What's up with boxart on some of the DVDs?
 

I was poking around the forums and noticed a post saying that the poses on the box art of the Lionsgate releases(especially the original Season 3 volumes) were retraces of stock art from the 2003 series.

I wanted to see for it myself by looking at some of the character galleries in the TMNT wiki and was shocked and amused by this. I'm wondering why they did this? The most likely answer is laziness but do you also think they did this to piggyback off the success of the new(at the time) cartoon like a mockbuster?

Anyway, I just think it's weird that they used retracing of the 2003 cartoon instead of using OT stock art or making new art or, hell, just using photoshopped screenshots from the show.

I dunno what the deal with that is. A friend (member Gunstar_Red) found (one of?) the artist's site/portfolio, he did TONS of base sketches for these things, & almost every single one lifted stock poses. The ones I didn't recognize were probably just more obscure style guide pieces. See here: http://www.ronmcpherson.com/Toy_illu...=800&width=650

I get using references, borrowing a pose from unrelated media, even... but copying from the same series & everything without even horizontally flipping them or anything? It's a questionable practice, for sure. If the dude was hired to do it that way, it only raises more questions. :tlol:

Yeah, it's bad.

I wish Lionsgate would have at least stuck with visual style of the Season 1 dvd cover, aka the inflatable-looking Turtles, as Peter Laird once called them.

It was embarrassing watching each cover between volumes 2-6 rip off 4Kids poses, sometimes being content to just crop the body off of them and focus on the lame head shot (Volume 4 & Season 4). They even used a Splinter that looked a lot more like the 4Kids version due to his coloring. With the Season 6 set, at least the layout was new (though the Turtles themselves look awful) and they pretty much traced a sceencap of OT April.

On the Season 7, it was more embarrassment as they basically ripped off the promotional poster poses of the Imagi movie. Seasons 8 & 9, I think, harkened back to the 4Kids pose stealing. Season 10 is the only one I can think of that doesn't explicitly rip off some other TMNT show for the layout.

This is common sense. The OT DVDs started in 2004, which is when the 2k3 series was airing. They knew kids growing up with the 2k3 series wouldn't recognize the originall toon Turtles so they traced 2k3 art to attract them.

That's why you literally have 4kids gray Splinter on one of the OT covers.

Two, actually.

I guess Lionsgate figured he looked so good, why not use him twice?

Even more amusing was the one time a Mirage TPB use the silhouette of 4Kids Splinter stock art on one of their covers...
http://forums.thetechnodrome.com/sho...80&postcount=3

Damn straight 4Kids splinter looks good, not really an excuse to use that design where it isn't relevant though...

Even though the S1 DVD had them look like the FW versions it still had the 4Kids intro song lyrics on the back. So it may have been to cash-in on the current show and later on the 2007 film. Ironically the original designs would've gotten more people's attention. Another theory is they didn't have the rights to the FW designs but there's wholes on that theory as well. I think the simplest solution is sometimes the right one, in this case Lionsgate didn't have faith on the product so they produced everything as cheaply as possible as we saw from the releases and how far apart they were and the hired artist just traced what he found on google images. I'll admit that as terrible as the covers were it was a indeed neat to see 2k3/2007 hybrid with the OT designs.

Did anyone notice they are also now doing this with the 2012 and 80s designs? I don't have any examples on hand, but a few products and childrens' clothing designs with the 80s Turtles have the exact same poses as some of the 2012 stock art.

I'm going to just chalk it up as different dimensions having to go through the same adventures than lack of creativity. Yeah, let's go with that.

Interesting.
Most of the 80s "retro" products look kinda terrible because they use c.2009 artwork (Mirage actually commissioned that stuff) instead of the vintage artwork, but I can't say I've ever noticed a borrowing from the 2012 poses.

I do remember seeing at least one such piece, might've been on a t-shirt. Not good.