Jessica Soisson

It was a blast meeting Kevin Eastman at Terrificon today! He absolutely loved the drawing, and asked me how I made it. He appreciated that it was a mix of both traditional and digital art forms, and told me to “keep drawing”. He even said that I should include it in our “Shell-fie”, as the con dubbed these smaller photo ops.

These are my two favorite pictures from it:

Here’s a few other pictures from today’s adventure:

I forgot about this in my drafts xD

The Archie turtles each gained unique costumes in issue 7, “Intergalactic Wrestling”. After parting with their costumes in issue 8, Raphael returns to the black suit in issue 10. He wears it until issue 19, in which he makes a grand entrance in his red outfit.

As much as I wanted to surprise everyone with the least voted for option, Donatello, who I had initially chosen, I ended up deciding on Leonardo.

While I’m usually biased, often choosing Leo, this decision is actually because of the color palette.

When this was Donnie, it didn’t look horrible. That’s because his mask is more cool toned, but there was a little too much purple.

Recently, I’ve been reading the Archie comics, and had been wanting to draw the turtles in that style. I also got a new drawing stylus I wanted to try out, so I decided to sketch in Ibis Paint to get the hang of it (I usually sketch on paper).

I was having trouble deciding what I wanted to use as a reference photo until I saw this cover art on a post from IDW. I’m also obsessed with the drawing so much that I’ll be after this variant cover.

(Reference art drawn by Luis Delgado, Dan Schoening, and Ken Mitchroney)

This one was super interesting. The artist, Vinnie Patrick, creates these shadow boxes by cutting layers from all sorts of trading cards. He calls them “3D cards”. This one is 4 layers.

If anyone knows more about these cards, please enlighten me. I do know the frame used is from S01E02 of TMNT 1987. This is the only card I’ve actually seen from the set.

I looked through the TMNT comics at a stand at L.I.Tropicon, initially thinking I’d get another Archie comic. Instead, I stumbled across this crossover story. After asking Kevin Eastman what it was like collaborating with Usagi Yojimbo at Terrificon, It was clear that I should pick this one.

The line-work in this comic is drawn by Stan Sakai, the creator of Usagi Yojimbo. This particular copy has the alternate cover, which is drawn by Kevin Eastman. It is probably the coolest comic I have now, simply because of it containing art by the creators/co-creators of these characters.

This was a fun weekend with my dad and my sister. We made some new friends, and plenty of happy memories.

Whether you know him as a ninja turtle, Yakko, Pinky, Carl Wheezer, PJ, Reuben, or many other characters, we all get a smile on our face when we hear their voices.

These characters are so impactful, that Rob calls it a privilege to be able to meet his fans. Every second we got with him was worth it.

He said/mentioned many iconic lines during the panel, including:

-“Narf!” -Pinky

-“Helloooo Nurse!” -Yakko (Rob also talked about how “Yakko’s World” had been updated, and sang the new part)

-“Butt canons, it has butt canons?!” (mentioned, not said word for word) -Donatello

-“Turtle Power!” and “Does the phrase, “go suck a lemon,” hold any meaning for you?” -Raphael

I’m super relieved to have finished this just in time to show Kevin Eastman, who I will be meeting tomorrow! I’m incredibly honored to have been given this opportunity, especially with the con being in my home state.

I started drawing this on Monday, with less than a week to finish the piece. On top of that, this is the first time that I’ve shaded a digital piece in black and white.

This isn’t the first time I’ve shown the sketch, but I wanted to include it to share how it was a sort of hybrid between traditional and digital art.

I’m going to meet Kevin Eastman this Sunday! I didn’t even know that he would be visiting my state until a few days ago, but couldn’t pass up meeting the co-creator of TMNT.

I decided that I wanted to draw a Mirage turtle very last minute. The reference was a color re-creation of the original cover, made by six artists at Mirage Studios. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to finish this by Sunday, but I’ll at least have the sketch to show for it.

The Side-By-Side:

I looked further into the story behind the reference image and discovered that each penciller did a specific turtle, Kevin Eastman’s being Raphael. I would have chosen Raphael, had I known that before I made my sketch.

I made this with heavy inspiration from the “Saturday Morning Adventures” comics. It is the first comic I’ve ever drawn. Thanks again to @fabuloustrash05 for the idea to have 87 Leo react to Karai’s snake form, and happy reading!

I decided to try something I had never done before: draw a comic! I will be finishing this project digitally.

Thanks to @fabuloustrash05, the subject came up about it being a missed opportunity to have ‘87 Leo react to 2012 Karai’s snake form in the TMNT 2012 crossovers. This is what I think would’ve happened.

For further context, Karai is wounded, and Leo tries to help her. She tells him that she can heal herself, turns into her snake form, and sheds her skin. Leo stares at her, absolutely petrified.

The last two images are Leo having a flashback to when they encountered the snake in “The Incredible Shrinking Turtles” (S2E2 of TMNT 1987). I believe that episode is where Leo gained his fear of snakes. (Nearly becoming snake food, while they were shrunk, seems like a valid reason to fear them.)

We came across a cute little comic book store, where I got the first comic book I’ve ever owned. I love the cover art on this Archie comic. The crystal ball thing is super cool.

I know I’m probably reading this in the wrong order, but the TMNT section was small. They only had a few different comics.

I remember seeing a crossover comic with Street Fighter. They also had some Last Ronin comics and some other IDW ones.

I think I’m going to look into the Saturday Morning Adventures comics next.

The original was edited by @snowbriar

Also, why does this seem to happen the most with Leonardo?