlight issue on
Optimus Prime. His later work included
Beast Wars: The Ascending, a Target exclusive
movie prequel comic with
Andrew Wildman as well as many of the profiles for the
Transformers: Beast Wars Sourcebook profile series. Figuerora has recently stopped working on IDW's Transformers comics to pursue other projects, the first of which being a five-part series for IDW titled
Zombies: Hunters.
Over his career, Figueroa has worked on multiple occasions with the prolific Transformers franchise writer Simon Furman.