Early contender for my personal favorite joint of the year:
The whole album is good but this was my favorite before I even knew it was a single. Not only does it have a Black Star reunion over a J.Dilla beat with “History” but there’s an appearance by Slick Rick, the Ruler.
I turned 36 years old yesterday. I’m shocked and embarrassed by the well-wishing and insanely good presents I got this year. I try to stay low-key about my birthday for various reasons but other people decided to play dirty pool. One of my best friends got me a flat monitor that my eyes are still trying to get used to. Everything is so fresh and so clean-clean. One of my sisters even bought me a best German Chocolate cake, possibly my favorite cake of all cakes. Thanks again to everyone who got me a gift or said Happy Birthday. Damn you for making me smile about my birthday!
I only had two plans for this birthday. One of those plans: Root Beer and Pizza. Once again, even with lower-grade sources of both items, the combination managed to be the sure shot. The other plan was to draw something special. Since it was my 36th birthday and I’m a martial arts fan, there was only one choice: Gordon Liu as San-Te from the classic film “the 36th Chamber of Shaolin” from Shaw Studios. I’m still horrible at likenesses but it was still fun to draw this. It was a quick pic drawn after working the last work day of a week where I barely slept so I’m sure it could have been a lot worse.
I finally added the Vs. Maker Graphic Generator to ScrollBoss yesterday. What you can do is make a fake video game screenshot by making some choices on two different menus. You can choose from different game screen set-ups and characters from Capcom, Marvel, and DC along with screen set-ups from games starring those characters. Yes, I said DC, although none of the DC characters have the bigger background pictures (known as ‘portraits’) so the custom Justice League Task Force VS. screen doesn’t use portraits at all. This thing is still a work in progress and only the screens in the “Marvel Super Heroes” style work 100% accurately.
I’ve been mentioning it in posts since March 2007 and even linked to a cruddy beta test. It finally has an official spot on the ScrollBoss site after two years of scattered work and a huge scripting rewrite last week that allows more features like screens with four characters. There are still a few things I need to add before I can call the engine 1.00.
More graphics, characters, styles and companies will be added even when the engine isn’t updated. Obvious missing characters like Batman, the rest of the original 12 Street Fighters and SNK as a whole are at the top of the to-add list. The ability to make message board sigs and avatars will be added later. If you dig it or don’t, please let me know what you think in the comments section here.
I had to disable my graphics card because it started to run hotter than ever and kept making my system freeze up even more than usual. Due to this, almost everything in Windows XP happens in slow-motion. There is a soul-stabbing lag when scrolling Firefox pages, moving files in Explorer and, the worst part of all, doing almost anything in an art program. Due to that last bit, there will be no new full-color pics from me until this gets resolved. Since I’m working the least amount of real job hours I have in years, this may take a while unless my income tax returns decide to show up this week.
I’m still going through different programs to see what still works normally. One surprise is that WinKawaks somehow manages to work at full speed even when the screen is swarming with Xenomorphs in Alien vs. Predator by Capcom. That’s some seriously efficient programming.
This is just a heads up for anyone who visits Illmosis and ScrollBoss and also gets bored enough to read this blog. I planned to color the Green Lantern – Hal Jordan pic this week but that’s not possible now. I’ll try to do some B&W art to make sure there’s still an update this week. The ScrollBoss update is still on. In fact, I may work more on it since I can’t color anything right now.
After a solid month of wearing myself out on artwork, day job work, a painful walk to the post office that made my skeleton ache and a 2-day sickness that made all of that even worse, I’m staying in this weekend. I can’t make it to Free Comic Book Day at the local comic shop but it’s just as well since I’m too broke to make use of the crazy trade paperback sale the shop is having then. I have a huge amount of website work to catch up on so it’s probably for the best.
TU4AR.com stands for what everyone thought a site address bought and ran by Capcom stood for: Take yoU 4 A Ride, the famous character select screen music from Marvel vs. Capcom 2. It’s been rumored for a long time and even news of it being rated got everyone excited. Now it’s official.
Kotaku.com has news on it including the fact that there will be online support, special graphic filters for whiny pixel-phobes and every character will be unlocked from the get-go so you can dive right in with your favorite 3-fighter team.
This is good news for many game players all over the globe. MvsC2 has been out of print for years and it currently sells in the $70 to $90 price range on the dickery-encrusted aftermarket like eBay, Amazon sellers and stores that sell used games. Now it will be available over through X-Box Live and PlayStation Network for… $15. Just to rub it in, I hope Capcom starts selling the PS2 version again for cheap.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present a piece of G.I.JOE fan artwork that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Allow me to introduce you to the man, the myth, the legend: Big Lob.
Most of you won’t know who this is so let me tell you about him. He debuts in G.I.JOE the Movie in a scene where the Joes’ resident hard case, Beach Head, tests out each member’s skills only to be annoyed by their personality quirks. In Big Lob’s case, he treats the obstacle course like a sporting event complete while giving his own third-person commentary of his actions. This irks the hell out of Beach Head, which makes him sound like a grouchy comics-only G.I.JOE fan who lives within the cartoon itself. He didn’t appear in later episodes of the cartoon probably because production of the show went to another company after the movie was made. He never got an action figure or appeared in the comic book. He just disappeared. No Colorforms, Shrinky Dinks, Underoos or vinyl pencil case art. Dude just disappeared.
I knew dozens of G.I.JOE fans while I was growing up and none of them had a problem with Big Lob. Most of us wondered why Hasbro never gave him his own figure. That was until I got online and saw how he seems to be one of those characters that some people like to complain about. A few will even try to tell you that nobody likes the character. Whatever, man. Look, Big Lob is a strange character and is probably crazy but who wasn’t on that cartoon? That’s what made it a fun show to watch for kids who hadn’t become morose, uptight sad sacks yet. So while he may not be a mainstay like Duke and Snake-Eyes or one of those figures like Hit ‘n Run or Repeater that hardcore Joe fans (including me) are crazy about, let there be no doubt that Big Lob has a posse. Now he has a piece of fan art to back that up.
ScrollBoss: Now that I’m not scrambling to slap updates together every two weeks while also trying to make content for Illmosis, I’ve been able to finish some long overdue work.
The worst part was finally renaming and reformatting the last batch of sprites, over 100 files, from the old naming format. Before 2005 or so, I used to put files in the same folder so graphic file names started with “sprite” or “anim” for easy sorting. I’ve been converting 100’s files to the superior “sourcegame-platform_character_whatitdo.png” style off and on for years until I finished it Tuesday night. This also includes saving static stuff as PNG files. Then I had to (try and) find every page where I used those old sprites and fix the IMG tags. If reading that bored you, imagine living it. That’s some of the unseen behind-the-scenes crap I talk about in certain updates. The crazy part was finding sprites that I never added to the galleries like Drokmar’s “I have magics” jazz-hands pose and some stuff from Undercover Cops.
Next update’s ETA: March 6th. Kung Fu Master finally gets a graphic gallery while other random galleries get some additions. Magic Sword gallery gets a few new animations that I took for reference some reason. I want to kick in at least one sprite edit, but no promises.
Beans vs. Cornbread: I signed up to Twitter and I’m testing two different widgets in the sidebar. One has a ton of features but updates a bit more slowly than the second widget that’s just a simple script from the main site. My Twitter page is here so add me to your follow list. I may throw in links to preview and test stuff on there for quick feedback.
Illmosis: Continues to roll on. Just scanned B&W profile pic of an “earlier age” hero but I plan to have more than that this weekend. No new character profiles yet. Custom Lego Batmobile update IF I remember to get batteries.
I was just looking for a straight-up video of the song but somebody on the YouTubes followed the obvious idea with a good video: