ScrollBoss spending December celebrating how insanely magical 1989 was for video games. The December 27th update was my favorite despite the ridiculous amount of sleep I lost working on it. I’ve never kicked out so many sprites from scratch at once and the Death Adder sprite is probably the best pixel art I’ve done yet. The updates may have looked big but no one would believe all the unfinished stuff there is for this including sprites, articles and even a theme song. I’ll save some of that for the 25th Anniversary of 1989 if I’m still working on the site by then.

Twofold month on Illmosis with a preview of the Twofold #1, Twofold’s sprite. and new logo

The Halloween update on ScrollBoss with Castlevania:SOTN sprite edits and a Alucard sprite from scratch, the Altered Beast werewolf and Rick from Splatterhouse. Plus, that Morrigan sprite edit turned out better than I thought it would.

A nice chunk of the Art Redemption List got some justice this year by drawing much better versions of things that I did a horrible job on the first time.

Art that turned out to not be crap:

The Vs. Maker Graphic Generator. It’s an experiment that has taken on a life of it’s own. It’s always fun to see people come up with team-ups and fights that I never would have thought of. Those custom mini-logos are fun to make, too.

The restart of Nutroll: the Illness that mainly got stopped (again) by the malfunctioning computer I was using. I almost literally flipped out due to all the computer freezes while trying to color the first page. Page One will be fixed before I get back to work on it in early 2010.

My favorite thing of the year is the reaction to this picture. This was just one of those crazy things that pops into my head a lot and figured it just needed to be drawn. I’d like to thank everyone who took time out to say how much they liked it because you made my 2009 a lot better than it would’ve been otherwise. As Brawn once said, “Mushy, but true.”

Alright, it’s time for me to get back to work on stuff for 2010. I’ll be working on a comic page tonight and I’ll have some announcements to make here in the coming weeks.

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.

I was going through parts of this blog as I fix some things with the template and I decided to check out the older ScrollBoss Anniversary posts. It wasn’t until I looked at the 8th ScrollBoss Anniversary post that I remembered how plans for a big update were brutally murdered by computer problems much like they were this year. Thanks to a good friend of mine who helped me out by getting a bunch of the bigger parts of it, I’ll have yet another new system some time this month. Thanks to a sale at Newegg.com, I was able to buy a new hard drive that has more space than all my old hard drives put together but was cheaper than any of them (not counting the 20 GB drive that came with my 1st computer). Hopefully the whole shebang will be put together next week. Sorry for not being as productive as I used to be and I hope that upgrading from “the NewOld computer” to the “NewNew” computer will let me annoy you with more of my lame creations than every before.

I can change the transparency, color and size ratio on the shadows and there are 3 new screenstyles that use them. New characters include Adam Hunter, Mr. X (Streets of Rage), Joker, Lex Luthor, the Flash, Martian Manhunter, Solomon Grundy, Star Sapphire.

Sprite Edits – Additions to the DC Comics page:

Flash’s pose looks like a transition sprite before running but it’s also based on this cover. Luthor has the twin pistols from JLU episode, “Destroyer” but I’ll probably make later variation where he has some crazy 70′s weapon with him. Joker’s sprite is an alternate angle of that Carmine Infantino pose that Mego used on his toy packaging. Solomon Grundy is just being crazy.

Also started a brand-new Toys and Cartoons page with two headliners from the 80′s. You’ll have to go there to see those two.

Other stuff: New additions to the Mini Logo page include Edi.E, Metamorpho, Mr. Fantastic, Mr. X, Lex Luthor, the Question, Scarlet Witch, Star Sapphire, Solomon Grundy, the Thing, Tyrant (Resident Evil) and the Vision. I’m also hosting some old MUGEN stages done by some friends of mine including some G.I.JOE, MOTU, DC and Marvel based stuff. You can find those here.

1.) Company Index: Like a hub page for a company’s content on the site. This area will mostly be ignored because it’s not sprites.

2.) Sprite Edits: Hey, sprites! Mario and Sonic done from scratch just to mess with the heads of those that think I don’t like the characters. Dammit, the internet is full of GOOD Mario and Sonic sites! That’s why I also made sprite edits of characters like Damnd from Final Fight, Rick Norton and Kazan from Brawl Brothers and Thomas from Kung-Fu Master. They don’t get enough fan love so I try to be there when I can. Also: sprite edits of Haggar, Solid Snake and multiple Batmans.

3.) Vs. Maker: Look, it’s more sprites! Still no update to the engine but a lot of characters got added. Batman is finally in there and is the only DC character to have a portrait so far. See? That makes him more special so that should make you happy.

4.) MugenBoss: I fixed and added more things that no one cares about except that it looks better. Here’s one cool thing donated by Kiwi and Shin Otaru:

I still can’t get over how Kiwi make the graphics from scratch. You can see the whole pic and more by checking out his deviantART page. If you have the MUGEN fighting game, you can download the real stage here.

EDIT:
I should have linked to the 7th and 8th Anniversary posts. Consider it done.

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’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.

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.