The final one:
click above for larger view
Well, now that I'm done posting these, I can bore you all with some rambling on, as I promised previously. Raphael is probably my favorite of the turtles these days, on account of him being the abrasive smart-ass of the group. When I was a kid, I liked Donatello best, because I always liked characters who were inventors (like Wheeljack in Transformers or Panthro in Thundercats). Donatello is still a real close second for me.
Working on these turtle pieces was a lot of fun. It was quite a different experience for me--drawing clean, simple pen sketches in one shot is a far cry from my usual M.O. (which is either super-sketchy or super anal-retentive). Also, including an environment to emphasize each turtle's personality and actually thinking about composition was quite a change of pace for me. Leonardo always struck me as a noble defender-type character, with a somewhat static personality, so I did my best to make him look stoic and watchful, but not too dynamic. Michelangelo is a total spazz, so having him jumping out of a building with frenetic energy (possibly into a battle, or possibly for kicks) seemed to make sense. Donatello, being the most pensive of the turtles, is the only who doesn't have his weapon drawn, and instead is daydreaming on a fire escape. Raphael is, of course, looking disgruntled, whether because living in a sewer stinks (literally) or because he's about to kick somebody's ass. Incidentally, Raphael was the first of the series that I drew (I posted him last because I also thought it was the strongest of the four), and was inspired by my brief time having an apartment that smelled like garbage and wanting to kick someone's ass because of it.
Lastly, you might note that each turtle was colored a different shade of green--this is something that was done with the original action figures in the 90's, and was done again with the relaunch of the cartoon and toyline in recent years. I've always been a little bit baffled by which hues of green they matched with which bandana color--the combinations always seemed to clash. I did my best here to make the color combinations complimentary. Oh, and the titles for these posts paraphrase the themesong from the 90's cartoon, in case you didn't know.
I might try some more pieces like these--they're very relaxing to do. Thoughts? (By the way, I do plan on responding to comments again, I've just been busy getting ready for Comic-Con... O_O )
The others in the series:
