[7:12 AM]Sonic Satam Dvd Box Set - In Stores Now!
Update by: Artie
EDIT: Whoops, I was mistaken, apparently Shout! Factory only has U.S. distribution rights for the SatAM DVD set. So it is only available in U.S. stores. Canadian folks, you'll have to import also. Sorry. :(

Today is the day that fans of the Saturday morning Sonic cartoon series (SatAM Sonic) have been waiting for. Roughly 14 years after the show first started airing on ABC back in 1993, the complete series, all 26 episodes, is now available in one 4-disc DVD box set! This DVD set is available in stores today, so get out there and buy it! This series receives my personal seal of approval, and is still my favorite Sonic universe to date. Not to say I don't like Sonic X and other Sonic incarnations, but I just like the SatAM Sonic series above all the others. Those of you who are old fans of this show will definitely want to rush out and pick this up, and those of you who have never seen it, or maybe never even heard of it, I highly recommend you pick it up as well. With a MSRP of only $29.98, you're almost certain to find it for only $20-25 in an actual store, or online shop, depending on where you go to purchase it. Not a bad deal for the whole 26 episodes of this wonderful series. So is this news post sounding too much like an advertisement? Maybe. But I'm not getting paid to do this. Though I did get a copy of the DVD set back in February from the producer! So I can state my opinions having had more than a month to look over it and enjoy it already. I'm recommending this DVD set personally, it just may be my favorite cartoon of all time. :) And as for extras? Interviews with Jaleel White (Voice of Sonic), Ben Hurst (Writer, did almost all of the second season and planned the third which was never produced), plus storyboards, concept art, and more! Not to mention the packaging, save for the front cover, consists entirely of fan art work. You may remember the news from back in October and November mentioning that contest. Now you'll be able to see whose art was published on the packaging! You just may see someone whose work you recognize from this site even. So go buy it already! Head out to your local store, or your favorite online retailer, or just follow this handy link to Amazon.com to purchase it. :)

Oh, and apologies to all you fans outside the U.S. & Canada, as that is the only country this DVD release is available in at this time. However, there are import options if you look around, and the copy I have is region free (NTSC).

[4:03 AM]Team Artail 10th Anniversary!
Update by: Artie
Hard to imagine I've kept this site up for this long and it's still going strong, but December 6th is Artail's 10th anniversary! I started the site 10 years ago, back on December 6, 1996. Of course back then it was called Artail Productions. I don't have a copy of the site from 1996, but you can see pretty much what it looked like from then by looking at an archive of it from January 1998 here on the internet archive. Things've come a long way, eh? I was so young and learning back then. Along the way the site has gone through a couple redesigns and a name change to Team Artail, and well, here we are today. Probably about due for another redesign, but I'm so busy and lack motivation these days, argh! I wanted to do something special for the anniversary, but I couldn't come up with anything. Well, the new art gallery was launched in October, close enough. :P

I know the header image up there looks a bit bland, but I put it together in about 5 minutes at 3:30 in the morning because I just wanted to get something up. :) The art on the 10th anniversary banner is by sobegrrl, from the oekaki. It's a character that came out of a little TA mascot design contest held by Kiwi on the oekaki (Winning design by jul-cat). This happened to be my favorite picture of it, and I thought I might as well use it for something on the site. I didn't ask permission, so she'll probably be surprised to see it up here, but being that she drew it for the site, I don't think it'll be a problem. :) Not sure if I'll stick with it as a permanent mascot for the site, but we'll see how it goes over.

Here's to 10 more!

[10:12 PM]Sonic Satam Dvd Art Contest Extended
Update by: Artie
The Sonic SatAM DVD art contest has been extended, the new deadline is Saturday, November 11. See the post below this one for the details. :) If you're sending in an entry, please only send in your final entry. Don't send it in at multiple stages.

[8:06 PM]Satam Dvd Set Coming + Chance For Your Art In It!
Update by: Artie
I haven't reported on this yet because I've been waiting for a more solid release date, but it has been CONFIRMED that a Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) DVD box set of the COMPLETE SERIES will be coming out in "early 2007" from Shout! Factory. This could mean anything from January to as late as April or heck, even May. My bet would be to expect it sometime in the March-April time frame, but I'll post the actual release date once I know it. This is the old Saturday morning Sonic cartoon that had the Freedom Fighters (Sally, Bunnie, Antoine, Rotor, etc). The DVD set will contain all 26 episodes and is scheduled for release in the US and Canada only at this time (as far as I know).

Now, on to the part that really matters to YOU at this point. The producer of the DVD set has been posting regularly at Fans United for SatAM (FUS) and announced yesterday that they are doing a contest for fan artwork on the INSIDE of the DVD packaging. If this set is anything like the Shout!'s Super Mario Bros. Super Show DVD set, there could well be four spots in the case for fan artworks behind the discs, each one a roughly 5 1/2" x 7 1/2" (width x height) space. This is what I imagine they have in mind, though I have not confirmed it as of this post, so watch the thread at the link below for further details. The basic rundown is that is MUST represent SatAM Sonic, MUST be scanned at 300 DPI and sent in JPG format (This is going to be printed material after all, it needs to be high resolution), and it MUST BE RECEIVED BY SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4! It's not a very long time frame, to be sure, but it's the earliest it could be announced, and artwork must be received by then to meet production deadlines. Entries may be emailed to SonicFanArt@hotmail.com. I would recommend fully colored pieces (whether by hand or digital) as you are going to be submitting something that is going to be considered for printing in an actual DVD set's packaging. And remember, 300 DPI scans, or VERY high resolution for digital works. Just to give an example, 5 1/2" x 7 1/2" at 300 DPI is 1650 x 2250 pixels. So you definitely don't want anything smaller than that. Bigger may actually be better when it comes to the print quality of it.

Now, all that being said, please see the thread on FUS for the complete rundown, as well as questions that have been asked and answered there. That would also be the best place to ask any questions you may have.

Good luck to you all, and remember, YOU ONLY HAVE UNTIL NOVEMBER 4!

[12:14 AM]Old Art Archive Torrent
Update by: Artie
For those of you looking for an easier way of backing up the entire contents of the old TA art archive for yourselves, I have created a torrent containing the art only (just images, no text files or scripts), seperated into individual .rar files by artists. I would assume none of the artists would have a problem with me doing this, since it is all publicly available here anyway, and I'm just making it easier to save it all before I take it down for good. This would benefit the artists who want to backup their own stuff too. (Any good BT client will let you select which files you want to download and which ones you don't) The complete torrent is 1.22 GB and contains 13,848 images in 123 RAR files (extract using WinRAR once downloading is complete) by artist. Here is a direct link to the torrent, or you can view the torrent info page here. Grab it while you can, because I'm not gonna seed such a huge file forever. And please do help seed once you finish downloading it, if you do. :) If you don't understand how torrents work, please google it. The info is easy to find.

Registrations on the new gallery are coming along nicely, but it seems to be catching on slowly. I haven't been able to get in touch with a lot of the old artists who have their stuff on TA already, so if any of you know someone whose art is in the old archive, but not in the new archive yet, please give them a holler and let them know about the new one. :)

[10:54 PM]New Art Gallery System!
Update by: Artie
So today I was sitting here and thought, you know, it's about time I do something about the lack of updates here. And that old ImageFolio art archive really sucks. So, I looked into Coppermine and installed it, played with it and said shoot, let's go with it! So after much tweaking and getting things running right, we now have a new gallery here after all these years! (Link also in the sidebar on the left) This is a HUGE improvement over ImageFolio. Now, I'm gonna have to run through a few points here regarding all this!

- New points of interest include commenting on images (can be disabled by the artist), rating images (can also be disabled by the artist), adding images to your favorites, sending PMs to other users, and also a buddy system (You must view a user's profile to go through the friend process). Also a much improved search function!

- The OLD ImageFolio art archives will remain online through the end of October so you all can grab whatever art you want out of it before I take it offline for good. The art from that will NOT be transferred to the new system unless it is done by the artists themselves. I'm not about to try to move over 13,900 images with dates and descriptions and such!

- ANYONE can register on the NEW gallery system. By registering an account, you gain the ability to comment on images, rate images, add images to your favorites (viewable only by you), and send PMs to other users. Registering an account does NOT enable you to upload art!

- In order to get your own gallery to upload art in, you must be added to the "Artists" user group by an administrator. Artists who were in the old archive can register and then simply request this to have it done. Artists who were not on the old site can apply the same way it's always been done, email 3-5 art samples and/or an existing gallery link to fanart@teamartail.com and your art will be reviewed for possible acceptance into the TA gallery. If you've submitted in the past and not heard anything back, now's a good time to try again. :) (PLEASE only send JPG/GIF/PNG images. NO BMP/TIF FILES!)

I think that's about all there is to say about that. Hope you all enjoy the new gallery system, I spent all day setting it up. XD And PLEASE be patient when submitting art samples and trying to join the gallery as a new artist.

One more note, I'm aware I never announced the winners of that Bloodlines contest, nor have they received their prizes yet! I will still be taking care of that, so please sit tight regarding that! I haven't forgotten! I'm just a bad person and a terrible procrastinator.

[8:47 PM]Contest Voting! (finally!)
Update by: Artie
Yes, yes, I know I really dropped the ball on this one and took far too long to get the contest voting up, but I have finally created a page displaying all the entries for the Bloodlines contest, and there is a poll for everyone to vote for which entry is their favorite. Just check out the Contest Page and you'll see the directions, the entries, and the poll all there! All the entries should be there. (If you submitted an entry and it's not there, then you majorly didn't follow the instructions, because either I didn't get it or it was totally unrelated to the contest.) Anyway, enjoy the entries, read the story if you haven't before voting, and good luck to all the entrants! Voting ends May 21, 2006 23:59:00 PST.

[3:47 AM]Art Contest Update
Update by: Artie
The contest was scheduled to end on February 28, but due to a few requests I've received to extend the deadline, I've decided to push it back to the end of March. So now you have until March 31 to get your entries in, folks! In addition, those of you who have already sent in entries, I'll need a bit more information from you. You can see updated information on the contest info page. New/changed information is in red text! March 31 is the final final deadline though, I will not be extending it again, so take advantage of the extra month!

[12:56 AM]Team Artail's First Official Art Contest!
Update by: Artie
I have decided finally after all this time to hold an art contest here on Team Artail! Complete details regarding this contest can be found by following this link. The deadline for entries is February 28, 2006. Have fun, everyone!

[9:54 PM]Shadow the Hedgehog Hi-Res Character Art
Update by: Artie
I've not seen these posted anywhere else yet, so I thought I'd bring them to you here. Just what the title says, high resolution character art from the upcoming Shadow the Hedgehog game! You may have seen SOME of these on GameSpot or IGN, but they aren't near as big as the ones I've got here. So, enjoy. See, I'm still alive. :)