"Ten Seconds Later"

A couple of months ago, Kevin Eastman had a cool idea for an upcoming cover for one of the IDW TMNT comic books -- he "reimagined" the cover of the very first Mirage Studios TMNT comic book, with a slightly different scene. This new version depicted the Turtles in different poses -- as Kevin described it, "ten seconds later", after they'd briefly paused on that rooftop on the first cover, and then leapt into battle.

He asked me if I would ink it, and I took him up on it. The process was much like the last few things we've worked on together -- he scanned his pencil drawing and sent me the file, which you see here...

I downloaded that file and printed it out on an 11 by 17 sheet of white card stock, using the color printer at Mirage to render it in as close a hue to "non-reproducing Photo-Blue" as I could approximate.

I inked this version, using a couple of different fine-point brush pens, and I tried to get close to the way Kevin inked the drawing on that first Mirage TMNT comic book. It required a LOT of little hatch marks, and took quite a while, but I liked the way it came out. Here's the scan I made of the inked drawing, showing some of the blue lines…

… and here it is cleaned up and turned into a purely black and white bitmap version.

The finished, printed cover featured nice colors by Ronda Pattison, with a palette similar to that of the original cover, and here's what it looked like. -- PL

Blast from the Past #367: pencil drawing for cover of Archie Comics' "TMNT Adventures" #41

This is interesting to me for the idea more than for the drawing. Where did I get the idea to have those two characters reflected in Leonardo's sword blades?

At this point in time, I can't recall. But it worked pretty well, even if logically and optically unrealistic. -- PL

Blast from the Past #355: Pencil drawing for Archie TMNT Adventures #35 cover

This may get confusing, but I think that I will continue to number both TMNT-related "BftP" material and non-TMNT-related "BftP" material in the same sequence. Since I split my original blog, "palbog", into two entities -- one devoted to TMNT stuff and the other to everything else that I want to show and tell -- it has been a little hard to keep track of what goes where. But I think with practice it will work out just fine.

One of the odd things which seems to have happened is that I have lost the ability to search this blog, which I have used in the past to avoid as much as possible the embarrassing happenstance of posting the same thing twice (something I have done several times in the past). I'm not sure why that search function is not working -- it may be some arcane cyber-artifact of the blog transfer process -- but I did discover that I can search from the "Edit" page. It's a little clunkier, but seems to work.

In any event, I did do a search to see if I had posted this piece before, and it appears I had not. I suppose I could be wrong... I hope not. Please feel free to let me know if I messed up!

This is my pencil drawing for the cover of issue #35 of the Archie Comics "TMNT Adventures" comic book. I am pretty sure that Ryan Brown inked this one, as he did many of my Archie TMNT covers. -- PL

Blast from the Past #285: Pencils for cover of TMNT Volume 2 #7

This is my pencil art for the cover of issue #7 of the Mirage color TMNT comic book series, also known as "Volume 2". I drew this based on a panel that Jim Lawson had drawn for the interior art.



I think Kevin Eastman inked this and I colored it in Photoshop for the printed cover. -- PL

Blast from the Past #284: Pencils for Archie "TMNT Adventures" #34

Here are my pencils for the cover of one of the Archie "TMNT Adventures" comics -- I believe it was #34.



I'm pretty sure Ryan Brown inked this one. -- PL

Blast from the Past #277: "Amazing Heroes" cover in black and white

As I recall, this one was a lot of fun to draw. I did this in 1986 for the cover to an issue of "Amazing Heroes", a now-defunct magazine about comics from Fantagraphics. I believe there was an interview with me and Kevin in that issue.



This is the black and white version -- for the finished cover, I colored the other companies' characters, but rendered the Turtles in shades of grey using my airbrush. -- PL

Blast from the Past #245: Pencils for cover of "TMNT Adventures" #37

I remember that doing this cover was extra fun for me because at the time I was into watching wrestling (WWF and WCW) on TV while I worked. -- PL

Blast from the Past #244: Pencils for cover of "TMNT Adventures" #40

Of the covers that I penciled for the Archie Comics-published "TMNT Adventures" book, this is one of my favorites.



The layout was inspired by my memory of the great Jim Steranko "Incredible Hulk" cover from "HULK King-Size Special #1" in 1968. -- PL

Blast from the Past #242: Cover pencils from "Archie TMNT Adventures" #32

This is the cover to issue #32 of the "TMNT Adventures" comic published by Archie Comics. I drew it in 1991.



When I was getting this image ready to post, I was thinking that the very clean pencils probably meant that I had "cyberinked" it for publication. But when I searched online to make sure that I had the correct issue number, I discovered that Dan Berger was also credited for the cover art. I'm not sure if this means he inked it, or colored it, or added stuff to it (I think I saw a tattoo or two on the sumo wrestler Tattoo in the printed cover that I didn't have in the pencils). Maybe Dan will see this post and provide some clarity. -- PL

Blast from the Past #231: Cover of second Palladium Books TMNT roleplaying game book

This is the black and white drawing Kevin Eastman did as the basis for a finished color piece that was used on the cover of the second TMNT role-playing game book published by Palladium Books back in the 1980's. I believe the title was "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures".



I think this is one of Kevin's best cover layout designs, and the color version was very cool. But I always found the Foot ninja in the skirt (in the foreground on the left side) kind of odd. -- PL

Blast from the Past #223: Pencils for Archie TMNT Adventures Special, Fall 1992

Here's another of my Archie "TMNT Adventures" covers in pencil form, from 1992. I've always liked this one, partly for the unusual layout. I think Ryan Brown inked this cover.



I'm trying to remember if this layout was my idea or Murph's. It's been so long I don't really know. Maybe Murph does. -- PL

Blast from the Past #221: Archie TMNT Adventures #5 cover

Here's another Eastman/Laird collaboration from the Archie "TMNT Adventures" days. This is the cover for issue #5, which Kevin penciled...



... and I inked.



Looking at this again, I see something which has always irked me -- when a penciler doesn't take the time to fill in large black areas with pencil, instead just putting an "x" in the areas which need to be filled with solid black. It's probably an efficient way to save time, especially when you are inking your own work, but I've always thought it looks lame and unfinished. When I am inking somebody else's pencils, I like to see a completely penciled page. -- PL

Blast from the Past #220: "How to be a Ninja" (?) cover pencils

I can't exactly remember the title of the publication for which this cover was done, but as I recall it was one of the things that Solson published during the eighties under license from Mirage.



Kevin Eastman penciled this cover, and I think I inked it -- but I could be wrong. -- PL

Blast from the Past #217: Thumbnails for Archie TMNT covers

Over the years, I have tried -- generally successfully -- to save a copy of everything I've drawn. Sometimes they are just tiny scraps of paper with tiny, scribbly drawings on them, drawings that most people would probably just chuck in the wastebasket (and rightfully so). But every so often I run across something that reminds me of the process that one goes through in creating a drawing for, say, a comic book cover.



Case in point -- I saved this little piece of paper with three of my small and VERY rough "thumbnails" for three covers for the Archie "TMNT Adventures" book -- from left to right, #'s 42, 44 and 43. (In fact, I think these drawings may literally be about the size of my thumbnail!)



I thought it would be fun to show those thumbnails and then the finished pencil drawings that they eventually evolved into. -- PL

Blast from the Past #212: Archie TMNT Adventures #3 cover pencils and inks

Here's another Kevin Eastman-penciled cover to the Archie "TMNT Adventures" series that I inked. First, Kevin's pencils...



... followed by my inks.



I always find it interesting to note what gets changed during the inking stages. -- PL

Blast from the Past #211: Archie TMNT Adventures #1 cover

Here's another penciled cover for the old Archie "TMNT Adventures" book, this one for the first issue. The pencils are by Kevin Eastman.



And here are the final inks, by yours truly. -- PL

Blast from the Past #210: Archie TMNT Adventures #33 cover

This is one of a series of covers I penciled for the Archie "TMNT Adventures" comic. I remember having a bunch of fun doing these drawings. Here's my pencils...



... and here's the finished version, inked by Ryan Brown with his brush of renown. -- PL

Blast from the Past #201: cover for TMNT color series #6

I have the feeling that I've posted this before, though a quick search of this blog indicates otherwise. If I'm wrong, I apologize.

Anyway, this is one of the covers -- done for the old Mirage color TMNT comic series -- that I penciled and Kevin Eastman inked. This is the inked version. -- PL

TMNT #31 cover by Michael Dooney

I got the word today from Michael Dooney that he had finished the cover painting for the next issue of TMNT Volume 4 -- #31 -- and he'd left it on one of the computers at Mirage. So this afternoon, while I was at the office waiting for Eric Talbot to get there so he and Jim Lawson and I could go for a short (but sweet) motorcycle ride, I copied it onto my trusty memory stick and brought it home.

And here it is!



Now that Mike has worked his magic, I think the only thing left to do is put together the letters pages. So if you had been thinking of writing a letter of comment, now would be a good time to finish it up and send it in. -- PL

Blast from the Past #190: Pencil art for cover of TMNT Volume 2 #9

This is Kevin Eastman's pencil art for the cover of issue #9 of the TMNT color series published by Mirage. I'm pretty sure I inked this, but I can't remember offhand who colored it. -- PL



P.S. -- Looking at the printed cover on the ninjaturtles.com website, it kind of looks like my Photoshop coloring, but I'm not completely sure.