I got to see “Beowulf” in glorious 3D IMAX last weekend, and while I really liked it, I think ultimately it gets a bit lost in the Uncanny Valley.

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Specifically, it was the worst of times for super-hero costume design, aka “the 1980’s”. As proof, I give you “Truk”, a villain from the pages of DC’s “The Green Lantern Corps” circa 1986:

I find myself rendered almost speechless by how incredibly lame this character is. If bad were a scale that went to ten, “Truk” would be an eleven. At first I assumed this incident resulted from some sort of Marvel-led takeover of the DC offices in an effort to drive them out of business. Or perhaps it was a bad April Fool’s joke.

But no. This is an actual, bona-fide, yes-they-really-meant-to-do-it super-villain. And thus I am legally required to unleash the mockery.
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Over the years I’ve had a couple of freelance clients send me images of a character from HeroMachine that they wanted to have in a custom illustration. Don’t get me wrong, HeroMachine is great for making “darn good” portraits, but there’s just nothing like a true, unique, professionally rendered image.

I thought it might be interesting to show you how the program can be used to give an artist a really good idea of what you’re looking for, though, so here’s one example of a character designed in HeroMachine, then rendered by hand. I give you Kubota, pint-sized (but deadly serious) soldier of fortune in the Star Frontiers game world (click on either image for a larger version):

I’ll be posting a few more of these over the next little while, the HeroMachine version first and then the custom illustration next. If anyone’s interested, I’ve also been thinking about having a contest. People would send me their HeroMachine creations, I’d pick, say, the five best, and then open it up to a vote. The winner would get a custom character portrait based on that visual.

If that sounds interesting, please leave a comment and let me know!

In the next couple of weeks I’ll be releasing some additional Expansion items, including a nice set of firearms by the invaluable Mark Shute. Since people seem to like guns and other assorted firearms, I thought I’d provide a preview of what they look like (click the image for a much larger version):

One of the things Mark does much better than I is creating drawings of mechanical items with clean, crisp lines that convey a sense of solidity. My Flash drawings tend to look like they were drawn with a brush, while Mark’s are more like those rendered with a good set of technical pens. It works much better for these kinds of things, and I have to admit I learn something every time I work with his stuff.

This next expansion to the expansion is going to add several hundred items to the set, thanks to Mark, including some really nice shirts and belts, among many others. You can see the full set of items he’s submitted here.

I use a Wacom graphic tablet to draw all of the items in the HeroMachine. It cuts development time dramatically, and allows me to combine the art production and code development into one application. I don’t think I could ever go back to a pure pen and ink on paper method of drawing at this point, I’m lost to the dark side.

Anyway, I thought you might be interested in seeing a demonstration of how, in general, you can go from a neat photograph of something to a finished digital pen and ink illustration like those found in the program. There’s no sound, just a visual — my auditory skills haven’t quite caught up to the times yet.