Turtle design - what do you think?
 

Hey

I'm studying for an exam in financial services (woohoo - tax calculations) and need to elleviate boredom. This is the result:

I was thinking about the different turtle designs we have seen over the years on the screen, and about the good things and the bad things of each.

TV

Old toon - Really cuddly and very benign although sometimes the animation was disproportionate. Found itself by series 3. Turtles all looked the same though, which was a shame. Didn't like the Initials on the belts. The weapons were also often disproportionate and tended to vary in size, especially Leo's swords and Raph's sai.

Red Sky - big improvement. Loved the more precise appearance and especially thier eyes. The proportions of weapons were more consistent. Liked the way that Raphael was less goofy looking (didn't smile as much as the others anymore).

Next mutation - see comments below re film 3 - same applies.

New Toon - really great animation, but I'm personally not so keen on the more bulky shaped turtles. Also, whilst their eyes not having pupils works really well for the comics and still shots, I feel it puts the characters at a disadvantage in animation as you can't see any expression in their eyes (although the animators do a really good job of getting around this by adapting the shape and movement of their eyes.

Fast Forward - animation seems more simplistic and their faces more angular. Don't really like it. Also, Raph appears to have grown which seems odd.

Films

Film 1/2 (I know they are different, but the same comments apply to both) - amazing puppetry - eyes are amazing. Like the way each turtle looks different to each other - like that Raph has scars on his face and shell. Leo is my favourite design - very natural. Mike is very sweet looking. Don and Raph had odd shaped faces to me. Love the long bandanas.

Film 3 - Oh dear, look like frogs.... with squishy shells.... look like the suits are made of chunky spandex...ugh.

TMNT 2007 - Love it - I love how each turtle looks different without being so extremely so like in film 1. I love how their sizes vary (it's quite funny that Raph is the shortest, like those little tough guys with attitude). love the belts and bandanas.

My Conclusion:
1. TMNT 2007
2. Red Sky
3. Old toon
4. New toon
5. Film 1/2
6. Fast forward
......
......
......
100=. Film 3
100=. Next mutation

Would love to know all of your opinions on this matter. Anything to distract me from my studying.

Raph was the shortest in TMNT 2007? That's really cute.

Raph was wider due to his being more muscular but i'm 99.9% sure Mikey was the shortest

I thought Raph was shorter, but based that on a picture. So I could very well be wrong. He was definitely shorter than Leo and Don though.

It makes more sense that mike is the shortest.

What picture?

To me, it looked like Leo was the tallest, but Raph and Don were the same height with Mikey being the shortest.

I'll look through the pics and try and find it - I'm probably wrong but will look right away.

OK I found it. To my eyes, Raph is definitely the shortest although my judgement of the perspective may be a little off - now.... how on earth do you post a picture?

Raph's the tallest and most built. Leo's 2nd. Then Donnie and Mike who are the least built cos their focus is elsewhere on tinkering & science and goofing off, respectively.

Well, still, they're all really not that far off from one another in build, barely noticed any difference when I watched it, and based on how well they all fought against the Foot and the Generals, they all must've kept in pretty darn good shape that year.

IS it those 162 images? If it is, tell me the image number.

Also, if you want to get an image up, start a photobucket or image shack account, upload the image from your computer, and then you can copy and paste a link on the Technodrome.

Oh, because those pics are big, you may have to use your paint programs to minimize the size first. 600 x whatever dimension would be an appropriate size.

Triple xxx, you can definitely see the size of Raph compared to the other Turtles. His shoulders, his neck muscles, are all far more developed than the other three. But I dissagree with Buslady on Raph being the tallest. Leo appeared to tower over the other three considereably.

No it's not. Damn it. I don't have 'photobucket' account - never heard of it.

Erm.... what do I do? I'll try attaching.

yes, he is definitely the most muscular, but I disagree with Buslady with regards to him being tallest in the 2007 film - I know that he is the tallest in other films, but not in this one.

Yay! There it is. He looks smaller than Mike to me. Only just, though.

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...2600pixels.jpg

Photobucket is an image hosting company. I am lucky I have the 162 images saved on my computer thanks to roseangelo, to upload them to my account.

My scanner, however, something is up with my computer where my scanner seems to not be able to read by the computer. My printer works, but when I scan an image, only half of it is shown, the other half is all black.

But in this particular phote, it makes Raph look taller than Leo. But it's hard to tell, because the Turtles are slouching or in a crouched position, or they are not standing together, but in different places.

Your photo in particular jenna has Raph standing a bit behind the other Turtles (you can see by the placement of the feet). People standing in the back ground tend to look smaller than the ones in the foreground, just like you see in my signature image.

I really liked the first season animation. It was by far my favorite (excluding red sky). I prefered the curved black line down the middle of the nose they had in a few of those eps.

As the series went on, the turtles noses got way to big, and round. I thought 2k3 was an improvement that showed their noses more compact.

Agreed and I think most people agree red sky animation was much improved.

The creators were probably trying to create a darker show that was more related to the comics than the OT. Everyone has the own opinion but I think the all white eyes look bad@$$.

... yeah it looks a lot cheaper but there are some good eps. Animation is sub par and their heads had too many sharp angles.

I like how if you took off each turtles bandana and belt you can still tell which one he is. The costumes were quite individualized.

I like the movie 1 heads more than movie two heads but Secret of the ooze had much improved costumes. The plastron looked more realistic. Don and Leo's belts were around their waist and not their chest. We got better animatronics and facial expressions as well. I just wish they would have used the same head structure for movie 2. Each turtle looked different than the first movie. Especially Don. They completely overhauled Donatello. :roll:

yikes! I hated movie three costumes. It's like they didn't even try. Good thing they all had different color bandanas or I wouldn't have been able to tell them apart. Their facial structure was exactly the same. They had no idividuality!:x

I love when their individuality is expressed. The OT drew each turle the exact same. :dead: yuck! They are all quite different and I'm all for anything that shows that.
If they took off their bandanas, you would be able to pick them out easily. I love that!

okay whatever...there's proof up there, Leo and Raph are next to each other in that pic when he gives leo those sword. Raph's taller. He's taller in TMNT1 as well.

when the dvd comes out watch that scene. When he says the words "You're going to need these if you're gonna lead us out of here," they are both standing straight (not like in the picture where Leo is bent over) and Leo is definitely taller.

I know that the pic I attached has Raph a bit behind, but to me he still looks smaller.

And I already said I knew that Raph is taller in the other films and noticeably so in fast forward.

I certainly didn't want to start an argument on this thread about height! My perception is that Raph is shorter, and I still think so. Other people mentioned it too on the "It's the little things" thread. But that doesn't mean that I'm right and I'm not going to get defensive and have an argument about it.

Although i do think Leo is def taller :P

BINGO! WE HAVE A WINNAR!!!! :D

Loving you dude!

Heh, I love that pic. It just screams "FAMILY!"

Raph is definitely not as tall as Leo. He is more built. But he's shorter. I think maybe he and Mikey are the shorter ones. That makes sense to me.

Compared to the comics honestly all those styles are ass.

I guess the 4th season of 2K3 gets my vote then on style then. I was never a fan of TMNT with pupils.

I know he's taller in TMNT 1....


:P

Actually I'm interested to hear about the comics. I don't know the comics well enough to refer to the designs (which is why I only mentioned screen in the opening post) but I've seen some of the designs from the different artists and would love to know more.

Then you're asking the right person.

Officially, according to the "TMNT & Other Strangeness" RPG material that Eastman & Laird endorsed and contributed to as part of the Mirage canon....

Page 96

Raphael
4'6"

Page 97

Leonardo
4'9"

Donatello
5'

Page 98

Michelangelo
4'8"

There you have it. Donatello is the tallest, Leo second tallest, according to source material. Raph is... the runt of the litter. :)

Oh my God!! Loving you too dude!

I think that's brilliant that tough ol' Raph is a little dude. Bless.

http://www.ninjaturtlesempire.com/scan2.jpg

http://www.ninjaturtlesempire.com/scan3.jpg

http://www.ninjaturtlesempire.com/scan4.jpg

Coooooooool.

Very Cool. :D

1.Old toon
2.Red Sky
3.Film 1/2/3
4.The Next mutation
5.TMNT 2007
6.New toon
7.Fast forward

Any chance you will post page 99, andrew?

The posting of page 99 would indeed be appreciated.

Something is seriously weird about the Palladium RPG stats, though. Sometimes it feels like they just winged stuff with no real thought about the characters. Look, Mike's the only one who can drive. And why would Don, of all of them, be the tallest and heaviest? And Raph is freaking short ... really, really short. 4'6''! Teehee!!!

What does M.A., M.E., P.S., P.P., P.B. and P.E. stand for? Does anyone know?

I have never taken the RPG stats to have canonical truth to them. First, while they were published with the aid of Mirage, they weren't published BY Mirage. And second, they were published sooooo early on - 1985ish - that Kevin and Peter were still in the process of developing the characters.

Most other stats that I've seen put all of the Turtles around 5' 2", which makes a whole lot more sense.

I was looking around the character profiles thing in the RPG section and spotted a link to this somewhere.

:o HAHAHAHAHA!!! :lol: So Mike is beautiful and Raph is traumatizingly ugly, according to those Palladium stats.

I'm surprised how drastically different each Turtle is from the others. I made up Dungeons and Dragons stats for the guys one time, but I didn't make the characteristics so drastically different--(Raph's attractiveness is 5 and Mike's is 16, for example).

So we have, according to Palladium:

A really tall, really smart Don who is an average fighter.

A Leo who's good at everything.

A Mike who is absolutely stunning and charismatic and charming compared to his brothers, and who is more physically stronger than Leo, but who's not very smart.

A really short, really tough, really ugly, fast-moving Raph with the lowest mental/emotional endurance.

I agree with this. Looking now on how the Turtles have developed, I am a firm beliver that a combination of todays comics, 2k3 toon and the the original movie and new movie hold the closest truth to accepted canon.

Just the fact that Raph is the most powerful and weight trains and is the bulkiest of the four would have him the instanst heaviest. So RPG stats mean absolutely nothing to me what so ever!

I agree. I don't know how old those stats are but if they were redone today, there would be some definate changes.

Sound enough, but at the time of its publication it was certainly intended to be canonical. If it's intended to be removed from the canon, we haven't been made aware of that yet.

At only 15 years old in these stats, it's not unreasonable to assume they had a little bit of growing left to do. By the end of Volume 2 they made it all the way to 17.

Here's Page 99.

http://www.ninjaturtlesempire.com/page99.jpg

On the next few pages, also interesting to note that April (around Vol. 1 #2) was 27 years old... and Casey Jones was only 22 years old at the time of his first appearance. Oroku Saki, at the time of his first death, 34 years old.

HAHAHA! April's a cougar :lol: Thank you andrew for the ages, especially Saki... his age is the most debated as far as I know

Before I begin my ranking, I have to say that one of the best things to come out of the 1987 cartoon that has been repeated successfully is giving the turtles color-coded bandannas. Otherwise I do have trouble telling them apart.

Designs ranked in order:

1) 2007 movie. Smooth, seamless, color-coded, not exactly alike while still being clearly the same kind of turtle. Facial expressions work well. They show pupils.
2) Old toon- including Red Sky and Archie Comics. Very likable. I don't mind the letters- in fact, I kinda like them although they are not entirely necessary. Fits the mood of the toon well.
3) Old movies- at least they color-coded and showed eyes.
4) New Toon- too scary, not showing pupils, not super proportionate. But at least they color-coded the bandannas AND have the turtles have different skin colors.
5) Mirage Comics- how does Splinter tell them apart is beyond me. I am so joyful that adaptations subsequent to the 1987 cartoon have kept the blue/orange/purple/red distinctions.

Splinter's 25? Interesting.

His mental age may have corresponded to that of a 25 year old man when he and the turtles first mutated.

According to some events in Archie comics, I estimate Hamato Yoshi to be around 30 when the events happened.