#amijustbeingweirdaboutthis

[humanradiojmp]

Rise of the TMNT... but it’s MLP

I literally woke up one day and thought “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles… but it’s MLP” and have spent the past week making designs for the four turtle brothers as hypothetical characters of the MLP:FiM franchise. Each one is a half-pony-half-creature character, as I figured that would be the best way to translate the four different turtles as MLP characters. I also thought a little bit of lore for each one, and thought that the characters would be part of a comic series within Equestria (kind of like the Power Ponies or Shadow Spade in the MLP franchise, or Jupiter Jim in the ROTTMNT franchise).

First on the list is Leonardo, called Neon “Neo” Brightlight in the MLP verse. This was initially done before I decided the brothers would be half pony-half creatures, but decided to leave Neo as is. He’s a full pony, a unicorn, who acts as the face man and medic of the team. He’s still the egotistic, pun making teen we all know and love, and is good at making strategies for fights. He does try to learn different spells that he thinks will help both him and his brothers, but he finds almost all of them difficult. He does, however, have a knack for portaling magic, so mostly focuses on that. [And yes, him being just a unicorn feeds into his inferiority complex, especially when he’s made the leader. Compared to the fact his brothers are half something awesome and have powers/magic related to that, he’s just a run of the mill unicorn that can barely do anything beyond basic magic. The portaling magic he tries to work at doesn’t even function half the time. Not to mention he knows he’s still the odd one out as a pony because of the weird spots he has (I imagine, before mutation, he resembled a regular pinto horse and the spots were merely a lighter shade of his coat color/white/off-white, but after mutation, the spots become brightly colored to resemble Leo’s slider stripes). He just doesn’t understand why “Draxum” had him in the mix in the first place, or why anyone wants him. But he wouldn’t trade his place with his family for anything.] With the design, I again made him a unicorn that resembles a pinto horse, having brightly colored spots to make a call back to Leo’s stripes. He has the original gear design pre-season 2 finale modified to fit a pony’s body, and has the same color green as Leo for eye color. I took some inspiration from various human designs of the TMNT and absolutely love the idea of Leo being a blond, whether natural or dyed. I just wish I made Neo’s mane a little fuller, it seems just a little too flat. And Neo is one of the two brothers that has a cutie mark, stars in a neon light like design. 

Next up, we have Leo’s twin Donatello, called Starry Haze (“Star” or “Hazy” as nicknames) in the MLP verse. I initially was thinking of making him either an earth pony or another unicorn before I went with the half-half design. In this version, he’s a half pony-half kirin who’s more focused on learning everything he can about science and tech than mastering magic. The easily prone to destruction and autistic younger twin to Neo, he spends most of his free time reverse engineering various tech he can get his hooves (claws?) on. He is often at odds with others because of his difficulties with emotions (doesn’t help that when he gets angry, he becomes a nirik and can set things on fire; I imagine the meltdown in Donnie vs Witch Town, he would just be ablaze as he says science is superior) especially when it comes to other kirin, but he does care deeply for his family. Design wise, I had a lot of fun with it and was pretty easy to churn out. I again took inspiration from various human TMNT designs and decided to give Star a sort of dreadlock inspired mane and tail look, being a little on the long side so it can allude to the would be full mane if he was full kirin. For the scales, the kirin has scales resembling leaves, but I decided to give him nine big square scales to resemble Donnie’s battle shell. Reddish brown eyes because I personally prefer that to the heterochromia look, and having his goggles around his neck instead of on his head, because otherwise it would have been too much going on in a single area. And, something specific for this, Star lost his horn in an accident as a colt and has used an artificial one since (I imagine someone had helped him and built his first version of the artificial horn and this sparked Star’s interest in science). (also, to anyone who might say artificial horns can’t work, MLP:FiM Season 4, Episode 6, “Power Ponies”. Masked Matter-Horn is technically a Pegasus with a false horn, and I’d like to think that, because both the Power Ponies and this take on TMNT take place in a fictional comic verse, the rules of how things work can be bended to fit the story; so shut up)

Following Star is this verse’s take on Michelangelo, called Speckles or “Keles”. I knew I wanted him to be a pegasus in this version because he’s so bouncy (i imagine he’s kind of like Rainbow Dash in that he’s always flying or just hovering most of the time), and decided with the half-half he would be half pony-half (metamorphosis) changeling. Cheerful and artistic, Keles brings the razzmatazz to the fights and acts as the wildcard of the group. While he is often the one to be the optimist in the group, he isn’t afraid to speak the hard truth with “Dr. Delicate Touch.” He cooks for the family and is the first pony in the group to make amends with “Draxum”, much to everyone’s distress. Being half-changeling, he can change aspects of his appearance without much of a second thought, but full body transformations take a lot of concentration and only lasts a few minutes.  Again, I knew I wanted Keles to be a pegasus based pony, so the drawing part wasn’t too hard to figure out. What was difficult was the color. Obviously orange gear but beyond that I had to come back to it. Looking at the changelings in the show, they either have a complementary or analogous color palette, so I went analogous (yellow, yellow-green, green). For the most part he’s fully pony in design and the changeling aspect comes in via his transformation ability, but he does have a few changeling aspects to the design with his “ears”, eyes, and crystal thingies on chest (I also did temporarily think about giving him insect wings, but I didn’t want to draw that so, yeah). Originally he was going to have a coat design similar to Sunburst, but I went with a more spotty design to resemble Mikey’s spots (and maybe also a call back to how changelings used to look, unintentionally). Once more, I was inspired by various human TMNT designs and gave him a curly mane, which also added to the bouncy, light on his hooves idea. And he is the only other pony besides Neo that has a cutie mark, a spray painted playing card.

Last, but certainly not least, we have Raphael, called Rimram, “Ram” or “Rammy” as a nickname. He’s the oldest and tallest/biggest as a half pony-half dragon. And it was actually the decision to make Raph pony part dragon that inspired the idea of them all being half pony-half creatures. Being the biggest and oldest, Ram is the one to often stand between his brothers and certain harm (especially because many are intimidated by him being half-dragon), taking and dealing a lot of damage. Also being part dragon, he sometimes has moments of rage and greed that are hard to control. But his love for his family and some different calming methods help curve that down. With the design, even though I knew I wanted him to be half-dragon, how that played out into his design was rather difficult to figure out. Had to futz around with it a little bit before I got something I was happy with. I’d figure his front legs could act almost like hands and he can actually hold stuff with his claws, and while it may not look like it, he can walk on just his back legs, but only for a short time. Of course, I had to make him spiky and made the decision that he has horns but no visible ears (I tried to make the horns allude to alligator snapping turtle spikes, but I'm not sure how well I executed that idea). Green with pink scales, because why not.

(Also, side note in case anyone’s wondering: With the weapons, I was thinking more along the lines of what could work with a character that can’t really grab things with hands. For the most part, unless they’re a unicorn or have some way to use magic to lift/wield stuff, most of the time ponies use their mouths to handle things and can use their hooves to a certain degree. With pegasi and other similarly winged creatures, I have seen them use their wings to hold and sometimes grab things, so they can use them as well as their mouths. So, mostly the weapons would hypothetically be used when needed, but most of the time they would be fighting with kicks and the like. Neo(Leo) and Star(Donnie) can obviously use their horns/magic to use their weapons, but they can wield them via mouth and hooves when needed. Keles(Mikey) can use both nunchakus simultaneously with mouth and wing, and Ram(Raph) uses his mouth, claw hands, and tail (since I imagine it can act as an extra limb like Splinter’s tail. Also, also, I gave Ram a jutte instead of tonfas or sais because of the mobility factor, and thought it would be better to use a single weapon instead of a dual wielding. Though I guess either one could be single use; I don’t know anything about any of these weapons outside of the show - and other TMNT shows - so there’s probably some things I could be missing.)