Blast from the Past #139: Evil Utrom designs

Back in the preproduction phase for the 2K3 TMNT tv show, when Lloyd Goldfine and I came up with the idea of the Shredder actually being, secretly, an Utrom in an exoskeleton, we knew that at some point we should reveal exactly what that evil little bugger looked like. I thought that he should look significantly different from the standard Utrom, in some way which would make him stand out and look BAD. So I did these two pages of quick conceptual sketches to try to come up with such a look.





And once we had settled on a design, it was necessary to come up with a restraining device for the flashback scenes which showed how the evil Utrom had escaped on Earth. The following image shows the small tweaks I made to the design submitted to us by 4Kids, which was actually almost perfect -- I just wanted to try to make sure that the squishy little imp could find a way to squeeze himself out of it. -- PL

Blast from the Past #138: Garbageman's "Whale Sub" sketches

(Hopefully this is not another repeat posting like that last one!)

I can't recall which episode of the 2K3 show this was done for, but 4Kids had sent me a piece of art for a vehicle that Garbageman was going to use. Unfortunately, I can't find it right now, so you can't see what it looked like, but apparently I wasn't happy with it, and did my own version, as seen here. The first drawing shows the "Whale Sub" with its grasping tentacles retracted, and the second shows those tentacles extended.





And here is the final model art as rendered in color by the artists at 4Kids. -- PL

Blast from the Past #131: Foot Tech Ninja design

Back in 2001, when I was working with Lloyd Goldfine and the 4Kids crew on the first year of the new TMNT tv show, one of the new concepts we came up with was the "Foot Tech Ninja" -- basically, Foot ninja with technological enhancements. (In retrospect, this wasn't a completely new idea, I guess -- you could see it as an offshoot of the original idea that Kevin and I came up with when we did the "City at War" story arc in the Volume 1 comics, with the Foot Clan splintered into several factions, one of which was tech-based.)



In an attempt to settle on a design for the Foot Tech Ninja, I dug out a sketch which had been done during the conceptual process for the Rainbow Studios TMNT CGI project which never materialized. I can't recall who did the sketch, but I always thought it was a nice one, and I tweaked it a bit to show Lloyd what I thought might be a good look for these guys. I think the final result was pretty close to this. -- PL

Blast from the Past #130: design for the "Battle Nexus" arena

Back in 2003, when I was working with Lloyd Goldfine and the 4Kids crew on the first of the "Battle Nexus" episodes, I had some ideas for how I thought the arena in which the fighters would clash could work. Basically, it was a multi-tiered area with each tier being a different shape, and divided into discreet segments. Reflecting the "elimination" aspect of the competitions, each successive tier would have half the number of segments of the tier below it, culminating in the single segment in the top tier wherein the final battle to determine the Battle Nexus champion would take place.



This design wasn't used as is -- I think it was deemed too complicated -- but elements of it ended up in the final look of the arena as it appeared in those episodes. I used one of my favorite 3D programs, Bryce, to rough out the design I had in mind. -- PL

Blast from the Past #52 repost: "Bad Guy" vehicle designs

Here are two more unused designs from the late 1980s.


The "Sewer Scraper" was one of my designs for the second year of the Playmates TMNT toy line, and I was disappointed that it was never made. I thought it was cool, and I would have enjoyed playing with it! I think it would also have been fun to use in the TV show.



The "One-Mutant Assault Helicopter" was intended for use by the Shredder's mutant henchcreatures -- I think that may be Rocksteady in the cockpit. This design was also never made into a toy. -- PL

Blast from the Past #51 repost: Bulldog Mutant

As previously glimpsed in Blast#49 piloting the Exoskeleton, this is the bulldog mutant (who was never given a name, as far as I can recall) which Kevin and I worked up for Playmates when they were looking for ideas for animal mutants to be the Shredder's minions in the first year of the toy line.





I know I penciled the top drawing, and I'm pretty sure I penciled the bottom one too, which Kevin inked. It's too bad this character never made it to the toy shelves -- I think he would have been very cool! -- PL

Blast from the Past #49 repost: Exoskeleton concept for bad guys

In my first year of trying to come up with toy designs for the Playmates TMNT toy line, I drew this sketch for a mechanical exoskeleton, one of several designs for vehicles to be used by villains in the TMNT universe. (I'm not sure why I started to ink it and then stopped.) In this case, it was to be used by one of the Shredder's animal mutants -- the bulldog mutant dude piloting this rig was one of several mutant animal characters we sketched up for Playmates (this guy never made it to toy shelves, though). I have a better drawing or two of him around someplace -- maybe I'll post those sometime.



Anyway, I really hoped Playmates would make this toy -- basically because I wanted to play with it! But as I recall, we were told it was to expensive to produce, and it was shelved. Ironically, several years later Playmates produced an extensive -- and very cool -- line of toys which were almost all exoskeleton vehicles, for a property called EXO-SQUAD. I guess timing IS everything. -- PL

P.S. What's the old saying -- "All things come to he who waits"? Playmates eventually produced some nifty "Turtleized" exoskeleton-type vehicles for the Turtles in 2005 -- the "M.E.C.H. Wrekkers" line. -- PL

Blast from the Past #48 repost: Fugitoid action figure concepts

Back in 1988 or 1989, I did these drawings of the Fugitoid in the hopes that Playmates would do an action figure version of him... which they eventually did, and it was nice, but not quite what I was hoping for. Note below the somewhat desperate hyping ("think of the play value!"), and the comment about vacuum metalizing. (This is the process by which plastic is given a metallic-looking coating... I'm not entirely sure if there is any real metal involved in this process, but the end result is a very cool shiny chrome effect.)



My pathetic pleading for vacuum metalizing of various TMNT figures (especially the Shredder) was kind of a running joke between me and my friend Karl Aaronian, when he was product manager of the original TMNT toyline at Playmates. When Playmates first did the TMNT toys, they had no idea how they would sell and were understandably cautious with expensive processes like vacuum metalizing... but I still bugged them to do the Shredder's armor in this shiny metallic technique, as opposed to the somewhat drab painted armor on the first Shredder figures. Eventually, they did, and it looked cool.

Anyway, my idea here was to enhance the "play value" (toymakers' jargon!) of a Fugitoid action figure by giving it a variety of removable/replaceable multi-function limbs. Cool, huh?



Fast-forwarding more than a decade later, Playmates did another Fugitoid figure to go along with the new Turtle toys based on the 4Kids TV show. This one was much closer in design to the original comic book character. (Note: The text in the image above was written in 2003 in reference to this new Fugitoid figure Playmates was developing, but the artwork was from the late 1980's.) Sadly, it was still not vacuum metalized. I guess you can't have everything. -- PL

Blast from the Past #123: More Splinter sketches

Here are a few more Splinter character sketches, done most likely in the late 1980's or early 1990's. -- PL

Blast from the Past #121: "Rhino Mutant" rough sketch

I found this one in an old sketchbook. I can't say with absolute certainty, but I'm pretty sure this was probably done before the first animated series was produced, quite possibly during our first visit to Fred Wolf's offices.



Kevin and I each did a number of conceptual sketches to try to visually flesh out some of the ideas in the treatment for the new show that we were shown when we went out there. This proto-Rocksteady was likely one of them. -- PL

Blast from the Past #119: "Nano" designs

In the first season of the 4Kids TMNT tv show, we introduced what would become a recurring character -- "Nano", the sentient cloud of nanoscale robots. Jim Lawson helped us out with these cool designs for the three basic stages of Nano's development in his first appearance on the show.

And below are the final show-ready designs, adapted by the artists at 4Kids from Jim's drawings.-- PL

Blast from the Past #118: Design for evil mutant's vehicle -- "Hover Trike"

This is a toy design I proposed to Playmates back in the late 1980's, I believe.



Looking closely at it, it's interesting that I not only used Rocksteady as the pilot but garbed him in some kind of Samurai-type armor. -- PL

Blast from the Past #117: Splinter character sketches

I can't recall exactly why or when I did these sketches of Splinter, but I suspect it was probably either for Playmates or for 4Kids, to be used as "model sheets" (although these drawings are considerably rougher than most of the model sheets I've ever seen). -- PL

Blast from the Past #115: Crab mechanic mutant

This is another drawing I did back in the early days of working with Playmates to come up with ideas for characters to extend the TMNT toy line. It wasn't completely fleshed out, but the idea was that this would be a mutant crab with a "mechanic" theme -- one of his large claws would be replaced with a mechanical one, and he would have tool belts and such. This idea was never used. -- PL

Blast from the Past #40 repost: Raphael's new look

This is the last of the proposed redesigns for the unfilmed fourth live-action TMNT movie. One of our ideas was to give Raphael the ability to “morph” into what we were calling “Raptor Raph”, complete with big gnashy teeth and claws to complement his big gnashy personality.



This was not much of a stretch, obviously. In retrospect, while this new approach was probably appropriate for Raph, it was also uncomfortably close to what we were proposing for Splinter.

Years later, during the Volume 4 run of my TMNT comic, I decided to (temporarily) transform Raph into a beastly-looking thing with some similarities to this iteration (minus the "morphing" powers). However, I think the look that Jim Lawson came up with for what some fans call "GameraRaph" is a lot cooler looking than this. -- PL

Blast from the Past #39 repost: Michelangelo's new costume

This is one more of the proposed redesigns for the unfilmed fourth live-action TMNT movie. Here we gave Mike a more “street” look because his new mutation gave him the ability to project a human appearance onto his turtle features, allowing him to interact freely with humans.



This reminds me a little of an even earlier idea Kevin and I toyed with for the TMNT comics. We had this (admittedly more than a bit goofy) plan to have Donatello make "human disguises" which the Turtles could wear that would allow them to move around undetected in public. These disguises would not have survived really close examination, though... for example, to accommodate the Turtles' three-fingered hands, they would wear special latex gloves which from a distance would look like human five-fingered hands, but actually had the index finger and middle finger fused into one, and the other two fingers also fused together in this way. I think I have a quick sketch of this somewhere, but I haven't seen it in a while. -- PL

Blast from the Past #38 repost: Splinter's new look

Here's another design idea from the unfilmed fourth live-action movie. We wanted to give Splinter a much more active part in the battles that the Turtles fought, and so he was going to have the ability to morph into a big, lithe, muscular “super rat mutant” type of thing.



Okay, it’s lame... I admit it. -- PL

Blast from the Past #37 repost: Leonardo's new costume

Here's another proposed costume redesign for the never-produced fourth live action movie.



The “rising sun” bandana on Leo in this version actually comes from a much earlier costume redesign session, when we were toying around with changing the costumes for the Turtles in the comic books. I kind of dig the “utility belt” Leo has in this drawing. I believe Leo’s new mutation was the ability to morph his skin into a kind of nearly impenetrable chrome-like surface (shades of Ben Boxer from Jack Kirby’s “Kamandi” comics!). -- PL

Blast from the Past #36 repost: Donatello's new costume

This is one of five pieces which were drawn by me and inked by Kevin (in the late 1990's, I think) as possible new takes on the main characters of the TMNT universe, as part of the development process for the never-filmed fourth live-action TMNT movie. We had put our heads together at the request of the movie studio and came up with some tweaks for the guys -- we were calling it “TMNT: The Next Mutation”. (This was before the live-action TV show.) The general idea was that the mutagen was continuing to change the turtles and Splinter, giving them new abilities -- and new problems.



Don was given the least obvious mutation -- growing telekinetic and telepathic abilities, unfortunately counterpointed by diminishing eyesight (hence the vision-enhancing goggles). We also provided him with an updated “techno” version of his bo staff.

In retrospect, I'm glad this never happened. -- PL

Donatello marker sketch

This sketch of Donatello represents something I rarely do, which is to draw a full figure Turtle without first at least roughly penciling in the basic shapes.



I did this one at some comic show in 2000. It's kind of funny to see what cheap paper I was working on -- as you can see from the photo, the yellow of the cover of the sketch pad I was using as a drawing surface shows right through the paper I'm drawing on.

This drawing was done with a Sharpie marker, a great tool but very unforgiving, especially on cheap paper, as Sharpies tend to bleed if not handled with lightness and precision. Drawing like this makes me nervous -- it's far too easy to make a mistake, and then the whole thing is ruined. This one came out okay, I think. -- PL