Blast from the past #351: Plot idea for crossover with "Bade Biker" and "Gizmo"

This is kind of an oddball one.

Looking through an old sketchbook, I came across this page. It's not dated, but from the contents, it had to be written before I plotted issue number seven of the original "Tales of the TMNT" book, because I clearly reused some elements of the plot for THIS proposed crossover.



I am not sure what inspired me to come up with this idea, but I have to say, looking at it now, that it would probably have been a lot of fun to work with Mike "Gizmo" Dooney and Jim "Bade Biker" Lawson on this.

And zombie dinosaurs could have been neat. -- PL

Blast from the Past #350: Sketches for "Ninja T's" softball team

Back in the 1990's -- I think -- Mirage sort of sponsored a local softball team called "The Ninja-T's", mainly because a couple of old friends of mine were on that team. I can't remember right now what the actual terms of the deal were -- we may have just let them use the image of the Turtles on their t-shirts and such.

Anyway, I did a few sketches for possible art to be used on those shirts, and I found these in a sketchbook last week.

Here's an almost-finished drawing of one of the Turtles bearing a baseball bat (maybe he nabbed it from Casey Jones' "bag of tricks").

I seem to recall that this was NOT the finished image that ended up on the shirts, and that I actually did another which was a more action-oriented pose of a Turtle wildly swinging a baseball bat. But I'm not sure. Maybe I'll run across that someday. -- PL

Blast from the Past #347: "Ultimate Drako" designs

(Pursuant to mikeandraph87's comment in my "Blast from the Past #346" post from a few days back, I am posting the following.) 

When the storyline in the 4Kids' TMNT series had the two villains, Drako and the Ultimate Ninja, being accidentally combined through the power of a mystical vortex (or something -- can't remember all the details), I gave some thought to what this new character/creature should look like, and came up with these sketches. (For some reason, the file on my hard drive was slightly corrupted and I had to crop the bottom of it, which took off part of the "Ultimate Drako"'s feet.)


I thought it would be unusual and creepy to have Drako's and the Ultimate Ninja's heads basically switch position in this bizarre amalgam of both characters. And I liked the bit where the new set of arms would have these big bat-wing type hands which could cover up Drako's head and then open up to reveal it. I don't recall if that feature was ever used in the show, and I don't think this figure ever made it into Playmates' toy line.

And here is the color animation model art that 4Kids created based on my sketches. -- PL

For Sale: 1986 "Hampshire Life" with TMNT cover story

Well, not just yet -- I still have to ask Dan if he can put these up on eBay and see what kind of response we get.

I found these today while looking for some stuff in my old studio, and doing a little cleaning and stacking of recyclable paper. There was a small pile of these -- about ten of them -- that I'd forgotten I'd saved. (I think these are the only complete copies of "Hampshire Life" that I ever kept -- usually I would just clip whatever art I'd had in them.)

It's kind of a neat bit of TMNT history -- a three-page story with interview quotes from both me and Kevin Eastman, plus photos and artwork. And they used Kevin's full-color cover art from the first printing of TMNT Volume One number 7 on the cover. There's also a nice editorial introduction by my "Hampshire Life" editor and friend Nancy Frazier, accompanied by a few examples of the art I did for the paper.

I took these photos tonight really quickly, so please excuse the sketchy quality. Here's the cover...

... the editorial...

... and the story. -- PL