]Okay, so let me preface this by saying im not a TMNT fan. Well I guess I mean i’m not a fanboy. I never grew up on this property as a child, so I have no particular love for it.

Honestly, I find the premise a little over the top; teenage mutants I can do (clearly), but the turtle aspect is just completely odd to me.


Anyway, because I’m currently working on the new animated tv show on nickelodeon, i’ve grown to have a very particular view of these characters. How i’d like to treat them. Clearly something like this nickelodeon would never go for, so I would never have a venue to realize my rendition with my work on the show, but I decided to just figure them out on my own and draw them anway.
I guess the first thing I wanted to accomplish, is because I find the turtles being ninja aspect so over the top I wanted to make my versions super serious to help counteract it. My version would have little to none of the staples that most fans love about the property. Again, I really don’t see the appeal all the other turtles fans do, so im just going completely left field on this.


LEO

I also wanted to make them more of a cross section look at Asian fighting in general, rather than just ninjas. Clearly I tried to get Leo to be more of a Samurai character; very serious, very methodical, not very fast, but incredibly precise. I also toyed with the idea that he only speaks in japanese, which I might stick with.


DONNIE

Probably the largest jump I make from the original design of the character.
My train of thought on this design sort of went all over the place. My original idea was to go a more sumo route. To showcase another form of asian fighting. I thought the idea of a large sumo wrestler type fighter who has to use a bow staff to extend his reach would be kinda cool. From there I added a bit more of the techy aspect of the character that is currently being used in the new TMNT show. I took it to the point where he is a walking workstation. I really wanted to make the character to seem like a guy who really spends almost all of his time tinkering and creating new tech. This brought me to giving him sort of a heavy leather work outfit. The kind people use at metal workshops and places involving a lot of sparks. Another idea I thought to add in there was the bomb aspect of ninjas. Dropping smoke bombs and the like. I just took Donnie to the extreme where he is strapped with a multitude of bombs. For any occassion.
By the end he became of a tank character. I think the sumo type fighting would be cool to keep, if he ever needed to get up close, but mainly he is a character that because he can’t move that fast, uses his tech and bombs to the fullest extent.


MIKEY

From the get-go, I wanted him to be the legit ninja of the group. He is the stealth, he is the shadows, he is the quiet. He is easily the smallest of the group. Everything about him is built to me nimble. Dark colours were an obvious choice for him.
Because with this line of designs I was attempting to make the characters serious, I didn’t feel a wise cracking, joking goofball would fit with the rest of the group. It was with a stroke of inspiration that I came up with the mask. I didn’t want to just go with a standard ninja face wrap (which felt a little boring to me) and it wasn’t until i thought of using a mask that he really clicked for me. It would allow him to look super intense and maybe something along the lines where the mask helped create a sort of myth about him amongst criminals. But the thing I really liked that I came up with was putting a smile on the mask. It really hit home as an homage to the fun loving mikey and immediately giving him a defining feature that the others wouldn’t have.


RAPH

I’ve had this one locked for a while. Idea-wise. He pretty much is the exact opposite of mikey. Raph is pure blunt force. He isnt fast, he isnt smart, no finesse. Instead, he just walks up to something and hits it until it drops. He doesn’t get out of the way either. He takes the hits. and hits them back. I also wanted him to barely use any weapons. its all his fists