This update has new and updated Capcom sprites, some fixes and additions to earlier updates, and a new video!

Mini-Logos:
– Capcom: Street Fighter 2010
– DC Comics: Wonder Twins

As usual, all these new things have been added to the main Image Generator, where you can make (and right-click save) your own images like the one at the top of this news post!

I also made a video that recaps what I’ve posted and made during the first half of 2022. This includes some things I haven’t shown until now, including animations and video project previews (though I’m still holding back a bit here). This just might turn out to be a yearly thing, so I gave it the name of HalfTime.

BTW: the video uses the SMB regular reconstructed font by TheWolfBunny. It’s mad solid and has a lot of characters other pixel art-based fonts lack. Here’s where you can get it for yourself:
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructors/1258630/thewolfbunny
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10bCAxc4-PxVnD5lqDZFi7POS8YNhQpI1/view

Those G.I. Joe sprite updates and that G.I.JOE HQ clip you saw in the HalfTime video’s “lab” are prep work for the “Yo Joe June” update later this month, which will include a few more G.I. JOE sprites! Currently working on more replacements of the old Capcom sprite edits and more “Original 13” (the original 13 members of the G.I.JOE line-up). Stay tuned!

There’s currently a Kickstarter campaign for a Ninja Baseball Spirits comic book! Yes, the Ninja Baseball Bat Man beat ’em up legend is fighting get it’s due right now, but the campaign still needs help to reach its goal. The comic has an all-star line-up of people who appreciate beat ’em ups, including Drew Maniscalco (the original creator of Ninja Baseball Bat Man), writer Dave Cook (“Go Straight: The Ultimate Guide to Side-Scrolling Beat ‘Em Ups”), and artist Steve Gregson (BPM: Beatdowns Per Minute). The comic will be available in digital and physical forms and there’s a wide array of extras for higher tiers, some including the beat ’em up-based BPM comic as a bonus. There are sample pages and artwork on the Kickstarter page, so check it out and give ’em a pledge if you’re interested (yes, I’ve got my pledge in already)!

Finally, Iron Man’s Hall of Armor is ready to fight in for M.U.G.E.N.:

Get the scratch-made stage and the music (Iron Man’s MSH BGM) from the page in this link! As a back-up feature, I have a new scratch-made sprite of Bravoman:

It’s on the Namco custom sprites page and he’s in the GFX Generators that use fighting game sprites.

In case you didn’t see it, yesterday’s TMNT-heavy update post can be found in this link. Due to day job issues, tomorrow’s update will be as late as this one was, but I think you’ll like the sprites I’ve been saving for this next one.

I did a lot of quick work on almost all of the site’s pages before resurrecting it after the recent hack attack. Some coding got smooshed here and there and a bit of it was sloppy, even if you couldn’t see it on the page. The pages are still being improved and updated bit-by-bit and you might even notice that a section your browsing suddenly gets upgraded when you go to the next page. That’s just me shoveling new pages onto the server and freaking you out.

PLEASE let me know if you run into any broken pages, broken images, broken links, horribly slow pages (especially the pages with a crapload of sprites) or anything like that by replying to this post. It’ll help if you let me know which browser you’re using and its version number (usually seen in the “About Browsername” option on the Help tab).

I’ll be back in about a week with that Avengers-based update.

I’m taking a 96% pause from fan art to be added until the SOPA/ProtectIP crap rolls through, so I’m concentrating on sharpening up a few site-related things.

GFX Generators – Sprites now have a “Direction” option. Default is the direction that the screenstyle wants the sprites to face (like a Vs Screen with P1 facing normally and P2 having a horizontally-flipped sprite).

Default is how the screen suggests the sprites should be pointed. Normal had the sprite facing its original direction and Reverse flips the sprite horizontally. Screen Opposite causes the sprite to face the opposite direction that Default would make it face.

The Minus World – The Bootleg Wrestlers feature just got a big update with a better design, added wrestler references and more. I was supposed to do this last year, but it got lost in the shuffle.

Tutorials – The article I made in 2008 about browsers’ forced anti-aliasing turning sprites into pixel diarrhea has been rewritten and moved to the tutorial section. You can find it right here. I also replaced the game sprites with my own pixel art so the page can stay up after any of those IP bills become law.

A new site has been added to the Quick Links on the side navigation: NXISTENCE.NET. Anyone who wants to read articles about gaming but don’t want the annoying schmucky smarm or baseline idjitry of commons sites need to check them out. The site is run by good people, so go give that place some love!

Custom Graphics: 2001-2011

(Updated Dec. 18th, 2011)

Do you enjoy fan art, game graphics, screenshots, game mods, sprite edits, tribute videos, game walkthroughs and anything of that nature? If so, time may be running out for you to do so. There are two bills currently being discussed in the US House Judiciary Committee that claim to be about fighting internet piracy, but many experts say that companies would gain the power to block US citizens from visiting sites they claim to be offenders of copyright law.

Who are these companies? You can find a list of them on the page called, “Who Wants To Break The Internet?” Viacom, one of the companies in the list, tried to sue YouTube for allowing videos from Viacom’s channels (like MTV) to be placed on the site, even though Viacom possibly uploaded some of those videos themselves. Yeah, Viacom lost. Universal, also on the list, had a celebrity endorsement-laced MegaUpload support video yanked off YouTube for featuring an unauthorized artist… who isn’t even in the video. A news show talked about that video, so Universal had the news show’s video yanked, too. Hell, these music companies have ordered the removal of videos posted by their own artists (and not just in the U.S.). For those who haven’t been irritated enough, here’s a story about how media companies somehow have the power to kill off public domain videos.

How would the U.S. government handle things? ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security) shut down five websites on the claim that they were counterfeits and bootleggers. As reported by TechDirt and the New York Times, one site was Dajaz.com, a site that provided downloads to songs purposefully leaked by the record companies for promotional purposes.

The abuse I’ve mentioned is what they can do without SOPA or Protect IP, so imagine what they’ll get away with if this bill passes. They already have the Chappellian “Shoot first, sprinkle crack on the corpse later” method down to a science when it comes to using the DMCA and site-specific kill switches. The fact that I’ll have to shut down this site if the bill passes isn’t the main reason I’m bothered by this. Many of us have turned to the internet because we don’t like what most media companies are pushing in our direction. Creative people and independent reporters are using it to avoid dealing with the same shady companies that have been spending money to push these bills and own the news channels which won’t tell you the same stories I’ve linked to here. Piracy may be hurting them, but their biggest problem is how the internet is giving us options. No, it’s not a c-o-n-spiracy as much as it’s the kind of typical corporate dick-move you’ll see happen when groups think a form of technology, like VCR’s, will threaten their money flow. They’re paying a lot of money to screw up the internet in the hopes that you’ll run into their open, greedy arms after they close off every other option you have now.

More about the topic:
Mozilla: Protect the Internet
BoingBoing: stories about SOPA
GameRanx – How SOPA Affects Gamers: SOPA Will Pass Unless You Help
Kotaku – The Stop Online Piracy Act and You: A Primer
Next Web Insider: 29 Tech Companies who back SOPA through a front group