The biggest thing for me was finally making a Twofold sprite that didn’t look like complete crap. That’s not a sprite made from a pre-existing sprite but was made from scratch. Instead of just posting it to Illmosis, I added Twofold to the Vs. Maker generator. I just added a few other things like new logos for the other characters you see in the screenshot. Yes, Balrog’s logo is supposed to look a bit familiar.

Final Fight: Poison vs. Billy

There’s a new ScrollBoss:Minus World section article on how some female characters were replaced with males in some 16-bit video games. The article is called Sidbillies for reasons that get explained early on. For the record, I didn’t even notice the “wardrobe detail” in the last character mentioned until I looking at the screenshots I took for the article. Everything right before that “ellipses” crap I pulled was what I originally had before I saw… well, you’ll see it. It was also pure luck that it turned out to be all about a ninja character.

I also put up a preview of the new Vs. Mode that I’m still working on. I used the old characters (but mostly new sprite edits) of characters from the “2002 Superninjas” tournament. It was an old series of polls in which the choice with the lowest vote got removed. The version that I plan to have ready in 2010 will be like no other poll you’ve wasted your time on just because you didn’t vote for Link, Squall or Master Chief.

And that’s what I’ve been up to. Sorry for all these posts about my sites but I’m not doing much of anything else right now Sad, isn’t it?

After everything I did to try and do something special for 9/9/09 for my ninja character, Twofold, I was too tired to really tell anyone after it was all finished and uploaded. I didn’t even get around to making a post here. The main thing was a preview version of the upcoming “Twofold #1″ page 2. Yes, page 2. Why? Because this was almost page one. I kept flip-flopping back and forth over whether or not I should start with this or have a page that almost explains why there’s a ninja battle going on in the woods. Forcing myself to get a preview page done on the 9th was a way of forcing myself to “s*** or get off the pot” with this story that I’ve been messing with for about three years. The good thing is that I finally came up with a done-in-one story that will give you nearly all the info you need for liking Twofold and Master Hsu. Master Hsu, along with supporting character Dr. Wu, appear on page 1 which leads into him semi-narrating the page through smack talk with his captors. Another reason the page you see now is a prototype is because some of that dialogue will be on pages 1 and 3 in the final version. Other new thangs added to the Twofold section include an early version of the new and improved Twofold logo. I scanned it in and made a quick mouse-vectored and CG’ed version of it right after finishing the comic when I should’ve been sleeping. It’s been added to the Twofold pages but a better one will done at a later date. I did a quick profile pic of Amy Mao from the Five Eyes school but didn’t have time to start coloring it yet. Finally, I added the first full-sized (11 x 17 inches) color comic pic I drew of Twofold and a sketch page that has Twofold, Passion Tanaka, characters from the Five Eyes school and some characters outside of the Twofold book like Nutroll.

I’ve been working on bits of ScrollBoss and there will be an update either this week or next week. One of those things may be a preview of the new Vs. Mode section. I had to put a modified poll script together along with data scripts for displaying info about the fights whether or not they’re still active. I can finish enough to get the “after the battle” section working to recreate the ending of the 2002 Superninja tournament that Final Fight’s Guy won back in 2002. There are some crazy RPG-style elements I need to finish for the new version so it’ll be a while before I can start the fights again. No one really reads this blog so I don’t have to rush like people are looking forward to this.

Some of my Saturday was spent getting a few more things set up on my computer only to discover that the new version of Image-Line’s site instantly recognized my old registration for FL Studio. Being able to save music files again means that I can get back to work on the background music for various projects. I’m no Hoyt Curtin or Johnny Douglas but it’s nice to have that program music program working for me again.

Those who visited the now-defunct Bad(ass) Movies channel on Mogulus may have seen something that is close to the hearts of many 30-something Kung-Fu flick junkies. That’d be this:

That is the intro to Kung-Fu Theater. When I was a young’un back in the 80′s, this show would start right when the Saturday Morning Cartoons were over and delivered a weekly dose of cinematic assbeatery. Words, especially as clumsily as I use them, cannot express how much I looked forward to seeing that promo. During the original run you could catch anything from a Shaw Brothers classic like Superninjas (“Secret Weapons? YA BASTIDS!!!”) to a movie where, I swear to Grodd, a Kung-Fu master rides a wooden horse and increases his power by drinking urine. No, I’m not making that up and I have the tape somewhere. This show lead to a lot of things.

1.) 2:01 PM: I believe that Kung-Fu Theater started at noon and ended at 2:00 PM. At 2:01 PM, tons of male children in our apartment complex ran outside and began to fake-fu and beat the Wooden Horse Piss out of each other. Imagine the forest fight from Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain redone with kids fighting with broomstick bo staffs, improvised nunchacku (more on that later) and their tiny bare hands. Describing these wars with the word “epic” would be a insult to our life-and-death struggles beneath the Saturday afternoon sun and above the parking lot asphalt. No one really hit each other but you couldn’t tell because years of beat boxing gave us the power to provide all the necessary sound effects of beating each other to death. I think back on it now and, dammit, we were some amazing and psychotic kids.

2.) Improvised Nunchaku: Some kids bring out some kind of stick to use as a bo staff and most of us rolled into the fray barehanded like Golden Arms, leader of the Chi Sah gang. A few of us possessed a power developed by Poison Clan of the Five Deadly Venoms (especially the Lizard). No one was more brave than the few who had the cast iron nerve to take one of their mother’s broomsticks, cut it in half, attach each half to a piece of rope and wade into battle with the almighty Improvised Nunchaku. On the Universal Scale of Weaponry, it still ranks above the Fatal Flying Guillotine and Mike Haggar’s lead pipe but slightly below the Eternian Power Sword and the Crissaegrim. Why was it so fearsome? Imagine the beating you’d get for cutting one of your mother’s broomsticks in half. Yeah. Due to this, the Improvised Nunchaku was the sign of a true B.M.F. of the highest order.

3.) Influence: This show was the reason that I got addicted to the genre and love these movies by the pound. Most Hollywood action flicks are pretty predictable in how people fight. But Kung-Fu movies seem to have an infinite amount of ways to beat someone down with the human hand or foot and that’s before you start bringing in both real and imaginary weapons. I didn’t care if the movies didn’t always make sense or that the voices and mouths didn’t sync properly. So what? Those movies were high-octane awesome and reality need not apply in this kind of escapism. Beyond the violence, I always loved the constant underdog status that many of the movies had. The theme of rebels fighting the Chings or Japanese occupation had a social resonance beyond its own setting. Plus, you can’t beat watching people fight social injustice by kicking the hell out of it.

Aw hell yeah. This was back when I started to make up my own characters and I thought it’d be cool to have a martial arts character. I didn’t know that much about martial arts so I made him a ninja superhero so I put “that weird swirly thing from the beginning of Kung Fu Theater” on Snake-Eyes’ comic book outfit. After years of changes, that character became the man that you see to the side of this text: Twofold. ORIGINAL CHARACTER DON’T STEAL. Sorry, that’s an internet habit. Seriously, if Kung-Fu Theater never existed or even had that intro, I never would’ve made Twofold. Many of the supporting characters like his teacher Master Hsu and Sean Chan were inspired by sitting in front of Grandma Marva’s big floor model TV to watch the adventures in this world that was just as exciting, heroic, violent and bugged-out as the comic books I was already hooked on. These movies also inspired my appreciation of the Beat-Em-Up video game genre of games like Final Fight, Double Dragon and Streets of Rage. That love is on display on a certain fansite that I created that lead to me making a lot of great online friends. I don’t care how corny that sounds, because it’s damned true. So as much as I thank all the filmmakers, directors, actors, teachers and others who made those flicks possible, I also want to thank the gang who put USA’s Kung Fu Theater and especially those who made that intro. I owe that person a lot. Maybe even a pair of Improvised Nunchaku.

The Nutroll: The Illness teaser page is done and uploaded to the site. Finally. By finished, I mean that my shambling, bloodstained shell of flesh limped to the finish line with this thing because nearly everything on this damned planet was trying to keep me from doing this. The sketchbook with layouts for pages 1 through 3 is one of the only two things that I haven’t found since having to move in February. The other thing? G.I. JOE the Animated Movie on DVD. In other words, fate decided that I should stop “Nutroll: the Illness” at the teaser and that I should be denied the glory of watching Big Lob make his move. People seem to like the teaser so far and that seals the fact that I should just leave it as a teaser until I find the original layouts for the next few pages. Besides, I have some website and commission artwork to do now.

Here’s the Thank You pic drawn to show my appreciation for 20,000 visits to Illmosis’ front page. Not bad considering how many people go straight to the galleries instead of the index page. Oh-damn-well. The theme of the picture is “two” and features Two.P from Capcom’s Final Fight, my character Twofold and the ultra-legendary Mr. Wrestling #2. I wanted to draw a bigger piece that also had Duo Damsel, Jack-2 from Tekken 2, Two-Bad from Masters of the Universe, the Two-Gun Kid, the evil twin brothers Tomax and Xamot from G.I.JOE and Two-Face. Between all the work I’d put into the comic and my sinus problems getting bad enough to make my head throb, I cut it down to 3 characters with outfits that had a nice place to stop before getting to the legs. That’s why Mr. Wrestling #2 is in a suit. Plus, I’d never drawn a masked wrestler in a suit, one of the coolest visuals known to the frail eyes of mankind. Two.P is there because I can’t think of a reason to not draw Two.P when the chance makes itself known AND I could cut him off at the bottom of the coat. Not that you asked, but still.

Most of the grunt work was done at a resolution where I can convert a lot of it to be put in a book. All the extra cleaning and detail work is what made this take so long. I figured that I may as well do it like that since it was already late for the site. It’s good to have that danged page done.

I’m a sucker for comic book reference material so my soul was filled with the happy after reading the Newsarama story about the upcoming All-New Iron Manual by Eliot Brown, the technical adviser to the old Marvel Universe handbooks and the original Iron Manual. This book will drop mad science (as the 90′s would say) about more armors than most people even know exist. Remember that 1990′s armor that got it’s own foil comic book cover only to be replaced about 10 issues later? There’s new art of it in that Newsarama link. That’s thorough, group. I’m sure that most comic blogs all over the interbutts have posts all about the cool technical bits of the MU Handbooks, but I’ll have to make my own personal list one day.

In epic happy real life news, the owner of these apartment buildings I’m living in announced that he won’t add gas meters to the rest of the apartments and will put that money towards fixing the shoddy 1970′s insulation. These places have some really bad draft zones and it looks like it’d be cheaper to just fix those than to add gas lines.

Legendary blogger David Campbell closes down Dave’s Long Box, his comic book blog. This was one of the first blogs that I ever checked out on a consistent basis and I’m sorry to see it close. It’s all for good reasons because he’s busy with all sorts of good stuff such as blogging for ABC. If, for some reason reason that defies the odds of reality itself, you’ve never checked out either blog, go and give both spots a read and be fully entertained.

Work on Nutroll:The Illness continues! These people will be on monitors in the background. They were drawn with the hasteness since you’ll barely be able to see them anyways.

I bought two more Cobra Troopers this weekend which brings my grand total up to 10. They had two more and I had more than enough money to buy them but I decided not to be a hoarder and left them for someone else to get. 10 is probably enough for any set-up or diorama I want to do anyway.

Another reason for putting the rest of the story on pause is that I’ve finally decided that I’m going to put together a small comic. Yes, a real comic made of paper and ink and staples. Depending on how much money I have by the time the work is done, it will either be a small ashcan comic or a real B&W comic with a color cover. Expect to hear more about this in a few weeks.

That’s right: Tiny Titans. Aw Yeah TITANS!

Nutroll Comic Page

See that creepy looking picture that’s the cover for Nutroll: The Illness? That’s temporary artwork quickly colored from what will eventually be the real cover. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to draw it all not to mention that it’s potentially spoiler-based. Once you see the end of Chapter one and see the cover, you’ll get what I mean. The funny thing is that I almost didn’t even have that temp version done because it kept coming up as “invalid file” when I tried to open it up in PaintShopPro this morning. I almost deleted the file out of psychotic rage. Minutes later, everything else running on my computer stopped working and I had to restart. Once I restarted and the ScanDisk check ran, the file reopened and everything else was okay. Luckily, that was the only stupid April Fool’s Joke I got hit with today.

Work: Started working a third cleaning account two weeks ago but I’ll be back down to two next week unless more sudden news pops up.

Hands: Right hand still has a clickly middle finger and is at 90% and the left hovers between 50% and 80%. Good enough to draw without pain. Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two.

Ear vs. Steak Knife: The steak knife is gone for now but I still have some throat pain and a buzzy headache. Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two.

Legs & Spine: Not really getting better since having to move during the crappiest week this winter. All these aches may worse thanks to the Ear vs. Steak Knife virus/allergies/whatever-the-butt-it-is. I spent part of last weekend walking with a cane but was still faster than most people walking through Wal-Mart. Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two.

Illmosis site comic design: Most this week’s free time went into writing a comic script/template/page design for the site that works like my galleries do. You can see a poot-butt preview version of it by clicking that link. For now, it only needs to be just good enough for the upcoming Nutroll:the Illness including redrawn panels. Guess what? Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two and aching hands that hurt when typing.

Sorry for not being around on the internet too much lately. I’ll try to post some good news, fun stuff and reviews once I get the chance.

• a pain like Sonny Chiba punched me in the throat hard enough to make my neck explode in slow motion.
• my head being inflated by the guy from Dig Dug but not enough to explode because he had to turn around and pump up a Pooka that was sneaking up on him.
• the feeling that someone tripping off Angel Dust is feverishly rattling a steak knife around inside my right ear as if there’s still some peanut butter stuck in the corners and grooves.
• that time Monday night when I coughed up Slimer from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.

If you know me from anywhere else, I apologize for not posting much and for how my posts are more garbled than usual.