New Freedom Force – Part 9 – Mantra

Meet Mantra.
An eternal warrior named Lukasz was reincarnated, to his shock, into the body of a woman, Eden Blake. In addition to being forced to deal with life as a woman, Lukasz also faces the particular challenges of Eden's life — in particular, her two children and her ex-husband. For the first time, Lukasz confronts the fact that for 1500 years he had been destroying families by stealing men's bodies and forcing them to walk away from their lives. He fell in love with her soul, which still existed within him.

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Skin includes mesh and keyframes with credit given to original authors in the readme.txt file. Skin and mesh enhanced to work in Freedom Force vs The Third Reich. Skin released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Freedom Force - Eddie Devil

Meet Eddie Devil.

Eddie Devil has been described as the Jimmy Olsen to El Gorgo's Superman. That is, if Jimmy Olsen was a luchadore who double fists cigs and a coffee to get ready to fight mermen. Actually given the wonders of silver age Jimmy Olsen... that's possible.

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Skin includes mesh and keyframes with credit given to original authors in the readme.txt file. Skin and mesh enhanced to work in Freedom Force vs The Third Reich. Skin released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Freedom Force – Penny Devlin: Woman Of A.C.T.I.O.N.

Meet Penny Devlin.

I’ve been a fan of Chris Sims’ work for while now. Check out his Invincible Super Blog to see why. He’s started writing a few comics at Action Age Comics and they’re pretty much universally great. I’ve been working on a concept for a comic of my own but the biggest snag is I need an artist to draw it. Sadly my Photoshop skillz stop where drawing begins. I tell you this because you can read Woman of A.C.T.I.O.N. for free online right now.

DOWNLOAD WOMAN OF A.C.T.I.O.N.

Skin includes mesh and keyframes with credit given to original authors in the readme.txt file. Skin and mesh enhanced to work in Freedom Force vs The Third Reich. Skin released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Freedom Force – El Gorgo!

Meet El Gorgo.

The marvelous Mike McGee and the tangible(?) Tamas Jakab are the creators of the impossibly amazing webcomic El Gorgo! I unleashed a teaser image of my El Gorgo skin on Twitter a few days ago and these kind gents followed me. I wasn't even following them yet! (my secret shame) I continued my work on El Gorgo and posted it to the Freedom Reborn Forums and then debuted Axe Cop. Not long after I posted my my teasers of Eddie Devil I found that Mike McGee had tweeted about it. I had yet to tweet about it myself! This level of connection between artists and fans (becoming mutual fans even) is why I love living in the future.

DOWNLOAD EL GORGO

Skin includes mesh and keyframes with credit given to original authors in the readme.txt file. Skin and mesh enhanced to work in Freedom Force vs The Third Reich. Skin released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Freedom Force - Axe Cop

Meet Axe Cop.

I just jumped back in to doing Freedom Force skins. It’s hard to believe the original is almost a decade old. Here’s everyone’s favorite homicidal officer with the mind of a six year old: Axe Cop. If you aren’t reading Axe Cop you should be ashamed. It’s free on the web at AxeCop.com so go there now!

DOWNLOAD AXE COP

Skin includes mesh and keyframes with credit given to original authors in the readme.txt file. Skin and mesh enhanced to work in Freedom Force vs The Third Reich. Skin released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Garmin Nuvi Fun – Dracula

Yes, Dracula. From Konami Krazy Racers another Mario Kart clone. It’s a good one though. This is Dracula from Castlevania driving a Go Kart! That is mind blowing.

DOWNLOAD DRACULA FOR NUVI

Installation Instructions

Garmin Nuvi Fun – Crash Bandicoot

Yes, I put together a Crash Bandicoot vehicle. The sprites are pulled from Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart a generally awful Mario Kart clone for the GBA. If you thought this was a surprise wait till Friday.

DOWNLOAD CRASH BANDICOOT FOR NUVI

Installation Instructions

Garmin Nuvi Fun – Donkey Kong

Have you ever listened to the music in Donkey Kong Country? I mean have you listened? Seriously stellar stuff.

DOWNLOAD DONKEY KONG FOR NUVI

Installation Instructions

Garmin Nuvi Fun – Bowser

Bowser involved a lot of ‘shopping up before he would look good on the Nuvi. The original sprite was so faded and ill-colored that it need significant alterations. But hey, that’s what I do.

DOWNLOAD BOWSER FOR NUVI

Installation Instructions

Garmin Nuvi Fun - Yoshi

I love me some Yoshi, but there are people who LOVE THEM SOME YOSHI. Those people scare me. I mean, I loves Yoshi’s Island as much of the next guy. It’s a good game. Top 10 platformer of all time. No question. What I’m afraid of are the people who fantasize about living wish Yoshi on his aforementioned island.

DOWNLOAD YOSHI FOR NUVI

Installation Instructions

Garmin Nuvi Fun – Wario

Fun fact about Wario and me. I love to play as him in Smash Bros. This gets me in trouble because I do my (dead on) Wario laugh as I run wild on my enemies. This is too much for them to bear so I’ve been relegated to more mute characters since.

DOWNLOAD WARIO FOR NUVI

Installation Instructions

Garmin Nuvi Fun - Toad

Toad is one of my favorites while playing Mario Kart. I’m prone to accidents so I love anyone with quick acceleration. When I play as somebody like Bowser I’m not even in contention.

DOWNLOAD TOAD FOR NUVI

Installation Instructions

Garmin Nuvi Fun – Princess Peach

The Princess gave me an awful lot of trouble. It turns out her sprite is just ugly.It’s tough to accept that, bit it’s true. Thankfully the only really bad angles are the front facing ones which you almost never see.

DOWNLOAD PEACH FOR NUVI

Installation Instructions

Garmin Nuvi Fun - Luigi

I did tweak these sprites a bit. The original’s colors are all washed out to look brighter on the original GBA’s unlit screen. I made them more vivid and smoothed some colors and gradients where it wouldn’t make the whole thing look blurry. I just can’t stand a blurry sprite.

DOWNLOAD LUIGI FOR NUVI

Installation Instructions

Garmin Nuvi Fun – Mario Kart

I told you I had a solution. I’ve been liberally cribbing sprites from The Shyguy Kingdom. Specifically their Mario Kart Super Circuit page.

Using this sprite sheet I put together a 3d view of Mario on his go-kart and converted it to the SRF format needed for use on Garmin Nuvi’s. Not only that, but I’ve done it for every driver in Mario Kart Super Circuit for the GBA.

DOWNLOAD MARIO FOR NUVI HERE

Installation Instructions

Garmin Nuvi Fun – Some Background

This week and next I’ll be posting some custom vehicles for Garmin Nuvi devices. It used to be that if you wanted to customize your GPS you had to download from the Garmin Garage. The Garage is cool but it’s only got what Garmin wants to give you. That means you get a lot of generic cars, when what you really want is the oddly specific.

Thankfully TechMods.net reverse-engineered the vehicle file format and created a decompiler and recompiler. That is to say, we can now make our own vehicles. To the uninitiated you may think that the car on your GPS is a 3d model, not so. It is actually a series of pictures of a 3d model. That means the cool guys at VehiclesForGarminNuvi.com can give use things like X-Wings, the Blues Mobile, Ecto-1, and sooooo much more. Too bad I’m no good at 3d modeling.

I’ve found an interesting solution to that problem. You’ll see it coming up soon.

Missed A Monday

It’s happened a few times before so it shouldn’t surprise you, but I missed a post yesterday. You’ll get it in little bit along with a third post today to catch up. As a bonus you get to hear why I didn’t post.

I was asked by my good friend Mia Claxton to design a logo for her. I considered it a privilege. Her beautiful middle name is Rose and I allowed that to be my primary inspiration. Be sure to check out her design blog.

I also had some ups and downs in my job search. Bad news: Best Buy rejected me because I failed their psych evaluation. These are the people who ask you if "It is maddening when the court lets guilty criminals go free." So I'm not terribly surprised I lost out. How does being a normal rational mind pass an irrational psych analysis? Luck? Lying? I don't know. The good news: My ever-amazing friend Nic Belmonte has found me a smattering of freelance work. Few people have come through for me like Nic has.

Tripton Follies Redux

The differences might be subtle but it’s worth posting the second (and possibly final) draft.

Tripton Follies Poster

The Jennings County Players are putting together a variety show so I leapt at the chance to design the poster. The goal was to make an old-timey vaudeville-ish poster to go with the show’s unique premise. Naturally that means to over-design it to the limit and to shift fonts whenever it feels good. This is the first draft of the poster and I’m very proud of it. I’m hoping that a few people will get a chuckle out of the poster before they even see the show.

Give Me Excess of It

After discovering that my backdrop was essentially the same color as the destination's wall, I switched to a more rosy color. The leaves are a temp object. Expect a different stencil in it's places with more detail.