Book Review: The Art of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
The Art of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a 176-page large format glossy art book which would look right at home on a coffee table or IKEA cube shelf. There are fifteen sections crammed full of visual development art, which each span ten pages or more, alongside essays and interviews with the film's above-the-line crew.
But is it worth your while?
Reading The Art of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
The written sections include a forward by Ramsey Naito (president of Paramount Animation), an introduction by Jeff Rowe (director), interviews with Seth Rogen (writer, producer) and Rowe, as well as an essay on the development process by Jim Sorenson (the book's author).
Despite the fact that the written text is never the main draw of an art-of-the-film book (which is immediately lampshaded by Rowe's introduction), I found the interviews and essays well worth reading. The lead creatives describe the preexisting relationships they had with Turtles and why they were interested in exploring the Teenage side of the aforementioned Mutant Ninjas more compared to previous incarnations of the series.
The book also contains a brief-yet-detailed history of the Turtles. If you're familiar with the franchise, you already know the broad strokes: What started as Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's violent parody of Daredevil in 1984 became transmogrified through the power of capitalism into a Saturday morning cartoon to sell merchandise to kids.
In retrospect it might seem like an odd choice, but this happened during an era where every moderately successful R-rated movie spawned a children's animated series to promote a lucrative toy line. Think Robocop: The Animated Series or Rambo: The Force of Freedom — I assure you, they're real. The history is detailed and informative, and includes archival imagery from the comic, the 1987 animated series and the 1990 live-action film, among other iterations.
Looking closer at The Art of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Mutant Mayhem is a film defined by its stylized 3D-meets-2D-meets-high-school-doodles look. This book leans significantly on the visual development process behind that style. There is no shortage of color studies, design exploration and expression sheets. However, like a picture of an iceberg's tip, this art book only occasionally hints at the rest of the pipeline at the animation production houses, mainly Cinesite (in Vancouver and Montreal) and Mikros (in Montreal and Paris).
I would have liked to see much more of the problem-solving that went into the film, including the process of adapting the designs into usable 3D character rigs. In part because it's all-too-easy for audiences to take the end result of an animated feature film at face value while not considering the process behind it. I came across clips on Cinesite's website which reveal more of that process and am convinced that their work would look right at home in its own 176-page volume.
With that addressed, the material inside the book is stunning. Particularly if you have any interest in the visual development, character design and environment design processes, which is worth consideration on their own merits. There is a wide variety of each to be found, in the full color semi-gloss pages.
The designs of New York City contain the most detail about the development behind the film's unique style that you will find in the book. A quote from Tiffany Lam Almack (art director, environments) reveals that instead of using blur to create the illusion of depth, as most 3D films would employ, the crew “developed a system where the further the buildings got in x, y, or z space, the crazier the scribbles got.” Detail serves as atmospheric perspective, giving way to messier lines and asymmetry as objects recede from focus.
Another standout in the book are the designs of the wider cast of mutants, particularly Superfly. While each Turtle gets the same amount of attention in the book as their primary antagonist, Superfly has unique visual elements, including an iridescent carapace and clumps of messy hairs, which are shown and described on the page. The color concept art for how his carapace reacts to light might be my favorite art sample, but picking favorites here is difficult.
The rest of the mutants are only allotted a page each, but what they lack in paper they make up for in variety. Each mutant's page features their final character designs alongside their concept art, and brief descriptions of their design process from Woodrow White (lead character designer). Fan favorites Bebop and Rocksteady appear first, but each of the eight mutants is worth a close look. Particularly Leatherhead's humorous 'alligator standing on two legs' silhouette.
In an art book about mutant animals, it might be surprising that the pages devoted to the supporting human characters are among the strongest in the book. April O'Neil, Baxter Stockman, and Cynthia Utrom each have sections where the designers consider previous incarnations of these characters, and how those traits are nodded to in Mutant Mayhem, while also drawing from more contemporary references.
Should you buy The Art of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem?
If you are interested in applying scribbles and brush strokes to 3D character rigs, to get an effect similar to what you will see in the movie, this book offers little to help you. There's almost nothing in here on how the rigs were built, animated or composited.
However, if you are interested in visual development, character design and concept art, this book is worth considering for the staggering variety of humans, mutants and locations contained within. If this is what you are looking for, I strongly recommend picking this book up.
And if there's a Ninja Turtles fan in your life who doesn't already own this book, this would be a welcome addition to an enthusiast’s shelves.
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