Some things I kept in mind when designing Bumblebee was that he is in several iterations: well-liked... like widely beloved, extremely friendly, empathetic, small, really brave, acts most juvenile compared to other Transformers... one time pee'd on dude. I didn't really consider that last one in the design it was just something I remembered.

The vehicle I chose for Bumblebee's alt mode was meant to vaguely resemble that of a yellow and black generic sports car that shares some features with his Bayverse counterpart's Chevrolet Camaro. I wasn't the best when it came to drawing vehicles, heck even now vehicles are still not my strong suit so I just went with what I came up with. When it came to color well... I referred to more of the most recent iteration of Bumblebee where most sport a yellow and black color like an actual bumblebee. When it came to pattern I had it so that there was a thick black stripe on the top of the car sporting the Autobot Insignia in yellow this specific spot was chosen so it would end up showing on his chest in his robot mode much like how it was on his G1 counterpart. 

When designing his body I gave Bee a relatively smaller rounder body kind of having War For Cybertron's bumblebee in mind here, but also kind of like a Bumblebee which also I felt helped give off a bouncier feeling that parallels his youthful energetic spirit. I designed his forearms to actually look similar to that of an actual Bumblebee's body including the pattern allowing for his weapon of choice an electric baton he'd nicknamed Stinger to act as well... a stinger! It's all connected! I added the doors on the back too a common trend in Bumblebee's most recent iterations are the car door wings hence his name and honestly I really like them so I added them! Our bee's got his wings now! When it came to to the general layout of car parts across his body I was thinking along the lines of his Animated counterpart, which itself is technically inspired from his G1 counterpart, but this design layout has more in common with Animated's layout, where the front end of the car including the wheels and hood would take up his feet and legs had the windshield in front half of the car take up the front of his body and the back half of the car would form the back, the rear lights would actually end up being put on his shoulders connected to the wheels that form the joints for wear his shoulders and arms meet I made his upper arms metallic clamp like to make his upper body seem a bit lighter too. 

When designing his face I actually went with a more simplistic approach to make a stronger impression to humans, thinking along the lines of trying to match pop culture cartoon icons like SpongeBob SquarePants over here, who is also yellow. I gave Bee a full-on mask and I chose a single facial feature to be the highlight of it. I chose one of the most expressive parts of the face, the eyes! I gave him big old round eyes and this aspect of his face was inspired by Baymax and The Iron Giant who similarly are both very friendly and compassionate robots with human companions and can totally kick ass when they need to. I made them more oval than circular just for the sake of resembling an actual bumblebee's eyes when it came to the helmet design I gave bee his classic G1 horns, added a few vents on the side of the mask, for the triangle on his face I actually drew inspiration from a part of the anatomy of an actual Bumblebee face, the part known as the clypeus, which is also in the middle of the face. Though it is not exactly triangular I'd say it vaguely resembles a triangle enough so I made the pattern triangular on Bee.