Edit: I drew a picture of Longway in semi-relaxed mode in tribute for the site’s 7th anniversary. Why? Because there are seven letters in his name and I needed a non-action shot of him. The other picture is design tweak of Beatdown. She has a design that I’ve been messing with for years but this is one that I’m fully happy with. I probably said the same thing when I drew her last year, but I really mean it this time. I have a paid commission to do and this picture shook off some of the pencil rust before I get down to the detail work on it. This picture WILL get the full color treatment later. Why did I draw her? Because I screwed up and thought today was the 8th anniversary so I drew a character with eight letters in their name. That kind of mistake is appropriate for this screwy site. Besides, I’ve been trying to get a decent design and picture of her for a long time so I’m just glad to have one.
I’m very, very sorry for the long gap of time without updates. I just added scratch-made sprites from last week’s giant ScrollBoss site update: A Metroid, Firebrand (from Capcom’s G’nG series and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3), Robin (classic outfit) and another Elevator Action Deluxe agent sprite.
I planned to do some art on the site to update this site along with with getting the upgrade for the ScrollBoss generators done AND getting the War Begins Again work started but October was a tough, hectic month. As big as that ScrollBoss update was, there was supposed to be even more than that. Yes, really. I’ll have to re-arrange the project schedule on some of it and save them for bigger things. I still can’t promise a weekly schedule again just yet but I’ll try to stay close to it. Happy Halloween!
WPGH 53 Pittsburgh used air the greatest superhero show ever back in the 70’s before I was even in Kindergarten. They took all of the syndicated packages of 60’s hero cartoons, usually shows made of up multiple short stories back then, and made this insane hyper-adventure mixtape. You could see Iron Man, Green Lantern and the Herculoids in the same half-hour. One of my favorite intros from that show was…
… Aquaman, King of the Seven Seas. The epic theme song and interesting undersea setting hooked me but I think I was drawn to the idea of being able to creatively solve problems AND punch bad guys in the grill. Today is the 70th anniversary of his first comic book and a website called the Aquaman Shrine is celebrating in full force. I’ll celebrate here by posting my own Aquaman stuff:
While I’m at it, here’s a fake Vs. screenshot with Aquaman vs. Black Manta from the ScrollBoss GFX Generator. I used Capt. America as a base for Aquaman and Cyclops for Manta.
I don’t have much to show off this time. I’ve been working on different things and I’ll show previews of them in a bit. The one new thing you’ll see is that the Elevator Action Deluxe sprite now has a mini-logo with it. I worked on a few mini-logos to bulk up the ScrollBoss update stew so the return update will be a big one. Converting pre-existing logos into mini-logos and making some from scratch must’ve been good practice for making my own logos designs. I think I’ve done at least one a week for the past month. Here’s one I’m working on for the Ace of Clubs:
Here’s something from a design sketch for another character in the same universe as Exemplar:
… and you know what that means if you know what program that is. Yeah, I know you didn’t know I got down like that. I started working on full-sized layouts for the real pages this week, too.
Northeast Ohio people: UnderCity Game Fair, a tabletop Role-Playing Game event, will take place at the All-American Comics shop in Warren, Ohio on September 17th. Check out the website to see the main line-up of games that’ll be run during the event. We don’t have a lot of events in this area so give this one a shot next week!
E’s! E’s everywhere! This update has a full-color debut of an old concept of mine that I didn’t fix until recently alongside a sprite of a classic game remake that just came out this week. Exemplar (who may get a name change before she appears in a story) is part of Project TC but will also appear in the “War Begins Again” project. I’m still working on the new version of this style so I’ll apologize in advance for differences in the pics. The second piece of newness is the male spy agent from the new Elevator Action Deluxe, a stylized revival of the old Taito arcade game. I don’t have it yet but having the director of Elevator Action Returns is a sign that it’s going to be good. I plan to wait until I have the game before making any more sprites so I’ll have proper reference for them.
A new Sheol sprite has been added along with Aaron Pinsky’s profile of his character. Click on the sprites in this update to check out the page with the rest of the Sheol sprites and character biographies. BTW: I still have two sprite commission slots open so have a look at the commission price list to see if the prices are right for you.
Work continues on Project TC and includes a character that isn’t ready to show off yet. I can post a teaser just to prove that I’m working on it:
Here’s another picture from the earlier experiments in this style:
A few of you will recognize something in the background of the second preview pic. Yes, that’s coming back when this project hits this year and there will be a new and improved version of it at some point in the future. I think I’ve been annoyingly cryptic enough for one day. Have a good weekend!
This is based on the first issue of the 90’s Black Lightning comic written by Tony Isabella and by drawn Eddy Newell, one of my favorite runs of any comic. I’ve always wanted to make a sprite of that cover’s pose but waited until I had the scratch-spriting skills to do it justice.
This sprite was made for a pixelart side-project that I’ve been messing around with for about two years now. I’ve either posted altered or cropped versions of the sprites as previews but never posted 100% visible versions of the sprites. This is the closest I’ve come to showing a whole sprite from that and even this one is altered and slightly covered up. I made one sprite edit and another scratch sprite for the same project yesterday but this is all you’re getting of that scratch sprite…
The picture of the original Lego Batman is inked and has base colors laid down. I made some changes before inking it but I still have a few problems with it.
Lots of progress was made on different projects last week. Some of it was sprite work but I made a lot of progress on one of the big features I’d always planned to have for the GFX Generators on ScrollBoss. The ScrollBoss weblog has a progress post that I keep updating as I improve this new feature. That is the type of work I can get done when I pass up doing small updates to work on long-term content.
The biggest thing I did this weekend wasn’t exactly something I made but finally coming up with a name for something I’ve had on the back burner for nearly a decade now.
There is a tag in the galleries that most people probably never noticed because I’ve barely posted any pictures that use it. That, and the tag, will be changing this year. I finished a logo for one of the first real things you will see from this concept but I can only show you part of it:
Every name I’d come up with for this turned out to be taken until I thought of this one last week. Even the first version of it was taken for the location in a book but a quick adjustment led to an even better name. The crazy thing is that part of the already taken name I had earlier turned out to fit perfectly with another word for the overall concept. There won’t be a year’s worth of teases for this one because I’m putting this one out there as soon as I get a few things in order.
I finished another sprite from Aaron Pinsky’s Sheol stories and added it to the gallery page. This sprite has one of the sneakiest faces I’ve ever sprited. Mr. Pinsky also provided a short bio for the character so be sure to check that out, too. I spent most of last week working on page layout ideas and other things that I can’t show you yet. There isn’t much else I can post other than a preview of a Lego Batman pic that still needs some work before I ink it. I wasn’t going to post it until I had it inked but this update needs more content.
The Wasp and Diamondback sprites from last week’s ScrollBoss update now have gallery pages on this site. Both have Work Progress animations that show you many of the steps I took to make the sprites. The ScrollBoss site is officially on pause for a while but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be new pixel art in later updates. I’ll be using that extra time to work on projects that I’ve been working on for a long time. The screenshots you’ll see below this post are from one of those projects and were taken as I worked on the logo this weekend. I posted these pics on my Ill Side-Mission Tumblr and I’ll try to do things like that more often.
Edit: I drew a picture of Longway in semi-relaxed mode in tribute for the site’s 7th anniversary. Why? Because there are seven letters in his name and I needed a non-action shot of him. The other picture is design tweak of Beatdown. She has a design that I’ve been messing with for years but this is one that I’m fully happy with. I probably said the same thing when I drew her last year, but I really mean it this time. I have a paid commission to do and this picture shook off some of the pencil rust before I get down to the detail work on it. This picture WILL get the full color treatment later. Why did I draw her? Because I screwed up and thought today was the 8th anniversary so I drew a character with eight letters in their name. That kind of mistake is appropriate for this screwy site. Besides, I’ve been trying to get a decent design and picture of her for a long time so I’m just glad to have one.
