After years of being sheltered from the human world, the Turtle brothers set out to win the hearts of New Yorkers and be accepted as normal teenagers through heroic acts.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:02 The original creation of the Turtles came out of love, passion, and a late night out of goofiness.
00:09 I did this drawing of a turtle standing upright with a mask on, nunchucks wrapped around his arms,
00:14 and I put it on a piece of desk and I said, "This is going to be the next big thing, a Ninja Turtle."
00:18 [MUSIC]
00:22 The animated series came out in 1987 when I was five years old.
00:26 The live action movie came out in 1990.
00:28 I was eight. It was like perfectly geared towards someone my age.
00:32 Ninja Turtles is something that all of us have been obsessed with ever since we were kids.
00:35 I remember being four years old and wanting all of the toys.
00:39 Action figures, cartoons, the bed sheets.
00:42 I was just kind of obsessed with them. I started taking karate probably because of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
00:47 How much love was put into their designs and the props.
00:51 My dad bought me nunchucks because of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
00:54 Package art and everything about it was like funny and weird and told a story.
00:59 [MUSIC]
01:01 They called us and said, "Would you guys ever be interested in working on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?"
01:06 Did we play it cool at all?
01:07 No.
01:08 No, no.
01:09 If we can approach it through this teenage lens, really lean into like a coming of age version of it.
01:15 And they said yes.
01:17 [MUSIC]
01:18 Jeff was willing to say like, "We have to make this look and feel totally different."
01:22 He was like, "What if it's animated by teenagers?" so to speak.
01:25 We put so much work into the visuals, into the artwork.
01:29 The style is perfect for this. It's almost like an underground comic.
01:33 It reminds me a lot of the original stuff that Peter and I did.
01:36 [MUSIC]
01:38 It's you and your buddies. It's you and your brothers. It's you and your sister and your brother.
01:42 I think a lot of people can relate to kind of feeling like an outsider at times.
01:47 This desire to fit in, to be accepted.
01:50 It's one of the most essential emotions.
01:53 The fans are insanely awesome.
01:57 Whether it be, "I love the turtles so much I wore the same Halloween costume for three years in a row,"
02:01 or, "I had a really tough childhood and the turtles helped me get through that."
02:05 And that's when it hits you emotionally.
02:07 [MUSIC]
02:08 Wanting to create, wanting to tell your own stories, and then actually having it happen.
02:13 It's a dream and it happened.
02:15 I love the Ninja Turtles. It was like the first thing I was ever a fan of.
02:19 It's fun and exciting.
02:21 [MUSIC]
02:22 Here I am 61 years old and I'm still getting up and drawing comics.
02:25 Turtles every day.
02:27 [MUSIC]
02:32 (explosion)