Ninja Turtles convention print
February 2011
Pencil, sketch pens, Sharpie, Tablet PC, Adobe Photoshop CS3

It's no great secret that I'm a huge fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. A quick look at my gallery, desk, or even my t-shirt drawer bears evidence of that. That said, it's kind of amazing to me that three years into attending comic conventions, I had yet to create a print of the green teens I harbor so much nostalgic and current affection for.
I did two versions of this print, a kid-friendly version, and one for a more mature audience. This is the latter, obviously. Both versions use the same line art, but the kid's version is colored in more cool colors, and is bathed in a purple ambient light, evoking the iconic color scheme of the original cartoon and arcade game's main titles. The turtles themselves are also sporting their multi-colored masks and have no blood stains. For this version, I kept the turtles in the "Mirage-verse" of the original comics, wherein they all wear red bandanas and are much more violent than their animated counterparts.
The overall composition of this piece is a tribute to the cover of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles volume 1, #1, as drawn by Kevin Eastman. I changed a few things, purposely altering Leonardo and Raphael's posture to fix some weight distribution issues that bother on the original cover. I also Michelangelo's pose, although accidentally. I mistook the shadow of his nunchuck in the orginal for Raph's bandana and changed the way he holds one of his arms. That small issue aside, I'm delighted with the way this piece came out, and I'm cautiously optomistic about it's convention reception.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles © Nickelodeon/Viacom
Artwork © WTAW Productions