Apriltello Kappa Shinobi meets a Pict Elf

This is really impressive! I love the detail on the outfits, particularly Donatello's. It manages to look detailed without falling into the trap of looking too busy, or too out of place on the cartoony body, which really says a lot about the good linework.

The use of colour is also great; this is a perfect example of how good "cel-shading" can look. The warm shadows on the characters' skins gives the entire picture a sweet and even romantic mood, even without a background I can just imagine them meeting like this under a spectacular sunset.

And I really love the facepaint on both characters, particularly April. The pale yellow against her skin that kives her a freckled-nut-not appearance really adds a lot to her design.

Couple of notices, though: there are a couple of unfortunate tangents in the picture (a visual tangent is when the edges of two shapes touch, making the image seem flatter and less three-dimensional.

The most blatant example here is Donatello's elbow and thigh -- see how the elbow is JUST touching his upper thigh? This makes his entire arm seem off; it looks more like the arm is cut-and-pasted to his body, than it looks like ir connects properly to his socket. Lifting the arm slightly to make sure there's some space between elbow and thigh would fix the problem.

Likewise, moving Donatello's thumb just a tad forward so that April's chin would overlap with it slightly would make it clearer that he's using his hand to lift her head, and that his thumb is not, in fact, stuck to her chin.

(This is a video that explains more clearly about tangents and how/why to avoide them: www.ctrlpaint.com/videos/avoid… -- that helped me immensely as an artist!)

Also... this might just be me, but... Donatello kind of looks like a girl in this pic. Maybe it's just because I often have to keep my own tendency to draw male characters too feminine in check, but... the way his eye and mouth are drawn kinda makes it look like he has thick eyelashes and feminine lips.

Come to think of it, his mouth seems a little weirdly positioned compared to the shape of his face. Maybe moving it forward and/or slanting it a little would help?

Other than that, though... I really love this picture. In fact, I'm favouriting it. ^_^