2012 TMNT Designs First Look Review!

On March 7th, 2011, Nickelodeon released some news to the Wall Street Journal about the new Ninja Turtle Cartoon scheduled to come out in 2012 with the very first image. This is an image of the Ninja Turtles in an action pose, Leo in the lead, Raph behind, him, as Don is next jumping down and in the distance we see Mike. All four Turtles with a whole new look.

I can say I never been a fan of the fat wrist and ankles. Thought that looked weird with the movie, though it seems that this is a look I'm just going to have to get use to. Though it just feels really weird to see their arms like that, as we've had them with normal wrist and ankles from 1984 to 2007. I know they were going for a more Turtle feel with this, though they're mutants that doesn't mean they need to be a certain percent of one or the other. It's a personal dislike. 

Let's talk about those faces. They say how they want people to tell them apart with more than just the color masks, little did they know that the original movies did that. If you put a photo of any of those Turtle heads into black and white, you could tell the Turtles apart. So this is not a fresh or new idea at all. Though it's interesting to see that they're trying to take this into the cartoon world. Mike and Leo reminds me of the 2007 Movie, Raph reminds me of the 4Kids series, and Don reminds me of some of Mark Martin's work. I hope to see better images of their faces, some none action poses so we can really see what they're doing with the new looks. 

Now the weapons. Leo's swords don't look like "ninjatos," which are the swords Leonardo should have and has had in the other series. Raphael's sais, much like the other series are designed as a sharp thin weapon, I don't care for how his right hand is holding the sai. I know a lot of people seem to like him holding them that way, but it's not right and could be painful in a fight against a sword. Don with his bo staff looks great. Than there's Mike. Where are the Chucks?! In this picture Mike is holding kusarigama and not Chucks in this picture!

In the past, Mike has been brought through one challenge after another with his weapons. The nunchucks were not allowed in many countries. So, in the original cartoon series to save the show from being edited more than it already had to be, the chucks were removed giving him his grappling hook. This was a big change to Turtle fans to realize that one of the main weapons that could still be found with the toys was taken out of the series. Than the Next Mutation came around with the tonfas as Mike's weapon. This was another disappointment to Turtle fans, and he barely even used his new weapon in the series. Now we're staring at the kusarigama in Mike's hands. I don't know about anyone else, but this is not going over well with me. Now Alex, one of the TMNT animators for this new series, has given us the idea not to worry about the weapons, "that’s just one of many images that was used for the composite." I will take his word on this and hope to see the chucks in Mike's hand for this new series.

Overall, I am looking forward to this show and am very excited to see art work of what we could see from the series. We are also to remember that this may be the design we're looking at, but the show is lined up as a CGI series so it will be much different on the screen.