May 20th, 2024

I’ll be showing off a few Mutant Mayhem sprites before the update hits this website and I’m starting off with one of my favorite characters, the Beast:

The Beast

The Beast


The pose is kinda based on the X-Men Mutant Apocalypse idle stance, but drawn in the proportions of the comic art. Most of you are familiar with the ’90s Beast with the yellow belt, but the first few sprites show him as he looked after he mutated himself further in Amazing Adventures #11.

May 21st:

4 sprites of Cyclops

Cyclops


Part of this Cyclops sprite base appears in all the way back in this 2018 video and an X-Men group sprite from 2021, but I redrew it recently and even made an arm and head variant to remake that classic Capcom pose that I and many other sprite editors used as a sprite base back in the old days. I don’t like to make a ton of alternate versions until I’m 100% sure I like how the sprite turned out, but I felt like I needed to make the X-Factor version just to rep Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge, and I’ll make a group sprite of that whenever I get around to spriting Gambit.

The CRT screen effect was done with CRT View created by Mattias Gustavsson. Stay tuned for more!

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May 17th, 2024

I’m done with commission work for a while, so I’m back with a few real updates!


The ToyBoss section was updated with more new photos and up-to-date roster photos. One is a quick shot I took yesterday of my still-carded Captain Commando figures by 52Toys, now that I just got my Ninja Commando from AliBaba. Still waiting on my Baby Commando pre-order at HLJ, so I think I’ll hold out on opening them until I get the whole crew. The three figures I have look great and I haven’t even uncarded them yet, and I’m definitely keeping the cards for the artwork once I open them all. Speaking of complete crews, I managed to get the other three Target-exclusive “Pizza Club” Ninja Turtle figures by NECA. This is the first set of Turtles I gotten since the original Playmates figures from the 80s. I was going to (and still may) get all the Loyal Subjects BST AXN Turtles (I only have Raph for now), but I saw these announced months ago and plotted to get them. The BST AXN Turtles are still good, but I think the NECA Turtles themselves scale better when next to other toylines.

Speaking of toy line crossovers, I also added a new “Scale Wars” section with a few photos of figures from different lines standing next to each other to show how they scale. Some of these may help if you’re thinking of mixing and matching toylines or trying to figure out sizes for cross-line toy fodder.


With X-Men hype at a fever pitch again after the 10-episode run of X-Men ’97, there will be some new mutant-related sprites hitting the site next week!

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April 30th, 2024

I’ve spent most of the month working on pixel commissions (more on one of those in a bit) and working on things for two future Sprite Showcase videos. Iron Man will be the next Superhero Sprite Showcase do-over, and I’m redoing nearly everything because the original was done before I had a working version of Anime Studio/Moho again. The original version was done with a few clips in Blender, including a low-poly 3D Hall of Armors, and a bunch of complicated layer compositions in Magix Vegas. I’ve finished enough to show it now, including a new logo sequence and added pixel cover 3-shots, but I think it needs more.


The other Superhero Showcase is a team showcase is something I teased in an earlier video and it’ll share parts of earlier episodes. I’m sure you can probably guess which team that’ll be with no other hints.

There will probably be a BIG ToyBoss section update in May once I’m done with the commissions. I’ve managed to get Captain Commando and Mummy Commando of the 52TOYS line of Captain Commando figures, thanks to HobbyLink Japan, and I’ve got Baby Commando on pre-order. I also lucked up got a NECA ‘toon-style turtle with the Target-exclusive “Pizza Club” Leonardo. Great figure, and it’s good to have one of the 4 TMNT in NECA style after getting Usagi Yojimbo and comic-style Slash. Will I be able to get the other three turtles? Tune in and find out. I took a quick size comparison pic to show Leo’s height compared to a Jada Toys Street Fighters, Hasbro’s Marvel Legends, and a BST AXN Turtle by Loyal Subjects.

Captain and Mummy Commando - carded


One of the commissions I drew recently was for a wild video guide by Avlyrr on hoe to play Hulk in Capcom’s Marvel Super Heroes fighting game. This is easily some of the most fun I’ve had watching a fighting game guide, and you’ll get some good laughs from this while learning what the good doctor (remember: this was the Peter David-written Smart Hulk era) can do in that game.


Big thanks to Avlyrr for being so great to work with for that commission!


Arcade Quartermaster just put up the new arcade game shrines for May: Master’s Fury by Unico and Air Bike Cop by Sega! (sorry that was the earlier update. May’s games are Bally Midway’s smash-hit driving combat game Spy Hunter and the gory Kaneko/Taito side-scrolling slasher Kabuki-Z!


Time for me to get back to work on the current commission. I’ll be back in May!

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March 29th, 2024


Custom Sprites – DC Comics: New sprites Lex Luthor (70’s Battle Array a.k.a. the Jumpsuit), the Parasite (Silver Age era and DCAU versions) and Mr. Myxzptlk added. Updates for Lois Lane: four earlier sprites modified, new Silver Age and Action Comics #1 work outfit added.

Mini-logos: Parasite and Mr. Myxzptlk added

ToyBoss: Added a boxed group shot of Jada Toys Mega Man wave 1, featuring Mega Man, Fire Man, and Ice Man. Been meaning to take more shots of them, but time is tight. But I did get an extra shot of Mega Man and Jada Toys Chun-Li together, and also added a shot I took last December of Chun-Li and Black Widow fighting some Cobra Valkyries.

The new sprites have been added to the main image generator, which I used to make the pic at the top of this post!

Last but not least, here’s the 2024 Superman Sprite Showcase video! Every clip (that I can remember) from the 2020 version has been redone and now has things like those cover-like sprite displays I didn’t come up with until 2021. Look carefully one of the characters who got a new sprite today also got a new animation that isn’t in the update. Best of all, it has WizzyWhipitWonderful‘s perfectly on-character original Superman CPS-2 music!


Friend of the site Arcade Quartermaster just put up new shrines for MASTER’S FURY (Fighting) and AIR BIKE COP (Driving)!


HobbyLink Japan has the 3.75-inch Captain Commando and Jennety/Mummy Commando figures by 52Toys in-stock, with Baby Hoover available for pre-order and Ninja/Sho still sold out. I got my orders in for Cap and Baby. I know a lot of people want 1:12/ 6-inch scale and 7-inch scale versions of everything, but I’m still a big 1:18 fan both for budget and space reasons. These Captain Commando figures look great and I can’t wait to get mine.

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February 23rd, 2024


Comic Books: Ace Harlem, the first recorded Black hero to star in a comic book story (part of an anthology book) in 1947. He’s been on my to-sprite list ever since I first heard about him a few years ago, so I’m glad he’s also the first public domain character I’ve sprited (and won’t be the last).
Marvel Comics: a redrawn Konami stance for Storm.
Final Fight: Damnd gets a new standing laugh frame added to the site.

Is that not enough Storm for you? You’re in luck then, because Storm is star of the brand-new Superhero Sprite Showcase video!


That other new pose you saw in the video will hit the site at a later date, I still want to make some adjustments to it.

This is the first real Superhero Showcase I’ve done since finishing the new computer in early 2021, so I had to hunt down and re-render some of the series’ files and streamline how the main videos are assembled. This should make future videos easier, which is a good thing because you’ll be seeing the Superhero Showcase happen more often. My current plan is to make one all-new episode followed by one update until the all four original episodes (Wolverine, Superman, Iron Man, Bat-Man) get remade.


BTW: There was another mandatory PHP update by the hosting company yesterday, so please let me know if you run into any errors. I did some basic checking, along with trying those partial palette choice characters in the image generators and didn’t see any problems. I’ll look around some more this weekend. There will be yet another of these later this year (didn’t seem like this happened that often until recently), so I want to make sure things are alright before all that.


Huge congratulations to the Arcade Quartermaster site celebrating it’s 16-bit anniversary! The site celebrates with a giant update of four new shrines: Final Fight Revenge, the relatively-recently uncovered Danger Express, Lone Wolf and Cub, Steel Gunner 2. Be sure to take a second look at some of the other shrines there if you haven’t been there in a while, because the webmaster’s been updating some of the older sections and you’ll never know what you’ll find (or hear)!

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January 26th, 2024

I’ve mostly been working on animations for this year’s videos since NYE, but I’ve got a few things to add this month.


Custom Sprites:
– Mega Man: I’m experimenting with my own Mega Man sprites, because I want to have some that are just mine and not trying to add to the Marvel vs. Capcom sprites.
Golden Axe: new sprites of Longmoan and male villager. If you visited this site in the old days, you may remember how the index page used to have animated GIFs of arcade version, and that’s part of why I had to animate it myself:

Mega Man: An all-new Mega Man sprite
– Marvel: Daredevil – two poses, new style, because I disliked the sprite I made in 2018.
– DC Comics: Peacemaker, from the backlog of sprites I’d drawn lineart for but hadn’t pixeltraced yet.
Illmosis: ScrollBoss site character Vonetta (aka Vernacula) redone holding stack of books sprite in her 2023 outfit. You’ll see more of Vonetta and other ScrollBoss site characters this year.
– Street Fighter Alpha 3 Vs. portraits: Blaze Fielding (SoR2)

Mini-logos: Peacemaker added to DC Comics.
portraits:
Street Fighter Alpha 3 Vs.: Blaze Fielding (Streets of Rage)

All these new pixel-things were also added to the GFX Generators where you can make fake screenshots, scenes, and other graphics.


Arcade Quartermaster also updated today with new shrines: Street Smart (SNK) and Aquajack (Taito)!

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January 2nd, 2024

Happy New Year! Here’s a little something to start 2024.

I have loose plans for 2024, but that Revenge of 1989 Sprite Showcase is the only thing I’ll be announcing ahead of time. Some of my 2023 plans were called off either because I took time to do commission work or I was busy with that site recoding thing for the server upgrade (and I’m STILL fixing things here and there).

While I’m here, I updated the Custom Sprite Pack Downloads page with a .ZIP with the Street Fighter Alpha/Zero 3 Select-Vs. name graphics I use in the image generators, which also includes A TON of extra names. Like the earlier sets, there is padding on both sides of each graphic to center them on the screen from either side.

Take care and I’ll see you later this month when there’s a full update!

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December 31st, 2023

Time for the Wrap-Up!

Custom Sprites:
Raven’s Dojo: new sprites of Rodney and Dornail
Illmosis Network: The Vonetta sprite from January of this year gets an alternate head.

Mini-Logos: New Raven’s Dojo section added with the Raven’s Dojo! logo!

The new sprites and logo were added to the GFX Generators, which I used to make the pic at the top of this post!

It was a busy year for me and I didn’t get to make as many new things as I wanted, and that’s why I split the ToyHaul and Wrap-Up into separate updates and, as you can see below, separate videos. Just as before, it’s a recap video that also has a lot of brand-new shots. You’ll see Street Fighter Alpha 3 Vs. screen displays with all the new portraits I made this year and a slightly animated group shot of some superheroes that surprised me because I forgot I did some of this stuff in early 2023. Hope you enjoy it!

Some long overdue and better sprites of Rodney and Dornail from the Raven’s Dojo comic by one of the hardest working artists and friends I know, Raven Perez. The comic is Not Safe For Work, but I hope you have the day off to jump into it and soak in the madness! BTW: Yes, this comic is also the setting for the Terrorcube game from last year. This comic has been going since 1998, this is the 25th Anniversary!

Thank you for stopping by, for leaving comments (EddieMountaingoat, SKB, and Bad Badtz Maru Jimmy), checking out the YouTube Channel (over 550 subscribers now!) and I hope this site continues to make you feel good about video games and pixel art. See you in 2024!

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December 22nd, 2023

G.I.JOE: Low-Light v.1, Red Ninja added. Redrew Grunt from scratch and made a Footloose based on the base sprite. BTW: this FINALLY replaces all my ancient Capcom edits in G.I.JOE gallery (but they’re still there to see in a sub-gallery.
M.A.S.K.: Vanessa Warfield (masked and unmasked) added to the new separate gallery
Street Fighter: scratch-made G.I.JOE versions of Blanka and Ryu
Toys and Cartoons:Skull (Super Naturals) and… Barbie? Yes, Barbie. That lady’s everywhere.
Marvel Comics: Secret Wars Mattel Magneto
Illmosis: My Christmas mascot (and toy store owner) Hilde Santessa

portraits: Street Fighter Alpha 3 – Snake-Eyes and Cobra Commander

Mini-logos: Barbie and Super Naturals
ToyBoss: group shot of Golden Axe (Storm Collectibles), Super Mario (Jakks) (only five figures, just got Luigi, Peach, and a 2nd Mario in a 3-pack).

GFX Generators: All new custom sprites were also added to the generators. Still finding and fixing things from the PHP upgrade (that’ll be going on a looong time). Also added:
– the Toy Aisle background got a big update, with more variations to figures (all wave 1 Super Powers figures carded) and many more boxes (especially the Transformers section). Some weird issue is keeping a thumbnail of the new version of showing up on the background selection screen on my hard drive’s copy of the site.

Finally, the toys get their own video this year. Check it out here or on the ScrollBoss YouTube Channel!

Thank you for stopping by! Whatever it is you’re celebrating or not celebrating, I hope you have a good weekend

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December 15th, 2023

There’s a Toy Haul update coming next week with some all-new sprites, but here’s a few updated things to get the party started early!


Masters of the Universe’s Teela was updated (palette contrast and shading) while Man-at-Arms now has a ‘Flimation armor’ sprite, and the G.I.JOE Battle Android Trooper now has blowtorch sprite.

All three sprites were added to the main image generator. The “GI*JOE 128×192” screenstyle now has another (and less specific) explosion background for the 1986 card, though the General Hawk-shaped explosion is still there.

Current plans are for the Toy Haul update to hit next week and then a Wrap-Up update before the end of the year. Here’s a tease of something (well, someone) you’ll see in both.

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