It's been a while since I have decided to do a new Microhero and I wanted to try my hand at creating a TMNT character in Microhero format. Aside from Aliens vs Predator, one of my favorite franchises of all time has always been Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ever since I was a child, TMNT has been a very big part of my child and I'm sure anyone who is an 80's or 90's Kid, has had the Turtles influence their lives in some way or another. I have never really made a TMNT fan character before though a couple of years ago a friend of mine and I had collaborated on creating some TMNT characters and this character was but one of four results of said collaboration and while the character was initially a Turtle-Tot, I decided to create what he would be as an adult.

Meet Giger Van Gogh. He is officially my first ever TMNT fan character, and perhaps another character I will further develop through roleplaying. Originally, Giger Van Gogh was supposed to be a mutant Red Ear Slider/Box Turtle hybrid due to his parents being a Red Ear Slider and a Box Turtle. However researching actual Turtle hybrids, it seems that Pond Slider and Box Turtles cannot produce offspring. So I revamped the character to be a mutant Red Ear Slider. If it isn't obvious enough, he does have the name of two artists-- he's named after Dark Sexual Fantasy artist, Hans Rudi Giger and of course impressionist painter, Vincent Van Gogh. I wanted to give him Giger's name because Giger happens to be one of my favorite artist, and I named him after Giger long before Giger's unfortunate death. I also went with the name Van Gogh to keep with the TMNT theme of having an artist name. There is a working back story for Giger Van Gogh but that is another discussion for a whole time. Anyway, I am babbling too much about this character, so let me explain how he was made.

Giger was created with a TMNT base that was provided by Carnage over at Microheroes International Board. To get his skin tone down, I have had to use four shades of green and worked with the shades in accordance to the base template's pixels in order to have the right shade tones in place. The plastron shell largely remain untouched but I wanted to add scars to give the micro some personality to it. The scars were done using brown and light yellow pixels to give it that scratched and scarred appearance. This was inspired by the scarred plastron shells on the live action TMNT references I've used from memory. The brown scarf was entirely created from scratch and it took three attempts to give it the look I waned, and they were done using a brown outlining, then filled in with different shades of brown to give it a cloth like appearance. The elbow and knee pads were from another TMNT base but they were originally brown, for this microhero, I had opted to color them a leathery black in appearance. The same can be said about the belt. The wrist wraps were extremely difficult to do but I've had to reference numerous microhero bases and examine the pixel work. It took some experimenting with colors but with light browns and tans, I got the desired cloth wrap which I was going for and I think I did it pretty well.

As for the red arm band, that was created partially from scratch as I had worked with different shades of red to give it a cloth like look, but the flaps were were originally a mask accessory on the default base but cut shorter to make it look arm band appropriate. Interestingly enough, the arm band is also meant to be a mask/bandana belonging to one of the original four TMNT, and it doesn't belong to Raphael as in the Mirage TMNT continuity, all Turtles wore red!

Giger Van Gogh is Copyright to Me.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is Copyright to Viacom/Paramount.