How To Draw TMNT 2012 Part 1 - The Carapace's Shape, Costal & Vertebral Scutes, And Marginal Scutes

How to draw TMNT 2012 Part 1 - The Carapace's Shape, Costal & Vertebral Scutes, and Marginal Scutes

Turtle shells are comprised of three main components:

The carapace - the part of the shell on a turtle's back

The plastron - the part of the shell that is on the turtle's front

The bridge - the part on the side that connects the carapace and plastron together

Today, we will be focusing on the carapace of the shell

#1 The Shape

The carapace's shape is essentially an oval. Now, how wide the oval is actually varies between the four turtles. If you look closely, the shape and size of the carapace between Leo, Raph, Donnie, and Mikey isn't exactly the same. But, we will get more into that in a different tutorial

For now, let's just sketch out a generic shell shape that can be used as a base for any 2012 turtle, starting with a basic oval. This will be our "inner ring"

Afterwards, add a slightly bigger oval around it to form the "outer ring"

Now, sharpen the upper and bottom edges of both ovals very slightly as illustrated below

You now have the base of a turtle shell

#2 The Costal and Vertebral Scutes

There's quite a bit to break down in this part, so let's take it one step at a time

First of all, what are scutes? Scutes are external plates found on the carapace of a turtle. In other words, you see those hexagonal shapes on the shell? Those are the scutes

Now, what are the costal and vertebral scutes? These are the scutes on the "inner ring" of the carapace that you drew in step one (Vertebral scutes are labeled with a "V", costal scutes are labeled with a "C")

As you can see, the vertebral scutes are located along the spine of the turtle. Meanwhile, the costal scutes surround the vertebral scutes

So, how do you draw the costal and vertebral scutes? We’ll break them down into three categories: The middle vertebral scutes, upper and lower vertebral scutes, and the costal scutes

The Middle Vertebral Scutes:

These are the only scutes that form a complete hexagon. They are located in the middle of the carapace. It’s important to note that in tmnt 2012 there’s only two of them. Now, you would expect these to be centered exactly in the middle of the carapace, but that's actually not entirely true. The middle vertebral scutes are actually placed slightly higher in the carapace rather than directly in the center

There's still one issue though, the belt the turtles wear. While the top middle vertebral scute is in full view, the bottom one is covered by the belt. Sure we could imagine what the bottom middle vertebral scute looks like, but we want to be accurate. Luckily, there's one scene in the show were we actually get to see it uncovered without the any gear in the way

In this frame where Leo's brothers are pulling him out of the tub we can see what the bottom middle vertebral scute looks like. Rather than being a perfect hexagon, it's more elongated and vertical

"Okay, that's nice and all but how do you actually draw any of this?"

For the top middle vertebral scute, you're going to want to draw a normal hexagon near the top of the carapace:

For the bottom middle vertebral scute, the process is similar. However, instead we're going to stretch out the lower half of the hexagon vertically to make it longer

The Upper and Lower Vertebral Scutes:

Due to the offset of the middle vertebral scutes, this makes the upper vertebral scute very small and the lower vertebral scute very big

To draw them, pay attention to where the red circles are. That's going to be where we will start connecting lines

First we're going to draw two diagonal lines upwards from the top middle vertebral scute where the corners are

Then from there we're going to draw two diagonal lines downwards from the bottom middle vertebral scute where the corners are

And just like that, the upper and lower vertebral scutes are completed

The Costal Scutes:

The costal scutes can be found surrounding the vertebral scutes. Drawing these scutes is actually quite easy

Once again, we're going to look at where the red circle are on the sketch. Those are the points where we will be connecting lines to

Starting with the top middle vertebral scute, we're going to draw lines at a slightly upward diagonal angle from where the middle points of the hexagon are

Now, we're going to repeat the same with the bottom middle vertebral scute. But, instead, we're going to draw the lines at a slightly downward diagonal angle

The costal and vertebral scutes of the carapace are now completed. Let's move onto the marginal scutes

#3 The Marginal Scutes

Alright, time to add some more details to your turtle shell. Now we're going to be focusing on the marginal scutes

The marginal scutes are the "outer ring" of the carapace

As you may have noticed, there's many cracks within the marginal scutes in tmnt 2012. But, did you notice there's a pattern to where they appear?

Each crack in the marginal scutes is located near the top of each costal scute with an additional two on the upper vertebral scute and four on the lower vertebral scute

To draw the cracks in the marginal scutes, first we're going to put them near the top of each costal scute

Next, we're going to draw the two cracks that are above the upper vertebral scute and the four that are below the lower vertebral scute

Note that the cracks on the upper vertebral scute are very close together. Meanwhile, the outer cracks on the lower vertebral scute are very far apart while the cracks in the center are very close together

And just like that, your carapace is now completed. You could technically stop here, but if you want to add more details then let's continue

Extras

Everything from here on out is optional to the tutorial and is just to help add some extra flare to your shell. Now, let's begin, shall we?

Creases:

One tip to add some extra detail into your shell is to thicken the creases of the scutes. This can add the illusion of depth into your artwork

Grooves:

While we don't have access to the models used in the tv show, we can take a look at the models from one of the video games

If we zoom in we see that there's grooves within the scutes in the pattern of a spiral. This is reflective of turtles in real life. By adding these spiral grooves into your drawings, you can add texture into your artwork

Define Your Marginal Scutes:

Another important detail to note: While not shown in any of the models, in real life the marginal scutes are actually comprised of many sections, rather than just one big outer rim. By separating the marginal scutes into sections you add both more realism and detail to your carapace

By combining all of these extra little details together our shell ends up looking like this

I hope you guys enjoyed the tutorial! This took a long time to make and there's so much more I could go into. But, I'm going to have to split them into different parts or else this post would never end

I want to end this with saying I am not an expert on any of this stuff. There's always a chance some of the information in these posts could be wrong. But, hopefully they're still helpful to you in some way

Part 2 | Tutorial Masterpost