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The Radical Evolution Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
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Jul 30, 2025
Ever since their debut, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been a staple of pop culture. Through several animated tv shows, to live action movies, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had many different looks and redesigns. But how has each TMNT design influenced it's predecessors? How have the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles been able to evolve while also remaining our favorite heroes in a half shell?
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I don't know who you are, but thanks
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You're not human. Bingo. We're dealing with a real mind here. That's what the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles looked like in the 1987 sci-fi comedy adventure
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cartoon that made them famous. It was a big change from the look they sported when they debuted just three years earlier
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in a landmark independent comic book series. But while the animated versions quickly became iconic, the character designs of Leonardo
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Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael were really just beginning to mutate. You're turtles
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Yep, so we are. I can't handle this. In 1983, comic book creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird moved in together in Dover
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New Hampshire, and began tinkering with some new ideas. One night, in an effort to make his
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partner laugh, Eastman jokingly sketched an anthropomorphic turtle wearing a mask and
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armed with nunchucks. At the top of the page, he wrote the words, Ninja Turtle. Eastman's original
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turtle had a flat face, short neck, and generally bulky appearance. But Laird, who agreed that the
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idea of a slow ninja was funny, later redrew it, making it slightly less goofy and more human
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with a slimmer neck, longer limbs, and protruding nose. He also added the words, Teenage Mutant
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The two didn't take the idea seriously at first, but the next day, they already started to see real
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potential in it. The two decided to create a team of four such characters and called them
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the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Turtles made their comic book debut in May of 1984
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in a book self-published by Eastman and Laird under their Mirage Studios banner
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These original turtles were clearly descendants of the turtle in Laird's sketch, but
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they have grown even more human in appearance, with even longer legs and arms. Also, to save
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money, the series was published in black and white, which, fortunately, was well-suited to
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the dark, gritty tone of its world. Except for their weapons, these original turtles
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were virtually impossible to distinguish from one another. They even shared identical profiles
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which made them a bit of an anomaly from a design perspective, because the conventional wisdom holds
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that a character should be recognizable based on their profile alone But then in 1986 a licensing agent pitched Playmates toys on doing a line of action figures based on the comic book But the company was only interested if a cartoon series would be
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produced to function as commercials for the toys. That series, produced by Fred Wolf Films
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debuted on December of 1987, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would never be the same
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again. The 1987 cartoon changed everything about the Turtles and their world, starting with the
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tone. The violent moodiness of the comics was replaced with a brightly colored
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kid-friendly adventure vibe. And the design of the turtles themselves was drastically altered
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in service of that change. The features of the cartoon turtles, who were designed by Ira Turek
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and Peter Chung, were rounded out to make them softer and cuter, and their anatomies were made
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even more human-like. The series also made an effort to make the individual turtles identifiable
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beyond their trademark weapons. Each turtle started wearing the first letter of their name
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on their belt buckle, and even more prominently, their masks, which had all been red in the comic
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books, were now four different colors. Blue for Leonardo, purple for Donatello, orange for
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Michelangelo, and red for Raphael. It was all a bit jarring for fans of the comic book, and at the
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time, many dismissed the cartoon as an inferior version for children. But the show was seen by a
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much wider audience, and it was that version of the turtles that became famous. Aspects of the
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redesign were migrated back to the comics, and even some of Eastman and Laird's own art
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like the now iconic covers to the first comics collection, reflected the new status quo. But like
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some sort of Ninja Turtles storytelling yin-yang, both visions, the dark comic book version and the
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light animated version, would continue to exert a creative pull on all future incarnations of the
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franchise. A great example of this came in 1990 with the first live-action Turtles film. It told
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a story based on the early comic books and took place in a world grittier than that of the cartoon
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At the same time, the Turtles movie, realized via actors wearing foam rubber latex suits created by
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Jim Henson Creature Shop, had inherited their cartoon counterparts' love of pizza as well as
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their color-coded bandanas. The film was a massive hit in the cartoon series, then in its eighth
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season would undergo a redesign to make it more like the movie The success of the film and its sequels also spawned a 1997 live television show called Ninja Turtles The Next Mutation which leaned more towards kids
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Looks like Raffi's taking up a little square dancing. The turtles of Next Mutation
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which included a fifth female turtle named Venus de Milo, were realized through foam rubber suits
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like the movie Turtles, but the designs were noticeably different, and most agreed, not for the better
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These turtles had rounder heads and permanent expressions that were, well, just weird
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Leonardo and Donatello's masks were also extended to cover the top of their heads
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and Michelangelo's to wrap underneath his chin. Meanwhile, the badges displaying their respective first initials
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which they wore as belt buckles in the cartoon, were moved up to adorn the leather straps
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they wore across their chests. The show was canceled after a single season
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Even worse, a disagreement over the controversial Venus de Milo character, as well as another hypothetical fifth turtle named Kirby
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that had been proposed for a movie sequel caused a rift between creators Eastman and Laird
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and as a result, the franchise sat dormant for a few years. But in 2003, the Turtles got a new cartoon
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Because Laird himself was the driving force behind it, this time, the tone stuck much closer
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to that of the original comics. Although what seemed grim and gritty in 2003
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may seem quaint by today's standards. So let's see you boys clean up for a change
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This chamber is filthy. Aww. The 2003 Turtles were less cute and pudgy than the 87 versions
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and their pupils were removed, creating this mysterious white-eye look Batman had been sporting for decades
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Well, that was easier than expected. I hope there are more of those guys
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I'm just getting warmed up. Despite being a quasi-sequel to the previous live-action films
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2007's TMNT from Imagi Animation Studios was a fully computer-generated theatrical feature
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The movie's tone was closer to the dark world of the original comic
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but the turtles themselves were redesigned by Jeff Matsuda and Thomas Perkins
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to be more round, cute, and kid-friendly. The 2012 CGI cartoon titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
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gave the turtles wider eyes that made them look more kiddish and oversized forearms and calves that created the feel of youngsters who hadn quite filled out yet You think you tough enough to stand up to my hot nudge up Fury What
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While initially disliked by fans, the show would ultimately be celebrated as one of the
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best Turtles properties. Nonetheless, the heroes in a half shell were about to get their most drastic redesign yet
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in a 2014 movie produced by Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes. To signal how physical and action-driven they'd be, the movie's turtles, designed by Jared
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Krzyzewski, were bigger and burlier than ever. At least, some of them were
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Because the other thing the movie did was start to change up the turtles' profiles
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Donatello, for example, was skinnier than the others, and Michelangelo was shorter
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But most memorably, the 2014 turtles had their most human-like faces of any incarnation yet
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including some seriously weird-looking lips. Dude. Despite the complete visual overhaul, Turtles fans were pleasantly surprised
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to find the personalities of their heroes mostly intact. And while critics savaged the movie
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like they were in league with Shredder, it did well enough in the box office to earn a sequel
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Then, in 2017, it was back to television and onto a brand new style of animation
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that leaned into the Turtles' fun side. Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
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used cleverly simplified but highly expressive character designs that drew on almost every previous incarnation
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Designed by Andy Siriano, these Ninja Turtles had multicolored masks like the 87 versions
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different style masks like the next mutation, individualized characteristics like gaps in
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their teeth, and non-uniform profiles like in the Michael Bay produced movie
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And now, 2023's Seth Rogen-produced theatrical feature Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant
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Mayhem comes to us as a polished-up throwback to the 2012 animated cartoon, by the way of
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what looks to be an animation style influenced by Sony's Spider-Verse movies
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Since the arrival of the 1987 cartoon, the world has had to grapple with the idea that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can be more than one thing and look more than one way
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Perhaps because this was so early in the franchise's lifespan, it meant that there was never really one single iconic vision of the Ninja Turtles
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And maybe there never needed to be. God, I love being a turtle