Thursday, December 13, 2018

SRB2 Kart

So you may have heard me speak mention of a game called Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart on Twitter a few times the past few weeks.

I guess you can say I've been addicted to it and went through the trouble of forwarding ports just so I could host a custom server with all the characters I created for it so far. And that includes the original Super Justin trio of Justin, Roger, and Zax.

To my surprise, the server gathered quite a bit of traffic last night, and while everyone stuck with mostly Sonic characters, there were a few brave souls that tried out one member of the Super Justin trio each. I stuck with the trio pretty much the whole server, though unsurprisingly Justin became my most used in the server.

Everything was chaotic and everyone was trading positions through the tracks like crazy. Heck, I'm not ashamed to admit that I got whooped quite a few times myself.

Hopefully I have enough motivation to continue making characters- it's a very time-consuming project just to finish one character- playtest them, and submit them. Sure I could crank out characters pretty quickly, but now that I have other things to contend with, including the holidays, working on Aozora's Adventure characters and lore, and doing sprite rips, you may have to wait a bit longer until my next character is complete.

Friday, November 16, 2018

Anime NYC 2018: Cosplay Photoshoots + the future of cons


For all the patient souls out there, here it is: all the cosplay photos I took during my 10-hour(!) stay at Anime NYC 2018, the final convention of the year too as a matter of fact.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/…

If you're wondering, yes, this is only the first day- I could not join the second or third days because of personal schedules conflicting with the con's.

Otherwise, there you have it. The convention season of Fall 2018 draws to a close (including two major ones and two... admittedly lesser conventions (one of which I'd barely call a convention to begin with)), so I can finally get back on track with my personal arts and other projects until the spring/summer con season starts with Castle Point Anime Convention 2019. Other than that, expect me to make grand returns to AnimeNEXT, EternalCon, Long Island Retro Gaming Expo, New York Comic Con, and of course AnimeNYC next year.

Saturday, November 10, 2018

Splatoon IRL | Inklings paint the world blue



This commercial had more to do with shapeshifting cephalopod kids painting everything in ink than any kind of soda.

Monday, October 29, 2018

Getting ready for Halloween like





You know for what's supposed to be a PG-13 blog I keep putting lots of stuff from M-rated games on here.

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

A small talk about conventions and VGC tournaments.

Hey there. Of course I made sure to make a post for this month before November so I thought I'd update you all on what's up first.

Firstly, NYCC went flawlessly well. I was able to bypass the hell of a line on Thursday and properly attend the convention that day and that day only. Apart from my legs once again starting to give in at the end of the day (and believe me I'm going to bring that up in just a moment.), everything went well. During the visit I acquired a few prints, a figure of the main character of an artist I follow online (that I met back in 2016), and a free (signed!) poster featuring Mega Man 11. I would have loved to come back the next day but of course I was already burnt out.

So that makes a grand total of seven conventions attended in total this year. CPAC, EMCon, AnimeNext, EternalCon, CradleCon, LIRGE, and NYCC. The only other major convention I'm planning on going to this year is AnimeNYCC in November, though there are two smaller conventions I'm going to this weekend which are probably going to be so minor that there's no reason for me to mention it here. And then there's DerpyCon. After some thinking it may not be possible for me to attend after all, especially since I need to also get to AnimeNYC which is the next week after. After that, there's no other conventions for me throughout Winter and the first half of Spring until Castle Point Anime Convention 2019 in April next year. From there I'll try to re-attend all the conventions listed above unless I'm forced to drop a con or two because their timeframes happen to land within the same weekend, as was the case with CPAC and EMCon last May.

Now then, enough about conventions, let's talk about fighting game tournaments. A friend of mine took me to a fighting game event in March showcasing games like Street Fighter V and Dragon Ball FighterZ. I had fun exploring the freeplay areas and everyone bringing in their consoles (mostly PS4's) for everyone to gather around and try. Someone even brought in a Dreamcast with Power Stone(!) hooked up. But sadly, no traces of Guilty Gear Xrd REV2.

Yes it was a pleasant experience, but I did have a few thoughts about it in the end. At this particular event (which was in a warehouse) the air was extremely stingy with very poor ventilation and no hope for proper air-conditioning- and combined with the odors of many, many people crowded into the area, the place got really smelly. Yes I could tolerate it, but once you take in the scent it's hard to not notice it and it just sticks with you the whole time (And please, if you have access to a shower, use it.) Not to mention, the gender ratio present in the building was 100% men, with no trace of a single female within the building. I get that fighting games are a hobby tailored towards men, but seeing not even a single female during the event just came off as extremely odd. And plus there were beer bottles left everywhere, filed trash cans, and men using the ladies' room because of the aforementioned 100% male ratio (and I can only imagine how bad the restrooms would smell considering the overall scent of the place and the filed trash cans and what smells those could contain). At least the best thing I can say about these tournament places is that seating os readily available, unlike at conventions where you have to leave the artist's alley and dealer's room, which are the bulk of conventions for me, to find seating.

I'm not hoping for the conditions to improve in the future since no one else that goes there seems to mind, but I do plan on going back someday regardless, maybe with a multiplayer versus game that's not very common to demo in the free play area (I'm gravitating towards bringing Joy Mech Fight on the NES/Famicom if I can get a spare NES I don't mind people potentially getting dirty and an NES flash cart cause my original Famicom cart is too prized to demo in a public setting).

Otherwise, that's all for now.

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Superjustinbros and Newgrounds

Seems like I should get a blog post up on this blog too so this one doesn't end up without a post for the month. Kinda hard to keep the motivation brewing when my main user base these days is Twitter.

Anyways I thought I'd lament a bit on one particular site of mine from my middle school years, a little site known as Newgrounds. Discovered by myself in early 2005 (having already existed for quite some time, back when I was in elementary school nonetheless), I mostly grew attached to the site for all the Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog (and soon, Mega Man) fan-made games but played the occasional dose of original content. I've always thought of contributing myself, but was too young at the time and even now I never had the time or money to afford and make content in Flash. And now with Adobe Flash closing in 2020, it may be too late. The only things I ever submitted were some art back in the days of Super Justin, but since it was all crap, I nuked it. There was some more normal content I tried posting there too, but, well, it's not exactly easy to build up a following on that site if you don't make Flash games and animations.

There was one other element of the site that would catch my attention in the early years of me using the site. For some time I would always question the orange-haired kid that populated the site's (at the time) ratings bar. Aside from looking vaguely like this one kid with literal fire for hair that I would see on T-shirts in the 2000's, that is.

(take note that what I'm about to discuss is a child character doing pretty South Park-esque things (he smokes and uses guns), so if this kind of stuff offends you I suggest not looking up the various games and whatnot the character does; of course I don't mention any of this in the article but whatever)

(Okay, you ready? Here.)
(please respect artists and don't remove their watermarks if possible, k?)

A few months after I started frequenting the site I would end up discovering Newgrounds' mascot, Pico. His games were crude, filled with adult humor, and contain the kind of things ten-year-old me was not used to during the time (or even noticed). But they were fun, if a bit short (but then again these games were old). Then on April 30th, 2006 there was a big event dedicated to the kid, known as Pico day, where fans would upload Pico-related content. 2006 was pretty great, and 2007 hit the ball out of the park, but then 2008 felt a bit lacking in some departments. 2009 was more of the same, and I remember 2010 having a few good hits as well, but then I stopped caring by the time 2011 happened, and with each passing year I simply kept overlooking Pico Day since I had lost interest in Newgrounds as a whole during my last year in high school.

I did buy the stickers long ago before they went out of print, though I have no idea what I did with them.

What also made these Pico Days special to me was that they used special Pico-branded loaders for each Pico Day. 2006's and 2007's went the extra mile and turned their loaders into short animated clips featuring the adult-mind-in-a-kid's-body.


2007's was especially smooth, and it was a bit disappointing to me that from then on, future Pico Day loaders went with static images or simpler looping animations before they seemed to just stop using them altogether in recent years. They're still great images for sure, but they don't have the extra oomph that an animated loader would.


So yeah, that's me and Newgrounds (and Pico) in as abridged of an explanation as I can provide. Now watch as I end up nearly skipping posting anything next month.

Saturday, August 11, 2018

Super Justin the Character in 2018

If you've somehow managed to be with me since the days of March 2009 (which I doubt anyone reading this blog is, considering that was nine years ago), then you may remember a little troublemaker of a character named Super Justin.

You know, dark blue hair, cyan shirt, black shorts? Yeah, that Justin.

Back in the day, he could be said to have represented an... immaturity period of mine before I started to bloody grow up. While it was fine and dandy in 2007 or so before I made my online presence known and when I really started to get into art and character creation, it wasn't until 2008 when I started doing the Super Justin thing much more seriously, and 2009 when I did the inevitable: joining DeviantArt.

Since then, myself and my self-named OC went through both ups and downs, resulting in the decision late October of that year to restructure myself and abandon the Super Justin side, and since then Aozora's Adventure took over and became what Super Justin wasn't. A far more creative project with more advanced character designs and characterizations that didn't leech half it's creativity off of some doujin soft game (but still contains plenty of references to mainstream fictional works).

Attempting to make Super Justin it childish-oriented in the case that it did get video games only hurt it more, and the repeated recycling of characters from completely different publications did it no favors as well. Arguments of course erupted over the seven months Super Justin lasted, and I was sick of the criticism and I had two options: Cancel the project entirely, or retool it so it's nothing like what it used to be.

And I picked Option 1, as I felt Aozora would give me much more creative freedom overall than what Super Justin would ever allow, but in the background, in the magical world of offline, I slowly and silently tampered with the three main Super Justin protagonists.



What you see here are the latest versions of the artworks I made in September of 2009, freshly entering 10th grade and during my attempt to, well, git gud with doing art. Compared to months earlier, characters had more realistic anatomy and I didn't simply rush through it all. But before I get ahead of myself, who is this blonde kid just floating around and who is that angry teen with the two-tone lab coat?

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Roger and Zax. These two were originally created to be male versions of two female characters I was once attached to for some time, but in an attempt to distance Super Justin from these girls and their universe (and cause the idea itself caused some level of controversy), I reworked their entire backstories and readjusted their appearances to distance them from the characters that inspired them. I also (not shown) changed Roger's wings to typical bat wings and gave Zax a much less-revealing outfit, with the potential for Roger and Zax to change back to their original designs in colder/warmer seasons respectively (I'll be sure to show off those someday). For the heck of it, I also went and made Sonic the Hedgehog and GBC-styled icons of the trio (the former happening mostly because of the similar chemistries and personalities the Justin trio has to Team Sonic) which I never showed to the public since I made them in 2013.



If Super Justin ever makes a comeback, everyone will get a major re-tool to completely outclass their original incarnations from 2008/09, with brand new characters to replace all the old ones including a new villain character to antagonize the trio. Unlike Aozora, Super Justin won't be overflown with characters from the start and to keep it from getting ridiculous, the roster overall will stay small. And to stay safe, no one from the original run of Super Justin other than these three will be present, expect for maybe Matt, Justin's green-clad brother. As for the general tone of the series itself, it'll stay lighthearted and not get super dark, since Aozora and WARMAN already fulfill that role, but there will be some level of tension here and there.

So will these three get new artwork? Maybe, if I do decide to go through with it, but keep in mind Aozora and co. will still be the main focus overall (and not to mention I have several other projects and arts I want to get to as well, now that I have no more conventions until October if I can make it to NYCC).

Sunday, August 5, 2018

Twitter please.

So for some unexplained reason, Twitter locked me out of my @Superjustinbros account for saying that it "may be compromised by a user or surface not associated by Twitter". Now this would be all fine and dandy, except for one fatal flaw: The "reset your e-mail" command does not send the reset link to my e-mail as it should, forcing me to talk it up with staff until I can get it all sorted out.

For now I'm stuck locked out of my account, unable to view it as anything other than as a guest because of my e-mail provider's broken as heck services.

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

MM8BDM Skin: Springman (ARMS)

Yup, after four years I finally complete another full skin for the little known game Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch. Today's subject is Spring Man, the title character of Nintendo's 2017 arena fighter ARMS.

This is the raw development sheet of the skin, based on a Mega Man-styled sprite I made of Spring Man back in 2017. I then touched it up, added rotations/movement, gave it some ARMS (heh), and this was the result:

his hair is supposed to face the other way agh





Oh wait, wasn't there another Spring Man already in the game...?


Oh right.

Download the skin here.
Dropbox Mirror (with Classes support)

Sunday, July 1, 2018

SKYMAN Drafts

As you all know, for some time I've been leaning on deciding to do one last selection of characters for my "WARMAN" series, known as the SKYMEN, to close out the series until I eventually start working on it proper. These are the same kind of WARMEN that you're all likely familiar with, but made for aerial combat first and foremost, with winged jetpacks and even more futuristic high-tech armor.

Today I went and worked on drafts for how I see the general looks of the nine models I have planned for what will be the final batch of models, which I plan to get designed in the next couple of months (perhaps around Christmas time, like what happened in 2015 with the massive influx in new WARMAN designs). Take note that these are not 100% final and on-top of possibly changing these brief descriptions over time, I will leave a good chunk of their designs and appearance to their designers to imagine.


M-17 SKYMAN (White): The first of the SKYMEN to be created- using the same all-around build style of M-10 as a base. The result is a similarly heroic, spiky white-haired model that looks to be steadily younger than M-10 with only slightly less developed muscles and a more rounded face. His white hair isn’t super exotic, resembling that of a typical anime male character with short hair, but it has its two longest streaks in the front dyed black.

M-18 SKYMAN (Brick Red/Maroon): A Jamaican-style model built to look slightly older than M-17 with a love for dancing, partying, and all around having a good time. His hair is a set of giant dark red dreadlocks formed into a ponytail.

M-19 SKYMAN (Turquoise): An Asian-style model with Japanese delinquent hair turned up to 11. He has an attitude but is normally kept in check by M-17 and M-18 and forms a power trio with the two models. He’s slightly less slim than M-18, favoring speedier tactics, but still muscular.

M-20 SKYMAN (Hot Pink): A model with a giant heart-shaped pompadour on his head. He is a highly brave and fearless fighter that cares deeply about his comrades and his own image, and has a love for sweet treats- especially chocolates.

M-21 SKYWOMAN (Tangerine): An energetic model with a love for action. She sports well-developed curves and her personality is a mix between the serious side of M-07 and the happy go lucky vibes of M-12. She’s based all around ranged weaponry and considers M-20 her best friend.

M-22 SKYWOMAN (Chanteuse): A “foil” of sorts to M-21, personality-wise. She would be just as curvy as her.

M-23 SKYMAN (Navy Blue): A hyper-gothic model with average-sized muscles, big thick navy blue hair on one side of his head (dyed black in some parts) that obstructs one of his eyes, and a love for all things dark, twisted, and metal. Even with his serious motives and spending most of his life dedicated to listening to music and attempts at forming a one-man band, he’s a decent guy deep down, is loyal to his crew, and is very flexible in his fighting style- preferring anything that can do massive damage.

M-24 SKYMAN (Pewter): A dandy, classy and elderly man built like he jumped straight out of the early 1900's but with the new and sleek armor design of the future. He's the oldest-looking of the SKYMEN but is clean, well-fit, and refined, along with an impressive goatee, old-fashioned futuristic eyeglasses in place of a visor, stylish hair, a smooth voice, and an eye for battle. He’s the brains of the team, with extensive knowledge on almost every type and style of weapon out there.

M-25 SKYWOMAN (Silver): One of the two “Metallic Power” models, a curvy female model with an almost hourglass appearance that embraces her attractive figure and built for maximum agility on land and in the sky. However, with all the weight poured into her body, she requires stronger fuel for flight, limiting her airtime.

M-26 SKYMAN (Gold): The other of the two “Metallic Power” models and created as a tag partner for M-25, M-26 is a fighter with a bodybuilder shape, being the tallest (just four inches higher than M-01) and burliest of the models yet, with super well toned but not exaggerated abs, arms, and legs- giving him the ability to wield the biggest weapons ever imagined. He has some shaved facial hair around his chin but overall his current hairstyle is unknown.

For those curious, you can see the Wiki page of the SKYMEN here, which still needs fleshing out:
http://warman.shoutwiki.com/wiki/SKYMEN

Monday, June 25, 2018

Convention Photoshoots: May and June 2018

For those of you that have been wanting to see my cosplay photos from Castle Point Anime Convention 2018, AnimeNEXT 2018, and EternalCon 2018, look no further! Here are some links to the collection of cosplay photos I shot at three conventions in the span of a month.


Enjoy.

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Con update - Cons over


Well it's been a long time coming but I am now fully done with all of the conventions that I had announced early last May. It was a good selection of conventions overall and I enjoyed my times at them, so I might as well post some verdicts:


  • Castle Point Anime Convention took place under extremely wet weather and at a new location after 10 years of being at a college campus, which kinda ruined the excitement of entering the convention (but the original location had a lot of waiting and having to navigate outside to go into all the different buildings so it was a better decision overall to relocate it to a convention center). The weather cleared up in the evening as it was getting dark, so it was a relief that I didn't have to endure the poor weather more than once. The con's interior and layout was all in one room, with the different sections divided using black curtain walls. Meanwhile, the artist's alley/dealer's room was decently large but overall felt smaller than CPAC 2017 by virtue of being in a more open space. And of course there was the game room, which was located opposite of the artist's alley/dealer's room and had a selection of Japanese arcade games (mostly rhythm-based ones) as well as Pokémon Battle Spot Singles matches being broadcast live on TV. I stayed for about seven hours before I left to go attend a small party my friend David was having in a nearby hotel, before driving home. It didn't have the same overall spirit of CPAC2017, but I had a good time regardless.
  • EMCon and CPAC2018 took place on the same weekend, which was tiring as hack, but thankfully the drive there was not a science project like with CPAC and the clouds had cleared away, presenting sunshine for the entire duration of the con. Since I was all worn out after CPAC just the day before, my ability to walk took a hit and I could barely keep standing throughout the convention. Plus I ended up at the con an hour early, so I had to stall in the the car until guests were allowed in. I did run into some friends selling at the different booths, but overall the artist's alley felt much weaker than 2017's EMCon buy virtue of only having about three to four actual artists (the rest were just dealers selling off different things). Plus, the special guest voice actor that was set to appear was only present on the first day of the con while I was at CPAC, which meant unlike last year I had to go without being able to meet a celebrity (not a big loss, but it's kinda a bummer). As for the final verdict, EMCon 2018 was OK, but it feels like more could be done to improve for 2019. And with it's small attendee number, I did not snap any cosplay photos.
  • AnimeNEXT 2018 last week was a blast, even though there were some new decisions made to this year that came off as strange to me- though they were done with good intentions. The artist's alley was massive and had a great ordeal of artists to check out, including several that I'm good friends with. It also was filled with cosplayers, resulting in what may be my biggest collection of cosplay photos yet. What struck me as odd was how the artist's alley and game room were located right across from one another, and you had to leave through the game room if you wanted to return back to the main hall (previously, there was an entrance and an exit from the artist's alley/dealer's room into the hallway and the game room was located elsewhere in the convention center, up two flights of stairs no less), so that was a bit strange. It was fun and all, for sure, and it was good to get to another major convention not long after CPAC. I will say though that the "cosplay wrestling" was dumb as heck and I couldn't watch it for more than ten seconds without cringing. At least the ride home was entertaining thanks to the sun setting in the distance- it felt very conclusive to an otherwise long and event-filled day.
  • Eternal Con 2018 felt like a less intense CPAC2018. Like EMCon, it was not focused on anime and I went (as usual) for the artists. This year I didn't get any fanart prints, just commissions, comics, and in one case a print of an original character. The artist's alley was laid out much differently, with only four isles, two of which were only one-sided, which made the alley feel much smaller than Eternal Con 2017. I did run into two of my friends selling art there after seeing them both individually at CPAC and EMCon, so that made it worth the visit, plus I met some more artists (and for the first time, got a commission of a WARMAN character instead of an Aozora's Adventure character) and unlike last year, got a decent number of cosplay photos instead of skipping it entirely (only about 30 photos total, again I'm not much of a comics person, though off course I couldn't resist snapping the three people cosplaying as Scott Pilgrim characters. Another huge plus for this year's Eternal Con was that the Wi-Fi inside the convention actually worked, so I was able to post updates onto Twitter and Instagram as I interacted with the various artists. I left about five hours into the convention; thankfully it wasn't pouring outside this year so I could leave without having to try and keep all my goodies safe and dry. It was a good con overall, but AnimeNEXT 2018 felt much more epic, by virtue of being larger and out-of-state.
There's one more con that I'm planning to attend soon this month, and it'll be another Long Island-based con, so I won't be announcing it since (aside from the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo), conventions from Long Island don't have that many attendees. As for cons in the second half of the year, the ones I'm interested in and definitely plan on attending aren't 100% set yet. There's also Otakon, but to get there would take me five hours of non-stop driving- even more than AnimeNEXT, so until I'm fully comfortable with spending the evening in a hotel and have both lots of money, an improved sleep cycle, and a well-powered laptop to check up on all my sites and such when I'm out as my phone isn't enough for that kind of job, that convention is a no-go. My goals are to attend aside from the aforementioned Long Island Retro Gaming Expo the following cons: New York Comic Con 2018, DerpyCon 2018, and AnimeNEXT 2018 before the year ends and I spend several more months convention-less until the next May.

If anything comes up, you guys will be the first to know. With that said, till next time.

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Izanagi? Who?

Since it's been a while since I posted on this blog (as per usual) and because I only brought this up like, once on Twitter a few months ago (I think last March), I thought I'd shed some more light on it.

Not too long ago, Aozora's Adventure was divided into three universes. The "Original" universe, and then the "Oriental" and "Darkenss" universes, one of which started in August 2010 and the other around March of 2011. One would be focused on an ancestor of Aozora in Japan's Edo period while the other would be a much darker take on the Aozora formula. Fast forward years later and due to lack of updates and general interest in favor of the "main" storyline, plus with the continued developments of WARMAN, I announced to put the two side-stories on indefinite hiatus.

That included their respective leads Amano and Dedrick, whom I just did not have enough material to work with really. However, there was one character from the Darkness series that I thought had some kind of potential, even more-so than Dedrick. And that was Dedrick's sidekick and best friend, Izanagi.



As you can probably tell I didn't get very far with him either, other than him being a mostly harmless demon with pyrokinesis with heavy Jamaican overtones in his design (but not to the point where he becomes a racial stereotype), but with Dedrick now gone, Izanagi could potentially be the lead cast member of a one-shot project.

And that one-shot project would be, as absurd as it sounds, Izanagi- migrating from the Underworld and having to hide that he did so, becoming the lead cast member/host of a sitcom sketch series hosted in California (yes, like Nickelodeon's All That) where Izanagi partakes in talk shows and sketches with other cast members and actors (that lack superpowers and supernatural abilities as they didn't come form the Underworld). The twist would be that it's secondly an action series thanks to a rival demon, one that looks like he came out of Hell aside form the green coloration and looking like a combination of animatronics and a man in a rubber suit. This monster would send goons and monsters to sabotage Izanagi's show- forcing him and his crew to drive them all out. In the meantime, the demon would run his own live-action TV series to try and usurp Izanagi's ratings from the top spot, using big-budget set pieces and other-top-of-the-line creative sketches to drive in viewers. This rivalry would not be played seriously at all, and even though Izanagi has access to powerful fire magic, he can't go all out or else he'll risk revealing what kind of being he really is and potentially- destroy the sets his show takes place on.

As the series would progress, Izanagi would slowly reveal new skills with his pyrokinesis during sketches and learn to control it better so it's less dangerous to the secondary cast he stars alongside. The sketches of Izagani's show starts to pick up the pace in craziness and soon Izanagi would find himself in more serious matters that could potentially either make or ruin his show and legacy than just having to ward off the rival demon's minions every so often.

Otherwise, that's pretty much the idea. Not sure if I'll decide to go with it but just incase these were the ideas I had in mind for the return of Izanagi.

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Convention update- May and June 2018


Hey there. This month is gonna be busy for me since I'll be attending two cons in the Long Island and New York area back to back.

On May 19th, I will be at Castle Point Anime Convention 2018 at the Meadowlands Exhibition Center in New Jersey for pretty much the whole day. The next day, on May 20th, I will be at EMcon's Animefest 2018 at the East Meadow Public Library in East Meadow, NY for as much as I can last there.

June 2018 will have a similar (though not as busy) situation, as I am attending AnimeNEXT 2018 on either June 8th or 9th (the date will be decided on later) at the Convention Center in Atlantic City, New Jersey, followed by Eternal Con 2018 on June 16th at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York.

For those curious, no, I will not be selling my artwork at these events, I am considering it for future conventions though. If you want to meet up somewhere at one of these events, please get into contact with me on Facebook, Twitter, or instagram (my contact information can be found in the "Links" section) and we can discuss meetups.

Note that schedules and such are not 100% final and may change over time.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Wizardworks Kid's Arcade Pack


In another (possibly ill-fated) attempt to preserve and showcase content from my times growing up (and since there are no copies of the disc for sale on eBay or Amazon, and no archives of the disc on archive.org), here is a complete archive of the "Kid's Arcade Pack" disc, featuring 5 arcade-styled games aimed at a younger audience. Three of them- Cartoon Combat, Circus Balloons, and Macman Kid are clones of Columns, Missile Command, and Pac-Man respectively, while Diamonds and Pegleg Kid are scaled down versions of Diamonds and Pegleg (which I do not own and may have never been released on Windows to begin with). Macman Kid furthermore is a derivative of an earlier version called Macman, which has less polish overall. Cartoon Combat I believe is also an offshoot of an earlier Missile Command clone, but there's not much research on it (and I wouldn't care since it's my least favorite of the set).

You can download all five games here. Note that they are all 16-bit Windows applications and will require a computer or virtual machine capable of running them. (If there are any missing files, please let me know!)

(DOWNLOAD)

If you're looking for just Diamonds for Kids or Macman Kid, you can instead download my Diamonds collection or my Macman Collection, which both contain their "Big Kid" versions along with the "Kid" versions.

Friday, April 6, 2018

How I'd change Splatoon 2

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Nintendo's little ink-shooter game Splatoon 2 and being someone that likes to share his thoughts on games (for better or worse), I conjured up a list (you can tell I'm a fan of those) of ideas to improve the Splatoon 2 experience.

One rule I kept to with this (as opposed to my usual "list of suggestions" lists from the past) was to stick to QoL (Quality of Life) updates as opposed to things that radically change the gameplay itself.

Without further ado, here's the link to the document.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BX8qizdCb-TvsZ8zBOtSCT7tzCrR2RJiL6PKOxqvf78/edit?usp=sharing

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

valvigirl's Sector X

I promise I won't oversaturate this blog with Kids Next Door, even if the series has been a huge influence for me ever since I started watching it daily on Cartoon Network. It was also the very first fanbase I explored when I discovered DeviantART in late 2006, and one of the very first fan-artists I ever followed was valvigirl. Her DeviantART account was my very first exposure to the concept of creating OC's and uploading one's artwork online for the whole world to see. Unfortunately her account has since been closed, with all her artwork deleted off the site and any existence of herself wiped off the web (including her personal site).

During my hunt for old mid to late 2000's artwork from myself, I stumbled across old artworks of valvigirl's that I had printed out at a low resolution (don't ask why) and the prints managed to survive the years of being stashed, and so I decided to scan them and show off some of things she created.

So I present to you, Sector X.



I would love to have gotten them in their original resolutions, but alas, they are pretty much lost, with not even web archives managing to salvage anything from the old days of dA. Oh well, I guess.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

SJB Art Archives: Super Justin Bros. Deluxe

One particular image that I wanted to share that wasn't in either Volume 1 or Volume 2 was this one, drawn on June 12th, 2008, which should give you an idea of what the Super Justin series as a whole was intended to mimic.


Disregarding the false "©1999" copyright date (where I pretended my games did exist), this was primarily Super Mario Bros 1 (or Deluxe in this case) mixed with Sonic the Hedgehog on the Master System/Game Gear. You have the general large level designs with slopped terrain of the later with some features like blocks and powerups of the former. This particular image showed off the two-player versus mode, illustrated by KND-style Justin (left) and Matt (right) playing the game on their Game Boy Colors. To the left are four creatures known as Boois, which where ghostly creatures that would serve as literal "ghosts" in Vs. CPU, mimicking the player's best times on each stage. And as better times were scored, they would turn to green, then red, then black. At this point they gained fuses and were re-named "Bombis", which this image goes into greater detail on.

Oh wait, why am I going super-in depth on super old art again?

Sunday, January 28, 2018

SJB Art Archives 2006-2009, Volume 2

(not sure which of these I did draw in 2006 but I digress)


If you wanted more crappy art and comics from my middle school (and my first year of high school) years, here you go! Volume 2 is jam packed with anatomical errors, sloppy pencil lines, fake Mario levels and powers, and lots of Kids Next Door-styled artwork to fuel your fantasies. (oh, and two Comedy Man entries I didn't include in Volume 1)

Again, nothing cringy or overly lewd to keep things PG-13 here.
Oh hey, a link!

Saturday, January 27, 2018

SJB Art Archives 2007-2009, Volume 1

Well, you probably weren't expecting something like this, but here's a few previously unshared things from 2007 to 2009 that I've drawn traditionally. Keep in mind this is everything I could bother digging up out of storage and post, so if I do decide to do some more digging through my stash (there are a few things that I'd love to share, especially from mid-2008), I'll post it here.


Without further ado, the link:
Yup, this is a link alright.
(Warning, most of these will be admittedly pretty crappy, please understand)

Here you'll find things like KND-era Super Justin, "Anime" Super Justin, some entries from the original run of my comic Comedy Man, and other miscellaneous draws. And don't worry, I left out the really cringey stuff.

Friday, January 12, 2018

Teasing a small concept:

Well hello everyone. Guess you weren't expecting a blogpost so soon? Well I got something for ya.
During the past two days, my mind abruptly came up with two concepts and ideas for potential future projects if my wish to become a game designer ever comes true. Of course one of these would be much simple, so I'll spill the beans on that one and get to the other one... possibly tomorrow?

So last Sunday night, the very well-known Vinny from Vinesauce streamed a bunch of Korean MS-DOS games, all of them obscure in some way. One of them was a platformer named Zis the Adventure, and it starred a very young child character that eventually gains access to a yo-yo that deals extra damage and allows you to scale up ledges... if the controls actually worked for throwing it upwards.

So that got me thinking of a game idea where the main core mechanic was being a character with dual grappling hooks on both his arms, which could be used for not just traversal, but offensive capabilities as well. Momentum and physics would also play a big role in getting around quickly while you launch the grappling hooks onto different surfaces to swing and propel yourself across the map. In terms of using the hooks as an attack, you can swing one of your hooks around you like a lasso to not only increase the speed, power, and distance of your next hook-shot, but also deflect enemy projectiles. In mid air, you can spin the hooks above you to slow your descent. Think something like Umihara Kawase but with an extra focus on fighting enemies and characteristics of a run-and-gun.

This was my idea for how the face main protagonist would look; something not terribly complex while still keeping my usual style:



His color scheme would be standard white skin, red-orange hat, black hair, and brown eyes. The rest of his body would probably be a basic yellow shirt blue pants, and black sneakers (if I ever complete the sketch I may try coloring it)

Otherwise that's pretty much it. If anything else comes out in regards to this idea I'll let you all know, otherwise I'll cya next time.