The French are famous for their fashion sense, which makes “Crimson Fox” a surprise inclusion in the “Bad Super Costumes” log with her ridiculous cape hat:

Is she a cobra or a fox? Maybe a fox in the process of getting eaten by a cobra? Either way, some villainous brick type character is eventually going to grab that irritating long hat tail and use it to smash her into a handy brick wall.

A long time ago, I had a request to make a color guide for the standard color swatches in HeroMachine 2 for someone who was color blind. I just stumbled upon the file on my hard drive, and thought I should re-post it here so it would have a final home in case other color-blind users might find it useful. Click on the image below for the larger, more legible sized version.

Stealth in the jungle can be achieved in many ways, from The Phantom’s dark purple to Tarzan’s flesh and simple loin cloth, but B’Wana Beast’s approach, which I call “exploded flight of parrots”, is certainly the most unique:

I sense the costume designer had an issue of National Geographic in front of him while watching Mexican wrestlers on TV and enjoying the company of Mister Jim Bean. Or, as I suggested above, his car was hit by the cargo of a jackknifed semi full of tropical parrots and he sketched the results.

I can’t decide which part of this costume I like best. Is it the bright red bullet helmet with the fabulous leopard-skin trim? The loincloth ripped directly from the table of the nearest Italian restaurant? Or the combination of Iron-Man boots with paw-print toppers? I just wish I could be there when the local tribe finally tells him that “B’Wana” in their language is not, in fact, “Revered White Hunter” but “Runs Around in Dishtowel”.

I am happy to announce that the hundreds of items in the 2.5 expansion are now available for the final male body, the Brick! You can now finally make your own heavy-world Space Marine, massively-thewed barbarian warrior, or muscle-bound face-smashing super-hero with the benefit of the new features.

Head on over to the main HeroMachine 2.5 application at UGO.com to play around with the new stuff. Enjoy!

Everyone’s been able to enjoy HeroMachine 2 and the expansion for free for quite a while now, thanks entirely to UGO. Because they’re both paying the hosting costs and providing my daily bread, I’ve been able to work on the program full time. And what makes that possible for UGO? Ads.

So as you can imagine, good ad placement is pretty much key to making this whole free thing work. As a result, we’re trying to come up with a way to include an ad right in the Flash applet itself instead of just placed around it on the page. The proposed interface looks like this (click for a larger version):

Let me know in comments what you think about this change — is it too much, or alright? I removed the icons for some of the basic functions like loading and saving and moved them to a menu across the top, how do you think that is working? What about the loss of the message window?

Update: After some discussion on the HeroMachine Yahoo Group, I have submitted this tweaked version for consideration (click for full size version):

I’ve included a small static text box explaining to the new user what they should do. I also moved the dropdown boxes for component and genre closer to the previews, as that’s where most of the activity occurs.