--- title: How the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Got Their 'Realistic' Look description: The visual-effects team explains how they brought the turtles to life canonical: https://time.com/3090173/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-design-concept-artwork/ author: Nolan Feeney article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-08T16:19:02.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:07:56.225Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: How the New Ninja Turtles Got Their 'Realistic' Look og:description: An interview with the visual-effects supervisor og:url: https://time.com/3090173/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-design-concept-artwork/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd22d3be1a160ed4e/69869ed03bc9991b421a4d5d/4s-vfx-059-lc.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How the New Ninja Turtles Got Their 'Realistic' Look twitter:description: An interview with the visual-effects supervisor twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd22d3be1a160ed4e/69869ed03bc9991b421a4d5d/4s-vfx-059-lc.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How the New _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_ Got Their 'Realistic' Look > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Nolan Feeney](https://time.com/author/nolan-feeney/)  ## Nolan Feeney Aug 8, 2014 4:19 PM UTC  Megan Fox stars as April O'Neil in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles alongside (L-R) Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and Donatello. Megan Fox stars as April O'Neil in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles alongside (L-R) Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and Donatello.Industrial Light & Magic / Paramount  by [Nolan Feeney](https://time.com/author/nolan-feeney/)  ## Nolan Feeney Aug 8, 2014 4:19 PM UTC “Realistic” isn’t a word that’s often used to describe _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles —_ for obvious reasons. But the visual-effects designers behind the Michael Bay-produced film, which hits theaters this weekend, say believability was the main goal of re-interpreting the look of the reptilian heroes. “Michael and \[director\] Jonathan \[Liebesman\] wanted the characters to be fun, to be interesting, for people to look at the characters and say, ‘How do they do this? Is this is a real character, is this makeup?’” explains visual-effects supervisor Pablo Helman, an industry veteran. Helman spent more than two years working on the film to find the right balance of gritty realism and family-friendly action comedy. That means making decisions about everything from how wet and leathery the turtles’ skin should look to how long their arms need to be to effectively throw punches. One of the biggest challenges was making the creatures appropriately expressive — a surprising amount of work goes into figuring out how big to make the turtles’ eyes and mouths. Because a bandana covers their eyebrows and half their face, the eyes have to be big enough to show emotion and reflect light — otherwise the turtles wouldn’t look alive. Since the characters talk like humans, they also need a mouth that has a similar range of motion to avoid looking like “like a puppet show.” “The question from the design perspective is, what do you do with all the meaty, fleshy parts that are on the left and right cheeks?” Helman says. “If you don’t resolve those in a convincing way, then you end up with something that is not photorealistic.”  Pete Ploszek as Leonardo Industrial Light & Magic / Paramount  Industrial Light & Magic / Paramount Industrial Light & Magic / Paramount  Industrial Light & Magic / Paramount Industrial Light & Magic / Paramount  Industrial Light & Magic / Paramount Industrial Light & Magic / Paramount The designers got some help from the four actors behind the turtles, who donned motion-capture suits to film their parts and whose faces inspired some of the turtles’ looks. “Noel Fisher is very close to Michelangelo — his eyes are droopy, he has a specific smile, he has a specific set of teeth, he moves his mouth in a specific way,” Helman says. “If we have captured the performance and have matched the physiology of Noel to the character, then that’s a lot easier to put it together.” The actors also helped differentiate the turtles from one another. Though the four brothers have different outfits that set them apart, their respective personalities also come alive in the ways they move throughout the film. Raphael, for example, is the toughest and most serious brother, so it makes sense that he has the athleticism of a linebacker.  Pablo Helman with the cast. Industrial Light & Magic / Paramount “Donatello is more like a basketball player, Raph is more like a football player and Mikey is a very short Messi and plays soccer,” Helman says. “The design is not something we take lightly — we take everything into consideration.” Though some fans have criticized the turtles’ design for being a little _too_ bulky and steroidal, Helman says the team took the entire franchise history into account in order to stay true to the characters. “I’ve been part of enough franchises to know that it doesn’t matter what you do, you’re going to piss somebody off,” Helman says. “If we did our job right, then at the end of the movie you will have understood what every one of the characters is about — the fact that they are four brothers, that they don’t feel they belong in the world, that somehow they’ve been wronged and they’re trying to do something right.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3090173/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-design-concept-artwork/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3090173/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-design-concept-artwork/"},"headline":"How the New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Got Their 'Realistic' Look","datePublished":"2014-08-08T16:19:02.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:07:56.225Z","description":"The visual-effects team explains how they brought the turtles to life","url":"https://time.com/3090173/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-design-concept-artwork/","keywords":["movies"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd22d3be1a160ed4e/69869ed03bc9991b421a4d5d/4s-vfx-059-lc.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nolan Feeney","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/nolan-feeney/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd22d3be1a160ed4e/69869ed03bc9991b421a4d5d/4s-vfx-059-lc.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles","caption":"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles","creditText":"Industrial Light & Magic / Paramount","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3090173/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-design-concept-artwork/","name":"How the New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Got Their 'Realistic' Look"}}]}] ```