Beating River City Ransom: Underground this week kept me in the mood for spriting more characters in the original NES game’s style. I’m still trying to find a balance between sticking in that original game’s look and trying more unique things like RCR:U did. Today’s batch features do-overs for sprites I’d edited from RCR sprites years ago (the Lee Bros. and some Street Fighter stalwarts), other teenage characters (including five with attitude), a few clownish characters (including my own character, Nutroll) and one man who will pity these fools.

also, one character that I thought I’d done for the Megaman NES style finally gets his turn:

You can now have such a thing as Thunderball Fists!

They’ve been added to the River City Ransom custom sprite page and, of course, the Fake Screenshot generator.

The Mega Man NES Boss Intro and Boss select screens now work in the new GFX Generator engine, and the Fakeshot (8-bit) generator has been update to use the v.2 versions, including the Shops from the separate River City Ransom Shop generator that was upgraded last week. New Mega Man-stype edits: Hawkwoman/Hawkgirl (DC Comics), Dr. Octopus (Marvel Comics), Doctor Emmitt Brown (Back to the Future) and Doctor Detroit.


The River City Ransom Shop generator was updated, too! Two new shops have been added: Good Burger, Daddy Green’s Pizza. New sprites include Ed (Good Burger), Lester Oakes (dissatisfied Good Burger customer), Daddy Green (the Last Dragon), the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (they heard a new pizza place was available!), Paul (River City Ransom: Underground), Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers, Batsu and Hinata (Rival Schools).

Those new sprites have been added to the Mega Man NES and River City Ransom custom sprite galleries

That’s not all! X-Men: CotA portraits of Jubilee and Gambit (made from Jim Lee art) have been added to the X-Men:CotA and main image generators!

Also: the part of the GFX Generator where you enter text now has a border for each entry and description so you’ll know exactly what’s what. Well, in the generator, not life itself.

Also: I’ve got FOUR commission slots open! Check out the Illmosis.net commissions page for all the details on how you can get me to make a sprite or two for you!

I couldn’t just let the 20th anniversary go by without doing at least a little something.

A new Alucard sprite has been added to the Castlevania Custom Sprite gallery and the main image generator.

There will be another small update in a few days, mainly adding the Mega Man NES screens to the new generator engine. Mega Man content is still a good way to get attention, isn’t it? I’m allowed to say that out loud, right?

Two new single image generators have been added: X-Men:Children of the Atom vs. screen and River City Ransom shops (newly added to the GFX Generator engine). Of course, there’s some new pixel art for you to have fun with in both of them!


Custom Sprites:
Marvel Comics: Phoenix/Jean Grey (MvC3 stance) and Mystique (Konami arcade stance)
River City Ransom: NES-style sprites of Provie, Bruno, Glen and Lilly (shop keeper) from River City Ransom: Underground, Ash Williams in S-Mart gear, the Merchant (RE4), and an improved Abobo (the old version was in the generator, but I didn’t like it enough to add it to the gallery).

Along with those sprites and the new generators, new CotA portraits made from art by Jim Lee and Alan Davis for Mystique, Jean Grey (redone), Phoenix, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Forge, Captain America and the Black Panther. The standalone CotA generator only has characters with all the necessary portraits and name graphics for the screen, but you can still use the one in the main image generator, even if the characters don’t have all the CotA goodies (though a few secretly have name graphics).

River City Ransom: Underground is finally on Steam! In honor of the game’s release, here’s a few new things for the site:

Kunio-kun: new separate gallery
River City Ransom: new separate gallery with new sprites of old-school Alex and Ryan and an improved sprite for RCR:U’s Bruno
Both new galleries also include the River City Ransom NES-style edits done for the River City Ransom shop maker in the old Fake Screen generator.

Mini-logos: new Conatus Creative section added with River City Ransom: Underground logo.

All of that newness has been added to the fight-scale GFX Generator.


One project taking up my time now is something I don’t think I can mention yet, but I’ll plug the bejeebus out of it once I can. It’s for something happening a few months from now, but deadlines like that can sneak up on you if you’re not careful, said the guy who can’t believe it’s almost March already.

Another thing I started working on is a new gallery system for the site. It’s so early that it’s not even in the galleries yet, but it’s already the framework for the new routine choosing the pics these headers. I also redid nearly all of the “corner box” images for them, and you’ll definitely spot some new ones shuffled into the mix.

Some of the sprites in this update are characters that I’ve wanted to sprite for years, but didn’t feel I was ready to do them justice until now. Each sprite was a sacrifice, they took hard work, they’re a way of liiiiiiiiiiiiife!

Custom Sprites
Movies: Bruce Leroy, Sho’nuff and Miss Laura Charles from Berry Gordy’s “The Last Dragon”
Technos: Bullova (Combatribes)
Atari: Tanya (Guardians of the ‘Hood)
Williams: Hit Man and Max Force from NARC

Mini-Logos
Movies: Four Last Dragon-related logos
Atari: Guardians of the ‘Hood

All of these things have been added to the main GFX Generator where you can make fake screenshots like the one at the top of this update post!

In honor of Double Dragon IV‘s release, today’s update is (almost) all Double Dragon! Don’t worry, the guest star will fit right in.


Double Dragon: Billy and Jimmy Lee (Super Double Dragon fight stance), Marian (D.D.1 outfit, D.D. Neo Geo stance), Abobo (classic, redone), Chin Taimei (NES outfit, redone), Abore (NES look).
– Technos: Renegade

Mini-Logos: Renegade added to Technos section.

All newness has been added to the GFX Generators, and so has a remake of the area outside the Dojo from Double Dragon III (NES). I also made adjustments to the engine that finally let me fix the X-Men Vs. screen name alignment for the second player.

Don’t worry, there will be more Double Dragon stuff hitting the site later this year, because you know I’ve got to celebrate the 30th anniversary year.


If you follow me on Twitter or Tumblr, you might have seen me post about opening up some sprite commission slots last week. All four commission slots were taken before I could post in other places and it went so well (and I have so few work hours at the day job right now) that I’ve opened four commission slots again! Please see the details on the Illmosis site’s commissions page if you’re interested!


edit: removed the Twitch video as it was causing the page to act funky. Will replace A.S.A.P.

I’m kicking off this year with a couple of beat ’em up series that didn’t get much attention here last year, and that’s by accident.

Custom Sprites: Those two series now have their own galleries:
Rushing Beat: new scratch-made sprites of Rick Norton, Douglas Bild, Wendy Milan, Lord J, Dieter/Iceman and some drones from the first two Rushing Beat games start this gallery off on the good foot.
Crime Fighters: new scratch-made sprites of Blood and Boomer replace their old Capcom-based sprite edits, and so do new sprites of a Vendetta/Crime Fighters 2 thug.

All of that has been added to the main GFX Generator, along with a new (and more accurate) version of the X-Men Vs. Screen. There are now options to choose the stage display, including one that isn’t in CotA.


A generator just for that game will be added in an X-Men-centric update later this year.

As of last week (and I was told the day before our last day there), I don’t have a regular account for my day job (though I got some fill-in hours here and there), so I’m running a sale on prints in the shop until things get better. 8×10/8.5×11 prints are $5 and the 11 x 17 and 11 x 14 prints are only $8! That’s for the line art and pixel art prints, including the non game-related prints in the Illmosis shop (where you’ll find more prints).

That’s a big update, but it feels like it’s missing something… or someone. Maybe he’ll show up later…

edit: Guess who showed up to the update?


added to the Movie gallery and GFX Generator.

Time to wrap it up, B!

Custom Sprites


(edit: I’m so tired that I didn’t even describe the new stuff)
DC Comics: Supergirl’s 2nd new sprite this year (didn’t have time to sprite her t-shirt and skirt outfit version until after the toy update)
Data East: a sprite of the Bad Dudes intro guy (an earlier version of the sprite was in the Mission Statement video) along with improved Blade and Striker sprites
Capcom: slightly-better Ton Pooh (and sisters) sprites
All sprites have been added to the main image generator.

First of all, let’s see all of the sprites that hit the galleries this year:


That’s not even counting sprites that were just in videos, like Link and Zelda with Triforces…

… and other things that I’m saving for later (a few were teased in this post).

One of the biggest goals this year was the rewrite of the image generator engine. The hard work paid off in a lot of big (the looser layer format allows for far better screen set-ups) and small ways (those links on the frame menu work on every appropriate screen). 2016 was spent getting it to work, converting the old content to the new format and working on new behind-the-scene tools for the new formats. The 2017 goal will be to convert the other generators and show you how much more the new engine can do now.


I’m not the only one doing a 2016 wrap-up, so check out these other party people out there doing the same!
VGJunk “THE 2016 VGJUNK REVIEW!”
Shunju Forest: “End of year post 2016 edition”


Just in case you haven’t heard, Arc System Works has announced Double Dragon IV for Playstation 4 and PC/Steam.


Some people may see the NES-centric style as a step back, but those were the last games where the series had a serious grip on gamers’ hearts. It doesn’t hurt that they seem to be leaning heavily on the NES version of Double Dragon II, a fan favorite which also made it into the NES Classic Edition (if you managed to get one). I hope this game turns out to be the start of more Double Dragon games, maybe even Double Dragon Neon 2.


Heads-up: there’s a game dev bundle on Humble Bundle right now that you may want to check out, even if you’re just thinking of trying your hand at making a game. One of the programs at the basic pay level, Spriter Pro, has a lot of praise from pixel artists and I’ll finally have my own chance to work with it.


I’m tired of typing, so I made a video to look back at the promo vids for 2016, including some new and altered clips just for this video. There’s also… never mind, it’s better if you see it for yourself.


Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see you in mid-January 2017!

You know, I think you’ve been a really good group of girls and boys this year, so I think I’ll let you open your gifts early this time. No corduroy pants and hats this year, it’s all toys!

Toys and Cartoons: Teela, Beast Man, Panthro, Rom: Spaceknight, Megatron, Kimber Benton
G.I. JOE: Snake-Eyes (figure 1), Cobra Commander, Destro, Cobra Trooper
DC Comics: Supergirl, Martian Manhunter (the sprite seen in the JLA pixel art poster)
Marvel Comics: Doctor Doom (Secret Wars ’84 outfit)

All those sprites are also in the new, main GFX Generator, along with two new toy card tributes and a new MotU font:

As always, many of the sprites, especially the Cobra Trooper, have extra palettes in the GFX Generator that aren’t seen in the main custom sprite galleires. After all, there’s no such thing as having too many Cobra Troopers!


(edit)
Elsewhere…

Arcade Quartermaster is getting 2017 started early with a group of new shrines: Star Wars arcade (hey, Star Wars toys are also a favorite), Outfoxies, Narc and Outrun!


Thanks for the stopping by and I hope you have a good time, no matter which holidays you celebrate!

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