“Why are they all in red?” Well…
The original, black-and-white TMNT comics by Mirage Studios are my favorite version of the Turtles, but I think the hand-painted color volumes released by First Publishing just before the 1987 cartoon started are my favorites amongst those.
The above toys are mostly pretty simple repaints with a bit of minor sculpting work — The belts, elbow, and knee pads are all made from Super Sculpey. Leo’s scabbards and shoulder straps are made of electrical tape, as are all the fluttery parts of the bandanas. The weapons came from various other action figures — Leo’s swords and Raph’s sai came from a couple different Marvel Legends figures; Don’s bo is cut down from an accessory that came with a McFarlane Toys Conqueror figure with some electrical tape for the wrapping; and I have no idea where Mike’s nunchaku came from.
I also swapped around which turtle was which, to try and make their faces better match their personalities. That may drive some purists crazy, but whatever, they’re my figures that sit on my shelf in my home.
And then I grunged them up a bit to try and match all the textures seen in the comics. Overall, I’m happy with how these turned out.
There will be plenty more Ninja Turtle repaints to come, but I’m putting everything else on hold for October 2020. In the spirit of Halloween, I’m going to post some kind of monster drawing at 9AM Eastern/6AM Pacific each day for the entire month.
AND I’ll be participating in Inktober this year, doing an ink drawing every day! So that’s at least two updates each day! Oh boy!