In what may be one of the biggest acts of nerdiness ever, a man in California has actually constructed a life-sized statue of the Transformer Bumblebee in his front yard. To make it even cooler, he based the design on the 80's cartoon and not the movie. In a final act of awesomeness, he used an actual VW Beetle to build the thing.

The funny thing is that the builder showed more respect to the original cartoon in this single act than Michael Bay did with the whole franchise (although I give Bay props for using some of the original cartoon voices in the movies).

Granted, car styles have changed a lot since the 1980's, but the VW Beetle is back in style and changing Bumblebee to Chevy Camaro seems sacrilege. My guess is that Michael Bay simply wanted to buy American.

So which Transformer do you think he should build next?

[via Topless Robot]

Here's some animation news:

Aardman Animation, the studio behind various Wallace and Gromit projects and the new CBS series Creature Comforts, is bringing its Shaun the Sheep series to the Disney Channel starting July 8. The series, aimed towards younger kids, focuses on a barnyard sheep who gets into crazy adventures with his animal pals.

Nahnatchka Kahn, a writer and producer on FOX's recently-renewed series American Dad, has been bumped up to executive producer on the series and will also be developing new projects for the studio.

Kahn previously wrote for such series as Recess, Unfabulous and Malcolm in the Middle.