The Art of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Ciro Nieli

[Damo]

A few take aways:
1. I don't think it was laid out very well. I understand that as an artbook it's intended to showcase ALL the art in the show, right down to little details, but I was genuinely bothered to see some really unimportant things get as much space (or more) than model sheets and concept art for the characters. A generic candy bar wrapper shouldn't be the highlight of a page in a book where entire characters got left out. There's also numerous examples of artwork being partially obscured, sometimes by necessity (another piece of art) and sometimes just nonsensical (a bunch of arrows pointing this way and that).

2. Similarly, some of those omissions were just bizarre. People have already mentioned a few characters left out entirely. What caught me by surprise is that only April's original design was included, not her jumpsuit or spacesuit. I'd in particular been hoping to see something on the latter, since I thought it was a clever way to bring in more of the 80s cartoon April's design.

3. Nieli was pretty firm in calling Mutant Apocalypse the canon ending (and again he was pretty specific about citing Mad Max and Kamandi as inspiration. No mention of After the Bomb, which makes sense since After the Bomb was an extremely different setting). Maybe I'm being silly, but I can't help but think that if he's going forward saying things that directly contradict what Nick has been saying, it might be slightly hurting his chances of getting that sequel he's said he wants to do.

Overall... the art itself is good, but I thought the presentation was pretty poor.

[rayfillet101]

I agree, while I get it is an art book, I wanted it to be a bit more organized and offer more detail on the characters. It didn't really show how the characters evolved throughout the show, just the initial concept for them. But I am always more focused on all the characters, so I would be slanted towards that.