#bc my carpal tunnel won’t let me write whole fics but I sure can write out tiny little ideas

[collectiveclams]

Trying my best to figure out what these guys look like in my head before I go look at the fandom’s generalized designs for the characters.

A friend of my twin got us into the show and a week later we’re at season 8!

I definitely need to tweak Cole’s design a lot- I want him to have a more strongman build & revamp his entire face design. But at the very least I’m happy with getting his hair the way I want!

Kinda hard to see, but Zane’s got little screws for earrings! I honestly didn’t account for how much older the faceplate would make him look, I intended him to look way more boyish.

Rambling about my current HCs of the Ninja’s appearances below:

I’ve been having a bit of an trouble deciding what various flavor of Chinese & Japanese these dudes should be based on. Considering the show is based on a 2010s vague idea of “Asia” and carries traits of both Japanese & Chinese influence, I’m just going to use both. I don’t know what sorta general consensus the fandom has of their appearances bc I have barely interacted with the fandom, so if this violently contrasts with that then yippee I have original thoughts, I guess.

-Kai is Japanese. Kai, being vain and caring more about training than Jay for example, has a more aesthetic build that’s definitely form more than function. Like a natty powerlifter who’s not competing. I’m not sure what height he should be, but if he’s taller his muscle definition would appear smaller so I’ll have to keep that in mind.

- Nya has initially a more functional build- far less muscle definition than her brother. Not outwardly buff and doesn’t have pronounced muscles, but can fairly easily haul a 100lb hunk of metal from a scrap pile to her workbench. But after becoming the water ninja, her new training gives her more pronounced muscle definition. Initially shorter than Kai but grows taller as the show goes on.

- Cole is southern Chinese. He’s got a strongman heavy set build. I envision him as fairly short so his muscles can be a little more pronounced. If you stripped his muscle definition from his ninja training away, I still want him to look like one of assholes who haven’t worked out a day in their lives but still somehow looks jacked.

- Zane is what pops up when you look up “Chinese teen male stock photo” because he needs to look like The Most Generic person ever. No muscle definition at all on this dude. He’s a nindroid & so there’s no need to include muscle decision to show that he’s strong. He’s either average height or slightly on the shorter side bc gravity is a bitch and the taller make a humanoid robot, the more balance becomes a bitch to deal with. So average height or short Zane it is.

- Jay is Uyghur so I can get this dude his reddish-brown hair. Minor muscle definition. His isn’t for aesthetics like Kai, he’d rather do ninja training than do the types of sets & pushing to failure needed to achieve more pronounced muscle definition for aesthetic lifting. Jay needs to be shorter than Nya. He’s definitely taller than Cole but I need him to be just an inch shorter than Nya because that’s funny to me personally.

- Lloyd is Japanese. Solely because Oni come from Japan & I got spoilered that Gargamon is an Oni later. Lloyd is a stringy ass kid at first & has no muscle definition at all. During his Green Ninja training before the Travelers Tea, he’d be trained for efficiency & not for aesthetics with the deadline of him fighting his father possibly being around any corner. After Travelers Tea he likely kept his training to function over aesthetics and would share similar muscular definition to Jay & Nya. And he’s tall. His dad is tall as shit with 4 arms. I want this kid to go through the Worst gangly teen era anyones ever seen and only barely fit his form once he finishes growing.

Additional thoughts:

And as a big comic nerd who owns around 800+ comics (might be more around 1000 now?), hoo boy I have so many thoughts on Lloyd and Jay liking Starfarer. I cannot wait to make a fic that’s just Lloyd and Jay ganging up against Kai over some incredibly wrong take of the comic he absentmindedly said and trapping him in a 3 hour long conversation about frequent mischaracterization and mishandling of the characters in Starfarer & how what Kai said was wrong. I just need a fic of Jay and Lloyd talking to each other about their favorite runs of Starfarer and complaining about a tie-in/crossover comic that’s written particularly bad, or complaining how an author completely misunderstood Fitz Donnegan or complaining over an author change & etc. I just need to make a fic of these boys talking about average comic book fan things.