Blast from the Past #140: Turtle design for 2K3 show

Here are some more artifacts from the early days of planning for the 4Kids TMNT tv show. They sent me several sketches to try to work out the basic look of the Turtles as they would appear in the show, trying to keep all the essential element while giving the Turtles a look which would be unique and separate from the way they looked in the original show. What you see here are, from top to bottom, a rough pencil sketch, a tight pencil sketch, that same pencil sketch with a proposed color scheme, and finally my tweaks of that colored sketch.









I can't find the old email referenced in the note on that sketch, but I think I can recall what the numbers are in reference to, as follows:

1.) Remove "peaks" from top plastron segments; make them straight across top.

2 and 3.) Make "connective" areas between plastron and carapace more obvious, and color them differently than either the carapace or the Turtles skin color.

7.) Make belt, wristbands, elbow and knee pads brown, i.e. like leather. (The old show extended the bandanna colors to these pieces, and while it worked fine then, I thought it was a little too silly for the attitude we were going for with the new show. -- PL)