TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES VIRTUAL ART SHOW 2023
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have certainly made a comeback in recent years and now their popularity is close to that of the nostalgic heyday of the 90's! With the new movie TMNT: Mutant Mayhem coming out soon, multiple comic book series from IDW in comic shops and numerous toy and collectible lines from Playmates and others hitting store shelves, there is no doubt something for everyone to experience the heroes in a halfshell regardless if you're a new fan or longtime Turtle watcher. To celebrate, I've assembled a bunch of my TMNT art in one place for our mini, virtual art show. So, pick up a pizza and enjoy! Cowabunga!
For each of the Turtles and most of the supporting characters, I decided to create my own version instead of recreating an exact replica of the classic animated series or a particular comic book version.
The world of TMNT has become so timeless that each incarnation brings something new while respecting the concept of the original all the way back to those first comic books from creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in 1984. As I was deciding which characters to draw, I kept thinking of all the ones that I wouldn't have time for. The Technodrome, the turtle van, the turtle blimp, the Rat King, mousers....so many mutants, so little time.
Raphael is cool, but rude.
Michaelangelo is a party dude.
Leonardo leads.
Donatello does machines.
Casey Jones
Lots of fun with this one. Part spooky, part sexy and part...Krang? It works for me.
Channel 6's April O'Neil
I always preferred the classic yellow jumpsuit-wearing version of April. In fact, April may have been my first action figure back in the day.
Oroku Saki is the Shredder.
I've always seen the Playmates version of the foot soldiers as almost zombie like. So, for this design I head-canoned them to be dead ninja soldiers artificially brought back as mindless automatons thanks to Dimension X tech.
Master Splinter
I drew this one to be part classic animated series and part Playmates original Splinter figure.
This was a version of Raph I did a long time ago.
The Turtles as the Universal Monsters!
Raph as the Metaluna Mutant, Donnie as Dracula, Mikey as the Invisible Man and Leo as the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I decided to go with the classic Playmates versions instead of the more recent NECA versions.
Horror-inspired Baxter Stockman!
It's just Krang. I love the animated series version of the brain, especially when he was without his android body.
But the android body was cool, too. Here's a redesigned version of Krang's hulking presence squishing the secrets of the ooze out of one of the turtles!
That's a wrap! I hope you enjoyed the art and had a shell of a good time!
*For the techies out there, all art was created on Microsoft Surface.
