October 23rd, 2014

The DangerTerrorHorrorThon started last week on ScrollBoss and the Elvira sprites were my personal favorite of the update. I’ve always wanted to draw Elvira, but I’m not good enough at likenesses yet to do her justice, so she has a cartoony Street Fighter Alpha 3-style portrait for now. The sprites, portrait and penciled line work for them are on the gallery page.

The second installment of the DangerTerrorHorrorThon hits ScrollBoss this Friday and will have at least six sprites in it. The first DTHT update got a better response than I expected, so I worked overtime to make this week’s update a big one. I’m getting ready to trace over the rough pencils I laid down for this week’s SFA-style portrait, so I’m going to keep this short. Thanks for checking this update out and be sure to hit ScrollBoss this weekend for more horror-themed goodness. I’ll be back here next week with more new content!

Categories: Illmosis updates, Site News by James Beaver
Tags: Elvira, horror, pixel art

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September 29th, 2014

So here’s the fully-shaded version of Gilius, though I still need to fix a few things here and there before making a background for him. I’ve also added sprites of the original starting lineup of Gauntlet, the legendary action dungeon crawling game by Atari. There’s even a 3-D rendered background for the characters, made for the GFX Generators on ScrollBoss. The Wizard and Valkyrie have work progress animations because I wasn’t rushing to make them like I was when working on the Elf and Warrior.

There have been quite a few updates on ScrollBoss, including one that had more than a dozen sprites from games released in 1989. Final Fight, Golden Axe, Strider, and many other games were represented, including a new Final Fight background. Some of those sprites will be making their way here over time, but I’m getting back to drawn artwork for a while, so there’ll be more of that here, too.

Categories: Illmosis updates, Site News by James Beaver
Tags: Gauntlet, golden axe, pixelart, The Revenge of 1989

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September 10th, 2014

Are you in the United States and dissatisfied with your internet connection? Is it too slow or does it go out all the time? Then imagine that connection gets even crappier. You won’t have to imagine it if politicians, including those who received a lot of campaign dollars from those cable companies, vote to allow internet providers to slow down any website that doesn’t pay an internet toll for sites to move at the speed they’re supposed to in the first place. We need to raise a ruckus and tell politicians that we know what some of them are up to and won’t stand for it. Learn how you can do that at the Battle for the Net website.

Categories: Illmosis updates, Site News by James Beaver
Tags: Battle for the Net

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August 29th, 2014

This new pic of Gilius is something I wanted to draw before the 2014 All AmeriCon, but my back injury slowed me down too much to get to it. Still, it’s early for next year, right? I also added the latest Tyris Flare sprite to her old gallery page. There’s a short work progress anim to show some of the steps I took in making it.

Those of you who like pixel art should check out the ScrollBoss site, because I just updated it with new sprites of Poison and Roxy from Final Fight and a few more criminally-minded characters, including a nefarious Golden Axe enemy that everyone hates. Hey, that means both updates fit the Revenge of 1989 theme I have going on at ScrollBoss right now! Okay, I’m the only one that would care about that, BUT STILL.

Categories: Illmosis updates, Site News by James Beaver
Tags: golden axe, pixel art, The Revenge of 1989

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August 1st, 2014

Here’s a bit of unfinished business from earlier in the year. Eddie “Skate” Hunter (known as Sammy in Japan) and Max Thunder. The Altered Beast gallery page was updated with a work progress .GIF of the Werewolf and the background now has colors that mimic the first round.

Hey, remember during SDCC when everybody said, “It’s Batman Day because it’s his 75th anniversary of existing in comics!” as if we didn’t do that two months ago. I know we did that, because I made a sprite for it. So, instead of making another sprite of Batman, I made the sprite of the Batman-ish boss from the early version of the Revenge of Shinobi:

The Revenge of Shinobi, along with Altered Beast, is one of those great games that came out in 1989. That’s the theme I’m celebrating for ScrollBoss this year, and I’ll be drawing some regular line art related to those games, too. Here’s some pixel art to celebrate Guardians of the Galaxy hitting theaters:

I don’t have to tell you who this is, right? The pose (and quick background) is based on Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers’ art from Tales to Astonish #13. There will be a Guardians sprite page in a future update.

I’ve just started moving into the new place and there will be some downtime for Illmosis and ScrollBoss for a while. My left arm and back still has trouble when I use that arm too much (an accident that happened back in May), so I’m going to be a bit wiped out after that’s done.

Categories: Illmosis updates, Site News by James Beaver
Tags: Altered Beast, Groot, Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel Comics, pixelart, Sega, Shinobi series, Streets of Rage, The Revenge of 1989, The Revenge of Shinobi

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July 19th, 2014

There’s a 14th Anniversary ScrollBoss update with a few recreations of old-school sprites and the werewolf from Altered Beast is one of them. The new gallery page will be for all the scratch-made Altered Beast sprites I’ve done, including the Neff and Headless Horror sprites. No work progress animations yet, but I also show the line work for the Werewolf and Neff-Rhino sprites. I still need to get ready to move, so the next few updates will probably have catch-up work with all the sprites I haven’t added here yet.

Memoirs of a Virtual Caveman, a book about classic video (and more), is now available in a new and improved form! Check it out at http://www.memoirsofavirtualcaveman.net!

Categories: Illmosis updates, Site News by James Beaver
Tags: Altered Beast, pixelart, Sega

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July 11th, 2014

I’m still recovering from the great time at the All AmeriCon and still packing up and sorting things about before moving, so I don’t have a lot of newness this week. Lego Spidey is in base color mode (with fixed-up linework) and the Madame Hydra/Viper sprite from last week is now on the Marvel Villains gallery page. No work-progress .GIF for that yet, but I’ll try to have that ready for next week.

I opened up an Illmosis page on Facebook (I know, I know), because Facebook is the only site a lot of people want to be. I don’t know why, but that’s how it is. Here’s the link:
Illmosis Facebook page
This will be a page for everything on the Illmosis Network, including ScrollBoss and Beans vs. Cornbread.

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I had a great time at the All AmeriCon convention this year, but that was a given. I’d like to thank everyone at All American Comics for putting on a great show, especially in an area that needs it. I’d also like to thank Jim Steranko (who I didn’t get to meet and will regret that forever) and Darryl Banks (ultra-super nice guy and great artist) for being there. Apologies to anyone I couldn’t remember, but I’d been running on the Sleep Deprivation Express for about a week and my brain was mush. My favorite part, as always, was getting to hang out with the other creative folks who were there. Check out the following links to see some work from those fine, fine people.

AJ Sabino
deviantART – Tumblr

Chris Kasmar
deviantART

Jason Liccardi: Creative Insanity
DeviantArt – Facebook page – Instagram

John Hazen
UnderCity Fair

Kat Foley
deviantART – Tumblr

PixelBits: purveyors of geeky commodities
Facebook page – Store Envy

Daniel P. Gorman
www.dangormanart.com

There are some people I’ve missed (never got the info on whoever was selling those kick-butt decals, but I got an awesome Hydra decal in an art trade), so feel free to leave a reply here if you were there! I also have a few prints left over, so check out the Prints page to get something!

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ScrollBoss visitors: while I might be able to have an update on the 19th for the site’s 14th anniversary, it’s not going to be big. Getting ready to move will take up a lot of time and I’m still unsure when the actual move date will be. So, to make up for that, we’re going to party in August and September. Why? That’s the 8th and the 9th months of the year, and that fits in perfectly with the Revenge of 1989 theme!

Categories: Illmosis updates, Site News by James Beaver
Tags: All AmeriCon, Lego, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man

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July 5th, 2014

It’s a celebration, the party flyer’s here. As always, timed to be given out at the All-AmeriCon convention in Warren, Ohio on July 6th. That’s tomorrow! I’ll be giving out this flyer at my table in Artist’s Alley.

Also: the Prints page is up! My prints are made at PerfectPosters.com and I’ll either ship them myself or ship directly from them, depending on what’s ordered and what I have left from the con. I’ve been fixing up the pics that I could fix for the 8×10 format to ensure that they don’t look too pixelated. I’ll be adding more old fixed-up pics as time goes on along with doing new things specifically for prints, including bigger prints. Transactions will be through Paypal. Please excuse the shoddy nature of that page, as I had to rush to get it finished before the convention. Expect an improved version very soon (probably in the next update).

BTW: There is a small ScrollBoss update today that celebrates two of the big guests at the All-AmeriCon: Darryl Banks and Jim Steranko. Which sprites did I make? Go look for yourself by following this link!

Categories: Illmosis updates, Site News by James Beaver
Tags: party flyer

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June 27th, 2014

Yeah, I finished a picture of Optimus for the first time since, what, 1999? Yes, it’s long overdue. I’ve been haulin’ astrofuel trying to get this pic done and watching G1 eps on Netflix to keep the momentum going. The unfortunate side effect is that my brain is now filled with good-bad Transformer puns. I’m sure that shift will eventually wear off after time.

I just ordered color prints for my table at All AmeriCon. They cost a bit more this time, so I couldn’t get as many as I did before. It’s still worth it, because the test batch I got a week ago look ultra-nice. Unfortunately, my wallet is going to be crying for a while, but that’s how it goes.

Speaking of the convention, check out this news article about it. It’s great to see the con getting more press and I hope that leads to a bigger turn out. Remember, Jim Steranko and Darryl Banks are going to be there, so check out the convention on July 6th if you can make it to Warren, Ohio!

edit: No, I didn’t time this to hit when the new Transformers movie hit theaters. I’m old, so don’t get me started on that turbo-roddin’ movie punks.

Categories: Illmosis updates, Uncategorized by James Beaver
Tags: '80s, Hasbro, Optimus Prime, Transformers

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June 20th, 2014

I’ve spent most of this past week reworking (or trying to rework) some pictures so I could get better prints of them for the convention. Still, I had to have something new for the site this week, so check out the line work for the Spider-Man picture I’m working on. I don’t know if I’ll have this finished for the All AmeriCon convention (in Warren, Ohio on July 6th), but at least it’s something new.

Also, thanks to a site recommendation from artist Julie Zarate, I’m getting my color prints from a new place and might be able to start selling prints on this site. Some of them will be more than just the pics you can see on this site and I’ll have more about that once I get everything ironed out.

Categories: Illmosis updates, Site News by James Beaver
Tags: Lego, Marvel, Spider-Man

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