Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – 2012

When I was 7 years old, I used to sprint to the TV after school to catch my favorite show, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So you can imagine my excitement when I found out we were teaming up with Nickelodeon to create a promotional app for their new TMNT cartoon series. I remember literally jumping for joy at my desk that day.

But, as with any great project, we faced some challenges. The client’s assets were delayed, making us worry about our release date. As the creative lead, I had to make a tough decision:

1. Wait for the client’s assets, causing a bottleneck in our workflow.

2. Create the game characters from scratch and hope the client approves our versions.

What would you have done?

Well, I chose to start from scratch. I have to confess, The whole team’s love for the TMNT franchise and the idea of creating my own turtle definitely influenced the decision. Passion is excellent driver for productivity.

So, I found myself leading a team of four 3D artists to model, texture, rig, and animate four characters in just three weeks, all while getting Nickelodeon’s approval. There were moments when doubts crept in, (The scope was also creeping) but I was determined not to let this project fail. I couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing Master Splinter.

To maintain character integrity, I decided to create a template. I passed this template on to the other artists, who then adjusted the individual turtle proportions based on the same edge flow. This made texturing much easier since they shared the same UVs, allowing us to share paint layers. Rigging was also streamlined since all four characters had a similar edge flow. I gathered some blurry T-poses from a Nickelodeon style guide and used them to create our template.

The Template:

With some luck, a great team, and hard work the risk paid off. The template method was a sucess and it ended with great results. Ad-dispatch managed to fulfill deadlines, create mobile performance ready game assets and got client approval.

Here are some of the character animations I worked on: