Mutant Mayhem director wanted animation to be like teenage drawings

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem director Jeff Rowe said he wanted to capture the imagery of teenage drawings of the Turtles in the film.

Describing the visual design of the animated film that was released in India on Friday, August 25, Rowe said, "We just wanted it to look like teenage drawings. You know, the kind of drawings you did when you were in high school that have weird shapes and bad perspectives but are lovingly rendered in places. And we're always sincere."

When he was creating the art and the world for the film, Rowe's idea was to make a movie that looked not slick and polished like typical CGI art, but a more messy, fun and unpredictable style which would also showcase both the nature of the story and its heroes.

Seth Rogen, the film's producer, loved the concept after seeing the wild lines, wonky proportions, asymmetrical design and the general sense of pure freedom and joy, rather than a need for perfection.  

Giving it a second look, Rogen realised that Rowe's visual design in fact replicated many of the animations that he had seen in the past, and even had personally incorporated some of these into his own works.

Rogen said: "(Normally, with animated movies), they pitch you the movie in a room and show you all this concept art, and it's expressive and beautiful."

"Then you see the movie and it's all been sucked into these perfect parameters and all those paint strokes have turned into perfectly rendered clouds that look photorealistic. I was just conditioned for it."

"We started seeing concept art for this movie, and it was some of the coolest concept art I'd ever seen. It was hand-scribbled, and it really didn't stay in the lines. (But this time), they actually translated it into the world of the movie."

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem has a star-studded cast of voice actors, who includes Jackie Chan as the voice of Splinter, as well as John Cena, Post Malone, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Brady Noon and Maya Rudolph.