Lost & Found: Nerdy Drawings I Made in Middle School

I was going through a box of junk in my closet ear­lier tonight in search of some­thing com­pletely unre­lated (Chi­nese ther­apy balls–don’t ask) when I dis­cov­ered a thick stack of draw­ings that I appar­ently did in mid­dle school, because they’re dated circa 1993 — 1994.  I would have been in 7th and 8th grade.

Check out the hand­i­work on my cross-eyed Chun Li:

Pure skill.

The funny thing is, I’m not sure I could draw any bet­ter if I tried today. With the excep­tion of a poster-size George Har­ri­son por­trait I once drew for my boyfriend in in the early ‘00s, I haven’t put pen­cil to paper since high school art class, where pretty much all I did was dick around and take stealth naps.

Any­way, here’s the rest of the draw­ings I found:

Look­ing at these draw­ings at age 30 is like open­ing a time cap­sule of my past nerdy inter­ests: X-Men, Sega games, Ani­ma­ni­acs , Dis­ney, Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles… Oh wait, I still like all that stuff.  But it’s funny to exam­ine them through the lens of my twelve year old self.  For exam­ple, I must have thought Psy­locke was one of the coolest X-Men because I drew her three times.  I must have also been really obsessed with the Sega CD game  Vay at the time.

Nowa­days most of my art is done on a com­puter screen, but there was a time when I would spend hours on end sight-drawing ran­dom sub­jects from what­ever nerd para­pher­na­lia  I had lay­ing around–game man­u­als, comic books, trad­ing cards, Sega Visions magazine…

I would put on music (prob­a­bly Ace of Base, lol) and just go to town until my hands went numb and eraser shav­ings cov­ered my lap. I remem­ber insist­ing my mom buy me those nice black Pilot ink pens which I used to painstak­ingly trace over my pen­cil lines.  Also: I’m not very skilled at col­or­ing with markers.

Some­times I think about get­ting back into the habit of draw­ing regularly–I have sev­eral half-ass sketch­books that were started with the best intentions–but the prob­lem is that I tend to think of a zil­lion other more pro­duc­tive things I could be doing with my time and the nov­elty wears off right quick.

Maybe I should just start draw­ing Ninja Tur­tles every day.

Meet Wes, a Guy Who Draws Ninja Turtles (Almost) Every Day

Last week I was ran­domly brows­ing #TMNT on Twit­ter (I think it was some­time dur­ing the the Bayliens back­lash) when I stum­bled upon  this guy .

His name is Wes and he has a cute TMNT blog where he draws a new Ninja Tur­tle pic­ture every day.  Well, almost every day.

He read­ily admits that he’s not an artist–which is appar­ent from the lined note­book paper and crayon scrib­bles that adorn his work–but he loves to draw Ninja Tur­tles so that’s exactly what he does!

There’s some­thing kind of charm­ing about a grown man who loves to draw Ninja Tur­tles with­out a care in the world about what any­one thinks or even if the draw­ings are any good.  As I men­tioned on his blog, it takes me back to my junior high days when I spent most of my time in class draw­ing Ninja Tur­tles (very poorly) and not doing what­ever it was I was sup­posed to be doing.

I asked Wes if he took requests, and he was more than happy to humor me with this amaze­balls pic­ture of Raphael, my favorite Tur­tle, crouch­ing on the rooftops of New York City:

Note the gar­goyle thrown in as an added bonus! I have no idea how Wes knew that Gar­goyles was also one of my favorite shows from child­hood. I’m pretty sure that my find­ing his blog was writ in destiny.

The next day he drew me the same pic­ture but from a dif­fer­ent perspective:

Totally shell­tas­tic AND refrig­er­a­tor worthy.

Any­way, check out Wes’s “Tur­tle a Day” blog for more orig­i­nal, hand drawn Ninja Tur­tle good­ness and occa­sional reviews about the other nerdy and equally awe­some stuff he’s into (which he also clev­erly illus­trates with Ninja Tur­tles).   And what a nice guy, too.

Sneak Peek at Nickelodeon’s Upcoming Animated TMNT Show

Via Scoop.it — Adven­ture Games

We’ve known for a while that Nick was plan­ning a new ani­mated Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles show for 2012, but today we finally get some screenshots!

Some stills of the new TMNT CGI car­toon have turned up on the Toyark. Though some designs of the show were revealed at last week’s Toy­fair, this is really our first look at other char­ac­ters’ actual appear­ance on the show.   The show which will pre­miere on Nick­elodeon, still has no clear release date other than it’ll be show­ing up some­time in 2012. A sneak pre­view has been con­firmed be shown some­time after the Kid’s Choice Awards on March 31, 2012.

Via www.theouthousers.com

Click the link above to check out the full set.

New ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Live Action Film in the Works, Jonathan Liebesman to Direct

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Hey, remem­ber a few years ago when we heard there’d be a new live-action Ninja Tur­tles film in 2011 and I got all excited about it ?  Just when I was start­ing to give up hope, I saw the news this morning:

Para­mount is in devel­op­ment on a live-action reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles. It has been a rough tran­si­tion so far from comic to fea­ture, but the stu­dio is tak­ing the project in an unex­pected direc­tion. Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Andrew Form of Plat­inum Dunes—the pro­duc­tion com­pany behind hor­ror remakes such A Night­mare on Elm Street and Fri­day the 13th—are shep­herd­ing the reboot. The stu­dio assigned the script to Josh Appel­baum and Andre Nemec, the writ­ers who most recently penned the whip-smart Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble – Ghost Protocol.

Now Vari­ety reports Jonathan Liebesman is in nego­ti­a­tions to direct. Liebesman directed Bat­tle: Los Ange­les, and his next project is Wrath of the Titans. He’s the up-and-comer you call when you want a big action film. Tone will always be tricky when your main char­ac­ters are anthro­po­mor­phic tur­tles who know mar­tial arts. But if they can rein­vent TMNT on the level of, say, Bay’s Trans­form­ers… well, that sounds like a blast.

Via collider.com

Cow­abunga says it all.

Rumor: Is Rocksteady Working on a ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Game? [False]

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

God I hope this is true:

TDW Geek by way of Paul Gale is report­ing that Rocksteady’s next game is called The Man­hat­tan Cri­sis… a Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles game. If you’ve played the stand­out Bat­man: Arkham Asy­lum or its even more acclaimed sequel, Arkham City, I don’t have to tell you how incred­i­ble this col­lab­o­ra­tion would be.

Via www.ology.com

How amaz­ing would this be?  I’m a huge Tur­tles fan, but I can do with­out most of the campy, car­toon­ish TMNT games of yes­ter­year. It’s time for a darker, grit­tier TMNT game!

Update:  As of 3:30 PM today, Kotaku is report­ing that Rock­steady chief Sefton Hill has con­firmed this report is false.  Aw, man. :(

Live-Action Ninja Turtles Return for 2011

In geeky movie news this month that makes me feel like a fifth-grader again, TMNT co-creater Peter Laird con­firmed in Vari­ety rumors of another live-action  Tur­tles  movie planned for 2011.  The announce­ment comes on the heels of  TMNT’s 25th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion.  Other than mak­ing me feel old, I’m also damn excited.  Because in Hol­ly­wood, every­thing I loved grow­ing up in the 1980s is sud­denly cool again.  The new Tur­tles  film will be pro­duced by Scott Med­nick of Leg­endary Pic­tures, who is cur­rently pro­duc­ing the soon to be released Where The Wild Things Are,  another live-action fan­tasy film (which hap­pens to be based on yet another com­pletely awe­some thing from my child­hood).  And if these screen­shots are any indi­ca­tion of what’s in store for the next TMNT , then color me green with excitement.

After the orig­i­nal live-action movie, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles  films went from bad to worse, though 2007’s ani­mated  TMNT  was OK.  Then again, I’m of the opin­ion that the first Tur­tles movie is one of the great­est if under­rated comic book movies of all time—but I may be a lit­tle biased.  I was obsessed with all things Ninja Tur­tles as a kid.  Like  really  obsessed.  If it had a TMNT logo on it, I owned it.  I could quote the movies word for word (prob­a­bly still can).

My wish­list for the new live-action Tur­tles movie:

• Darker, grit­tier, edgier Tur­tles truer to the orig­i­nal Mirage comic books.
• Curse words.  Most TMNT fans have grown up, and so should the movies.
• Sex (if only to sat­isfy my mor­bid curiosity). 
• Real­stic CGI that doesn’t look like CGI.
• Back to basics origins/roots sto­ry­line. (Think Bat­man Begins .)
• April O’Neil, and any­one other than Paige Turco to play her.
• Blood, weapons, and graphic violence.
• Moar Raphael.*

Things I could live with­out:

• Shell-tastic tur­tle puns.
• Any char­ac­ter who exists solely in the Archie comics series.
• No Venus.
• Ran­dom kid-who-meets-the-Turtles char­ac­ter (a’la Keno in Turltes II, and later Yoshi in Tur­tles III).
• Any sto­ry­line involv­ing time travel.
• A Turtles-themed rap song.
• A PG rating.
• Cowabunga.

The sucky part about all this?  Wait­ing two years.

*Raphael is still the coolest tur­tle, and if you don’t agree with me, I’m not shar­ing my Ninja Tur­tles fruit snacks with you.