In recent months, artist Raf Grassetti has been blowing us all away with his realistic renditions of beloved characters from ’90s animated series. The illustrator, whose day job is as a Sony Playstation art director, has rendered stunningly detailed illustrations of X-Men and the Batman: The Animated Series rogues. Only in his take, they are presented in a lifelike and realistic style. Now, he’s applying that same magic to the beloved heroes in a half-shell. Grassetti just released images of all four of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the results are just totally awesome, dude. You can check out his new renderings of Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo down below:
About his newest creations, Grassetti said (via his ArtStation page) “Having some fun with some TMNT mixing the old school designs that I grew up with and love with some new influences from the Michael Bay and animated series.” We imagine he means the most recent animated incarnations of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, like Nickelodeon’s Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Right now, Grassetti has only released his versions of the four main Turtles themselves. But we know that we’d love to see this expanded to see Shredder, Splinter, Krang, Leatherhead, April O’Neil, and more. Let’s just make a whole underground pizza party out of it!
We imagine that eventually, there’s going to be another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action series of movie. It’s kind of inevitable. And whenever that happens, we certainly hope that the producers give Raf Grassetti a call. His versions of the boys has the right mix of nostalgia for the original TV incarnations from the ’90s, but combines it with more detail and flair than we’ve seen on other iterations of the characters.
For more of Raf Grassetti’s amazing work, be sure to head on over to his Instagram page and his ArtStation account.
Featured Image: Paramount Pictures
