Kowabunga Pretoria! - Splinterlands X Ninja Turtles

For this weeks splinterland fan art contest @splinterlands/splinterlands-art-contest-week-375

This work of fanart was inspired by a conversation with my good friend Trocpolock aka Hive account@cherokee4life He's been incredibly generous as a friend for quite some time and I asked him if he'd like some art done in his honor. To which he suggested the fantastic card Zargull as a ninja turtle. An idea, which any person with a properly functional brain can see is absolutely awesome.

So off I went brain storming, and collecting stills from ninja turtles, and trying to figure out a pose. I initially had a dramatic jump like the Ninja turtles are doing regularly, but it never felt quite right.

Here's an early image from that. It doesn't really capture the epicness of Ninja turtles OR Zargull. This is partly cause Action shots are hard but the core idea just didn't quite hit it.

Then on a TV show I was watching there was a bit with someone doing tricks on a skateboard and I was like, YESSS Zargull needs to be on a skateboard! Cue watching skateboarders, and pausing to try to figure out the right pose and everything.

Which is how we get here.

Yup, a very simplified pose but it mostly captures the feel of a skateboarder mid jump. Now to take a slightly developed stick figure and turn it into ninja turtle Zargull. Which was a very fun challenge.

To that end I gave it beefy legs and arms, and a tutrle head, as well as a shell.

At this point though, he just kinda looks like an offbrand ninja turtle.

I very much wanted to include Zargull's magic in the artwork, and I wasnt' real happy with the arms so i shifted the pose a bit in preperation for adding magic.

Then I got distracted by adding colour cause it helps me think about details and see how it looks and what i want to change. The colours were colour dropped from Zargul's artwork except the shell colour which was a derivitive of one of the browns. At this point though he's still more "offbrand ninja turtle" then Zargul, but a ninja turtle.

So I study Zargul's artwork(which is fantastic by the way.). One of the challenges for doing cross fandom artwork like this is trying to figure out what details will make it clear their a version of the orgional character. Essentially how do you know it's Zargul and not just some random orc in his orgional work. After some thinking I decided the fur lining, scars, and shiny skull's were key features. Oh and his beard! I also at this point decided that I wanted to make it look like it was from a comic/still of a cartoon so I added a dramatic background. Which I wish I'd done later cause it made seeing my line work hard.

The blue is also the watersplinter blue but with the saturation shifted.

I also thought it'd be amusing to make him look a bit distressed because I'm not sure skateboards exist in Pratoria.

Happy with my concept and pose, it was time to clean up the line work since it was a rather big mess. This is one of my favorite parts of drawing cause it can take it from "Well this could be cool to , ahh yeah that's the good stuff. Some of the base colours aren't in yet but that's okay.

From there I added the magic effect and decided it'd be the main light source which simplified shading a bit.

And more shading, which I was really happy with how it turned out. I also decided that I'd made the bottom of the skateboard be the water splinter background colours with the splinterlands logo, and the same image that's on Zargul's clothing, on it.

Some more shading, and removing the refrence pics, and we done!

Thank ya for reading! If you've got any suggestions for characters/fandoms that would be fun to cross with splinterlands let me know, it just might happen. And you'll be a beneficiary of the post to!