Thank you so much for making such a fantastic art piece! Every single detail is incredible!!! I've stayed at it hour what adds up to literal hours today
I'm amazed with the work you put into it. I hope that the asks that I answered were helpful for you. I'm very impressed at how thorough you were in your research. The whole drawing is just SO COOL and I DID cry as I stared at it because of the loving detail in literally every pixel
Again, IT'S ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE! THANK YOU SO MUCH!
You are very much welcome! I had so much fun, and all of you are making me blush. So worth it.
Oh, jeez. More under the cut; I can't keep anything short.
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I spent so much time on it over the last few days (first piece I've finished on a deadline, too), that I now have no clue what to do with my life. I'm lost.
I'm liking it more and more the less I look at it. I knew I was biased (I see gore-covered-turtles when I close my eyes).
The details have always been my favourite part. It's the little things that really breathe life into art. It's like telling a story. Whenever I write, I find myself drawing parallels between drawing and writing. Like word choice and colours. Sentence structure and contrast. It's incredible how the smallest little things can completely change a piece.
Also the details are just the easiest part for me. No tricky anatomy, just a lot of time and fun.
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And yeah! I love research. A lot. One of the things I'm kind of working on a bit is going through the different human and testudine systems and comparing them to figure out what would make sense in TMNT (I call it: "Chelonian and Human Comparative Anatomy and Physiology").
(Chelonian and testudine both mean turtles. Testudine is taxonomic and chelonian is more general.)
I showed my uncle a diagram of skin I spent forever drawing, and he was like, "It's Saturday. In the middle of summer." Lots of people think I'm weird. I love it.
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And yes, those answered asks were incredibly helpful. I was very impressed with that whole chart you made, and I'm relieved you already had it. I had like, a whole list on the canvas while I was drawing to make sure I didn't forget anything.
Ahem. Tis the anniversary of Spider's Web with Strings Attached, and I wanted to make something! Go and read the fic if you haven't already; it's incredible.
Lots of ramblings and other versions under the cut (if anyone wants to see any other parts with or without different lighting and stuff that I didn't include, just let me know; I'm happy to share).
This is the first (almost) completely original thing I've drawn digitally! Poses are really hard for me, so I'm super proud of this. No tracing, only references!
...so. Many. References.
Except for the bricks, which I'm not counting, because bricks are scary. And the chains. I used a brush. Chains are scary too.
I started July 28th, and then spent almost 40 hours across various canvases planning, experimenting, and actually working on this. Not including research. It took me absolutely forever, but I regret nothing.
Except for the fact that I spent over 6 hours just shading bricks. I didn't even draw them! I took a pattern for the grooves from google and filled it with black, (rotated and edited for some variance in their cells), and then did the red lighting and some shadows you can't even really see. For 6 hours.
I tried to draw their spider brooches many times, but I could not get them to look right (especially from a side angle), so I gave up. Let's all just pretend they're there until I come back later. Eventually. Maybe. Oh, and Leo's chains. At the time of posting, I really just want to get this up and posted, so they're not shaded, but again, I might do it later.
I wanted to have this set when they're both in their separate cells, right after Viper was, uh...in the cell with Leo. So, Donnie is all stitched up and healing, while Leo is...not doing great (not certain about the timeline, because I'm paranoid about everything, so it's probably fine). But, I wanted to convey what happened to Donnie, so I drew that weird glowing spine thing to indicate some kind of mystic healing something. I don't even know.
It didn't turn out as well as I wanted it too, but I'm probably biased. Because there was so much gore on Leo's side, Donnie's looked boring. I couldn't figure out how to do the lighting. The values could be better. It could do with more time spent on the shadows. Etc, etc. I'm a perfectionist.
2. Big version without lighting (except on the bricks) or Japanese characters.
3. Close up of magic spine representation thing because I'm proud of it.
4. Close up of gore-covered-Leo because I'm also proud of that. I have never drawn such...messy gore before.
Fun fact, the group of layers all of that was on is called "Bad Stuff".
5. Close up of Donnie's shell stitches without the spine thing, because I worked hard on those. It was also pretty tricky, because I couldn't find any references for large stitched wounds. Only open ones. If anyone knows any good places for references like that, t'would be greatly appreciated.
Also, they don't usually stitch puncture wounds, because it could trap infection, but I feel like with something so large and deep as dragon teeth it would be necessary? So I tried to include those.
But also, would they just stitch the skin in such deep wounds? Is there still a gaping hole under the skin? Do they also stitch muscles with the dissolvable sutures or something? I'm like, going to go to med-school just so I can draw more accurate wounds and stitches and stuff.
6. Close up of Leo without the gore because he's pretty and I'm really proud of the plastron. And the right forearm armour piece. I couldn't get the other ones to look as nice, much to my dismay.
The Japanese characters write out to Omae wa hitoribocchi da, which translates to You are alone. I think. Google Translate says it's You are all alone, but translation services that I trust slightly more, like Reverso.net and ChatGPT (the most reliable of sources, I know) just say You are alone.
Omae is the equivalent of anata, for those familiar with Anata wa hitori janai. They both mean you, but omae is more...condescending, from what I can tell. Informal and rough, often used to express disdain or superiority.
Wa indicates that anata or omae are the subject of the sentence.
Hitori is present in both, meaning alone, though from what I can see, hitoribocchi is more...desolate and painful. It's a more emotional term for being alone.
Janai kind of means is not, or are not, while da is just like...closing the sentence. A firm, declarative ending particle.
I tried to paste the actual Japanese characters from different translation services (I am not fighting with using a keyboard from another language), but Tumblr wouldn't let me. Boo. So, you can all suffer with my English-Japanese. Also, don't trust anything I say. I'm learning Japanese on Duolingo, but I've only just started and it gets way more complicated. So, pretty much anything I just said could be wrong. I just did a lot of research.
If anyone does speak Japanese, and knows a better way to convey this, please tell me. I crave knowledge and accuracy.
I should get like, a personal human translator. No AI or program can truly understand a language like its people. Especially comparing Japanese and English. From what I've learned, there are a lot of words that could be translated many ways, depending on exact feel. It's complicated, and I'm scared to get farther into Duolingo's course.
I also just discovered yesterday that today is also the anniversary of the Rise Movie, so yay! Happy Anniversary to the movie that literally changed my life. And Curly, you're awesome. It's authors like you keeping this fandom alive, so thank you!
Another redraw. Big surprise, I know. Poses are hard, okay?
Edit: The one on the right is the new one. I’d been fiddling with this for a while after posting it, and every time someone liked the original, I was like: “NO! No, stop, it’s horrible.”
Original and other stuff below the cut.
I still don't like it. I don't like anything. Screw perfectionism. And the artist curse of judging yourself too harshly. Why do the teeth look weird. I stared at so many pictures of teeth for this. Also hair. Why does hair have to exist.
Aaaand the original. Drawn by @charcoaldustonmyfingers. I just absolutely love their style, it's so cute and clean. I might do more redraws of their stuff.
(Totally has a bunch of frames downloaded already)
And thank you to the artists of Tumblr for drawing such amazing stuff for me to redraw/color/whatever. Because again. Poses.
Self-reblog! Cuz I edited it. Overall, I prefer the second version more, but I messed up the hair :(
I think the background is much better in the second one. The light…silhouette…thing…whatever. I don’t know, it kind of washed out the rest of the picture. I’m learning! I-I think...
I had a dream that I was future Leo and I was so cool and I took Casey under my wing and taught him how to fight and stuff and then I WAKE UP as some lame teenager who can’t even do a single pull up >:(
It took me a second to understand what a Naked smoothie was, then I was like- Oh! Oh oh oh!
Seriously though, these things are keeping me alive. The Green Machine one is my favourite, and everyone I show looks disgusted when they see how many different grasses are in it.
Another redraw. Big surprise, I know. Poses are hard, okay?
Edit: The one on the right is the old one. I’d been fiddling with this for a while after posting it, and every time someone liked the (my) original, I was like: “NO! No, stop, it’s horrible.”
Original and other stuff below the cut.
I still don't like it. I don't like anything. Screw perfectionism. And the artist curse of judging yourself too harshly. Why do the teeth look weird. I stared at so many pictures of teeth for this. Also hair. Why does hair have to exist.
Aaaand the original. Drawn by @charcoaldustonmyfingers. I just absolutely love their style, it's so cute and clean. I might do more redraws of their stuff.
(Totally has a bunch of frames downloaded already)
And thank you to the artists of Tumblr for drawing such amazing stuff for me to redraw/color/whatever. Because again. Poses.
And for this last one, a few people came to mind. @bowandbrush @leosmasktails @chiscribbs. Just tagging people I know also believe in God. Because yay, pretty music! Thought y'all might like it.
Ok, that's it. I've been fiddling with this for weeks without really changing anything, so I'm just posting it.
This took me almost thirteen hours and I'm still not happy with it, but I can't for the life of me figure out why. I might come back to it eventually, but for now, behold my labor of love! Or...one of them. Many more to come, probably. Most likely.
...
Maybe. Oh please, Brain. Let me draw more.
Ta-da! Redraw! @somerandomdudelmao 's apocalyptic series has not left my brain yet, and it probably never will. I have so many panels saved that I'd like to redraw. The brain rot is never-ending.
So…I have done an obscene amount of research on turtle biology. Because I’m so freakin obsessed with these stupid turtle people. And in doing my research, I found something that reminded me of something in the endnotes of a fic from @thedawningofthehour.
From what I could see, softshell turtles do have lungs, and they can breathe air just like any other “air-breather”.
We also know that most turtles can “breathe through their butts''. Thank you, Olaf. This is called Cloacal Respiration (for those of you who don’t know, a cloaca is the only…uh…hole that most birds and reptiles have). This is kind of a misleading name because they can also oxygenate through their mouths and throats as well.
I was really curious about how exactly they did that because that’s pretty freaking cool, so I did more research. It sounds like they can do it through specific areas because they have a high enough concentration of blood vessels close enough to the surface that it is possible for them to oxygenate through diffusion (diffusion is essentially just molecules passing through cell membranes to get into the cell, thus, in the case of oxygen, fueling it). Which is kind of scary considering that that would imply that those areas would bleed a lot more if injured and likely be a lot more sensitive. This is even more scary considering that I also found out that most turtles also have something else called cutaneous respiration, which is literally the same thing, but through their skin. Which implies that their skin is very sensitive. I also learned that in their throats, they have lots of highly vascularized villi (little...bits of flesh in a specific shape), which allows for even more diffusion. Oh, fun.
…
Kind of unrelated, but I also found out that while brumating, every once in a while, softshells will do something resembling a pushup to expose more oxygen-rich water to their skin. Ooh, fascinating.
Important notes:
I am not a professional, everything listed here is from my own personal research - which is very carefully conducted, but still take everything I’ve said with a grain of salt.
When I say “most…”, it’s most likely because I don’t want to speak in absolutes about things I’m not 100% certain about, so it could be true, or it could not be.
I’m sorry if I offended anyone by explaining things that people already knew, I just have absolutely no clue what normal people know (I researched taxonomy and turtle ear anatomy for fun, y’all).
I, unfortunately, couldn’t find anything talking about how long turtles can actually hold their breaths or go without oxygen that took into consideration cloacal respiration. Maybe that information doesn’t exist because I’m the first psychopath to wonder about it, who knows?
There are so many questions I’ve had branching off from this that I’ve just chosen not to delve into yet because I’ve already spent way too much time researching this. For example, I’m not sure if the “higher concentration of blood vessels” is actually, well. Blood vessels. ‘Cause I have no clue if diffusion can occur in flowing blood. How do alveoli work? Do the blood cells stop at the alveoli to re-oxygenate and then keep going? Do they have like, little docking stations? Are there alveoli in turtles' cloacal tissue? How fast does the transfer of oxygen happen; maybe it doesn’t matter if the blood is flowing, I don’t know. My brain is a mess; I could keep listing questions for ages.
Having said that, if anyone knows anything about this that I missed, can confirm my hypotheses, or even just wants to discuss this further, I absolutely love talking about science, and I would really like to develop my theories more. Knowledge is the most valuable thing in the world to me, so please don’t gatekeep it. Even if you have like, the most stupid idea, I would really enjoy discussing it.
I SPENT 7 HOURS OVER THE LAST THREE DAYS DRAWING THIS PANEL FROM @somerandomdudelmao'S COMIC BECAUSE IT HURT ME. I AM HURT. OW.
I'm still getting used to this app, so sorry for the low resolution and anything else.
This is also the first digital art piece I've ever finished, so thanks so much to Cass for helping motivate me!
I drew it while listening to Hold On by Chord Overstreet, - it made me feel things. I don't like feelings - so I put the speed paint over the song. Here you go~
