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

Mirage Universe cover inks

Here is the inked version of the "Mirage Universe" cover pencil drawing that I posted a little while ago.



We're still planning to do it as a "flip cover" book, and I had drawn the pencil piece in exactly that orientation, but I cut the artwork in two in order to make it more convenient to ink. Also, it's easier to see all of the artwork when presented this way. -- PL

Boston ComicCon, November 2, 2008

Yesterday I attended -- along with Mike Dooney, Jim Lawson, Dan Berger, and Steve Lavigne -- the Boston ComicCon held at the Back Bay Events Center. (Eric Talbot and Steve Murphy had planned to come, but unfortunately couldn't make it.) Steve Lavigne came down from Maine, along with his whole family, and met us at the show. It was fun -- a mellow, old-school kind of comic convention. We were pretty busy the whole time, and met a lot of nice people.



This photo of Mike, Jim and Dan -- posing by the poster for which Jim drew the art -- is one I snapped just as we arrived at the Expo Center.



Here we are at our table, seen from the perspective of my seat -- Steve was sitting next to me so that we could more easily collaborate on our full-color TMNT head sketches. Curiously, we didn't actually do any!



One of the nice fans we met was this young woman, Kellyanne Lynch, who showed up in a nifty Turtle costume which she said a friend had helped her sew together. I wish I had gotten a photo of the back shell they had made -- it looked great. The whole costume looked very comfortable -- just the kind of thing to wear all show long.



By far the coolest thing we saw at the show -- in fact, possibly the coolest thing we'd seen in a long time at ANY show -- were Jesus Colon's hand-decorated sneakers. (That's Jesus in the above photo, holding the sneakers.) He told us he had done all the drawing on these shoes in a marathon all-nighter the previous day, basing all of it on the first two issues of the comic. Here are a few close-up views of the shoes.









Cleverly conceived, creatively executed -- well done, Jesus! -- PL

Blast from the Past #111: Donatello with computer

Here's one of many "pinup"-type drawings I did years ago, this one from 1985. It's interesting to look at these early pinups, when I was still drawing the Turtles as they appeared in the first few issues of the comic book.



There are a few interesting details about this one which are worth pointing out. First, this is one of only a few drawings of a Turtle that I've ever done which show him without the signature mask, belt, wristbands, knee pads and elbow pads. (I think it was because of the idea behind this drawing -- Don's at home, working on his computer, "at ease" if you will. It's actually something I wish we had been more cognizant of while doing the comics, the movies and the tv shows -- that the Turtles, realistically, would not ALWAYS wear their gear. Sometimes it gets kind of ridiculous -- when you see them sleeping in it, for example!)

It's funny to look at the computer Don's using -- obviously state-of-the-art at the time, but looking pretty dated now, with its bulky CRT monitor and dual five inch floppy disk drives.

Also, this drawing somewhat obliquely references something that I had given some thought to but never really did anything about, preferring to just let it slide... and that is the fact that, given the size and shape of the Turtles' fingers, it would be very difficult for any of them to type on a standard computer keyboard! I remember that this is why I drew this one with Don holding that pencil -- I was thinking that he could use that to press the keys with so his big green fingers wouldn't mess things up.

I even, at one point, did a few little sketches for "typing caps" -- little plastic doodads which could be slipped over a Turtle's fingertips. These caps would have small, normal finger-sized projections which would allow for more easy typing.

But I don't think anyone ever complained about it, so I let it go. It still does bug me, though... but just a little bit. -- PL

Blast from the Past #110: Unused TMNT color logo

This color version of the original logo for the first TMNT comics may have been created for use as an iron-on, but I don't recall if we ever made any.



I also don't recall which one of us did the colors on this one, though I suspect it was Kevin. As for the original logo design, I think Kevin came up with the basic look and I did the finished letters. (But I could be wrong... hey, it's been almost twenty-five years!) -- PL