teenage mutant ninja turtles artobiography preview

8/22/2019 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Artobiography Preview

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IT M N T B O O K


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T M N T B O O K

FOR

the AWESOME PeterLaird, without whom therewould be no Teenage

Mutant Ninja Turtles!

AND

to our fans, who gave

us the GREATEST jobon the planet, to writeand draw our own

COMIC BOOK stories!

ISBN: 978-1-61377-661-2

16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4

IDW founded by Ted Adams, Alex Garner,Kris Oprisko, and Robbie Robbins

Ted Adams, CEO & PublisherGreg Goldstein, President & COORobbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic ArtistChris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-ChiefMatthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial OfficerAlan Payne, VP of SalesDirk Wood, VP of MarketingLorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital Services

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES:ARTOBIOGRAPHY. JUNE 2013. FIRST PRINTING. 2013 Kevin Eastman. 2013 Viacom InternationalInc. All Rights Reserved. TEENAGE MUTANT NINJATURTLES and all related titles, logos and characters aretrademarks of Viacom International Inc. CEREBUS andall related characters are & 2013 Dave Sim. AllRights Reserved. IDW Publishing, a division of Idea andDesign Works, LLC. Editorial offices: 5080 Santa Fe St.,San Diego, CA 92109. The IDW logo is registered inthe U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Any similarities topersons living or dead are purely coincidental. With theexception of artwork used for review purposes, none ofthe contents of this publication may be reprinted without

the permission of Idea and Design Works, LLC. Printedin Korea. IDW Publishing does not read or acceptunsolicited submissions of ideas, stories, or artwork.

Originally published in 2002 by Heavy Metal.


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IIIT M N T B O O K


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4 T M N T B O O K

I always felt my artistic interest

and skill was inherited, but I never

knew to what depth until recently.

I had seen many of my

grandmother Eastmans watercolor

paintings, and had traced over many

car and motorcycle drawings of

my Dads when I was younger. Mymother was always doing something

creative, and today paints better

with oils and pastels than I ever will.

It seems both sides of the family

brought a piece to the table.

It wasnt until George Eastman

contacted me through the Ninja

Turtles web site in the late 90s to

confirm some facts for the Eastman

family genealogy web site that

he was building, did I get the full

picture.

It was there I first discovered

Seth Eastman. Here are some of

my favorite drawings, and the man

himself.

H I S T O R Y

MISTERDARKANDMOODY

ONEOFM

YFIRSTCOVERSFORCLAYGEER

DES

P

HOTO

BYSYDNEY

HIGHSCHOOLMURAL


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5T M N T B O O K

Arguably the foremost

pictorialist of the American

Indian, Seth Eastman was born

in Brunswick, Maine on January

24, 1808. Thomas Jefferson

was finishing his second term as

president of the United States

there were seventeen states.The eldest of thirteen children of

Robert and Sarah Lee Eastman, Seth

Eastman descended directly from

Roger Eastman, the first Eastman in

the colonies. An adventurous young

man from Wiltshire (the southern

country of England wherein lies

Stonehenge), Roger boarded the

ship Confidencein Southampton

harbor, bound for Massachusetts

Bay Colony, in April 1638.

Upon graduation from West

Point, Second Lieutenant Seth

Eastman was assigned to the First Infantry and sent halfway across the continent to the edge of civilization at Prairie

du Chien, where Colonel Zachary Taylor was rebuilding old log Fort Crawford from native rock.

Like many of his fellow officers, Eastman had taken an Indian wife in 1831. The third daughter of Chief

Cloudman of the Lake Calhoun village, her name was Stands Like A Spirit.

Largely unbeknownst to the outside world, besides keeping peace on the frontier, Captain Eastman was also

amassing an amazing portfolio of paintings of Indian life. Consumed by an unquenchable passion to preserve forposterity the customs of a race he thought to be dying, Eastman was assembling a pictorial history of The Dakota

that would be second to none.

Seths mixed-blood daughter, Nancy, had grown to bewitching young womanhood. She was said to be the most

beautiful of all Dakota maidens, and Indian tradition insists that she was as good and virtuous as she was comely

of face and figure.

Eastmans final commission in 1870, also for the government, specified seventeen paintings of American forts

for the House Committee on Military Affairs. After completing nearly all of his paintings, on August 31, 1875, Seth

slumped over at his easel and died. The Washington National Republican carried a brief obituary on Thursday,

September 2nd.

MY NEW HERO


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6 T M N T B O O K

THE FIRST

EASTMAN

AND LAIRD

DRAWINGAs for me, I was born May 30, 1962 in Portland,Maine to parents Kim and Sandra Eastman. I grew up

in the tiny country town of Groville, Maine with sisters

Marlene, Judy, and Maryann. Did all that normal kid stuff,

and I liked to draw.

MYROUG

HSKETCHFORTHEFIRST

GROUPDRAWING

PETES

TWEAK

MY FIRST

SKETCH

BIRTH PLACE OF THE TURTLES

THE FIRST TURTLE


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7T M N T B O O K

All my earliest submissions to publishers

were Underground ones, like Last Gasp,

Rip Off Press, and Kitchen Sink. One of my

biggest supporters, high school art teacher

Jane Hawkes, found my interest in the edgier

content of these comics disheartening, but

still encouraged me to practice drawing

everything I see as I would need to if Iintended to draw comics for a living. She was

pretty special.

My mother says I drew

all the time, especially when

I was supposed to be doing

homework.I still clearly remember the

day I decided what my calling

would be, it was right after

I read the first issue of Jack

Kirbys Kamandi I wanted

to write and draw my own

stories.

This was pushed to the

next level of intensity whenI discovered Heavy Metal

magazine, and the artwork of

Richard Corben.

In pursuit of more Corben,

I found underground comics

and self-publishers. I loved the

freedom of expression they

had, while most mainstream

comics were restricted by a

ratings board.

PRE-ISS

UEONEGROUP

SHOT

CHARACTER

SHEETS


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8 T M N T B O O K

H

ISTO

RY

Although I was rejected by most of the Undergroundpublishers, one of the smallest took a chance. Clay Geerdes

Comix Wavewas my first publisher, and it was an incredible

feeling. I had tasted blood, and now needed more.

After graduation from high school

in 1980, and a

brief visit to the

Portland School

of Art, I spent

the summer

cooking lobsters

before moving

to Amherst,

Massachusetts with a friend. There I found a comic magazine called

Scat and took the bus to their office in Northampton to sell them some

of my work. They werent interested, but said I should meet this local

artist with similar interests named Peter Laird. With a mutual love of

comics and Jack Kirby, we became fast friends, and began working on

short stories together right away.

THE FIRST ISSUE

THE FIRST CONVENTION

THE FINAL SHREDDER

CONCEPT

THE FIRST CONVENTION AD


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After another summer of cooking lobsters, Pete and I made a studio out of his living room and called it Mirage

Studios. Our plan was to join forces and sell our skills.

It was there in Dover, New Hampshire after some late night joking around, the first finished sketch of the

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles evolved.

Tired of rejection letters, and inspired by the newest self-publishing movement, especially Dave Sims Cerebus

comic, we pooled our money and borrowed some more from my Uncle Quentin to come up with enough to print

3,000 black and white comics we were sure would never sell.May 5, 1984

we premiered the

first issue at a local co-

mic book convention. It

was incredibly exciting,

but I was back cooking

lobsters in June.

In early 1985, the

sales for book twoexceeded 15,000

copies, and by mid

1986, Turtles book

number eight shipped

more than 125,000

copies. I was drawing

comics all day, and

supporting myself the

dream had come true.

THEFIRSTPRESS

RELEASE

ONE

OFTHEFIRSTADS

HOME TOWN PRESS

9T M N T B O O K


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10 T M N T B O O K

Throughout the eighties we traveled a lot

for promotional events, and met lots of other

creators, and began to expand our publishing.

We also began to do some licensing deals like the

Palladium Books Role Playing Game.

Through its publication we met an agent named

Mark Freedman, who had savvy, and a lot of the

same kind of luck we had-- Good Luck.Mark worked the right deals with the right toy

and animation studios, but would Mutant Turtles

sell?

Fortunately we were wearing our seat belts when

we found out. By 1990, in addition to the number

one toy and cartoon show status we had, New Line

Cinema, Golden Harvest, Jim Henson, and director

Steve Barron added a big screen smash hit to the list.

We had now accomplished what no other

comic industry individuals had, not only did we

write, draw, and publish our own characters,

we had reached a major level of success in the

entertainment business by making specific decisions

for characters we fully owned and fully controlled.

Im very proud, but very respectful to all

those who struggled before me who created

an environment that allowed the turtles

accomplishments to be possible.

FIRSTSANDIEGOCON

CHARACTERARTALSOT-

SHIRTIRONONS

THEART

OFBEDDIVING


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11T M N T B O O K

TOY PROTOTYPES FROM 1988

THE FIRST TOY FAIR WITH OUR AGENT

The licensing program that launched in 1988, and dwindled to a trickle by 1998, was an amazing adventure.

Although Peter and I nearly completely stopped drawing to handle the business of the turtles, we never stopped

being creative.

Together we worked on close to 300 of the cartoon shows, three live action films, a dozen video games, a live

action TV series, a touring stage show, and over 3,000 other licenses worldwide.Every success story seems to come with a personal cost, and although Pete and I had, and still have a strong

bond, there certainly were times it seemed we were married, and only staying together for the kids.

Regardless of the bumps, we couldnt have done it without each other. Besides, the journey more than

exceeded any of my wildest dreams, and

allowed me to see and do things that could fill a

couple of lifetimes.

A TRUE MIRAGE STUDIO

H

ISTO

RY

teenage mutant ninja turtles artobiography preview

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