Monthly Archives: June 2009

META: Out of town

I'll be headed out of town around noon today for a family wedding, back again late Sunday night. I've got some random panels and such scheduled for your entertainment and edification, but if I'm slow to respond to stuff that's why. Don't burn the place down while I'm gone.

Create a Character 4: Basic Humans

The one thing I wish I'd done at the beginning of this would be to give a basic art instruction course on the human form. I'm not terrific at drawing a human form, mind you, but I remember enough from those classes to teach it to you on here. And who knows, maybe some of you WILL use some of it to go draw, who knows? Continue reading

Reason #12: He steals badly

Pretty much every artist has at some point "derived inspiration from" or "paid homage to" or "flat out stolen" work from another artist, but the thing is that when you do that, what you come up with still has to be good. Which Rob Liefeld is not. As evidence, and with a tip-o-the-hat to Glenn Hauman, here are two panels for you to compare. The first is from Rob Liefeld's New Mutants #93, cover date September, 1990, and the second is from Fantastic Four #247, by John Byrne back in October 1982:

rip-new-mutants-093_05
rip-fantasticfour_v1_247_p20

I don't have a problem with him lifting the design from Byrne, but I do think this is a great example of his deficiencies as an artist. Let me run down the reasons for you.

Continue reading

Random Panel: General Entendre the Second speaks

kid-eternity-2-1946-lick-them

(From "Kid Eternity" number 2, 1946.)

HM3: PNG and JPG fix

I think I've fixed the HM3 Alpha problem where using "Save as JPG/PNG" would squeeze your character into the upper left corner of the image if you used the left or right Hand. It now sets the image size to 400x600, which means wingtips and such will get cut off. But, it returns those features to basic usability, at least.

It also hopefully sets the stage for the "choose super big size" option down the road. In fact, I think I can by default set it to larger than 400x600 if you guys want, just let me know. This is all uncharted territory, I'm just hacking my way through it, but I'll give it a whirl.

HM3: Good news and bad news

I've just uploaded an update for the HM3 alpha that hopefully will fix the problem with the layers getting hosed up beyond all belief when you load saved character. Unfortunately it looks like this has also broken the "Move to bottom" function and introduced a new error when loading a saved character where things are getting masked to the wrong items.

But, I wanted to put this up there for now to see if at least the layering problem is fixed. Give it a shot and let me know -- I THINK you can load old characters and it ought to work properly.

Random Panel: It’s the second one. Always.

csbg10

Hammerknight’s Recipes, Vol. 1

(Hi everyone! Damien here. Hammerknight is going to be doing a bit of this from now on, and this is his first post! These are some of the how-to's he's been posting on the forums, and he'll be joining me on my Saturday post this week also. After that, you'll be seeing brand-new stuff, and like me, he's always ready to do requests. So give HK a big warm welcome! Continue reading

Hey, nice rack!

His tagline is "He stalks the world's most dangerous game", but unless that game is deaf I think he's got two very large, very bulky, very obvious problems to deal with before he's stalking anything but a can of metal polish:

manhunter1

Apparently you have to have flunked out of the Fashion Institute to be called "Manhunter" (see my entry on DC's attempted relaunch in the Nineties), unless you happen to be from Mars where, let's be honest, they're very snazzy dressers. Or were, before they all died. Best looking corpses in the solar system though, you have to give them that.

Anyway, this particular Manhunter is all too Terran, and someone has, in what I can only imagine is the world's best fashion-related practical joke, convinced him that wearing weapon racks strapped to your shins is a good way to be a stealthy assassin. I bet he was too dazzled by the glaive-length push-dagger they also gave him (which naturally wouldn't fit in his leg-holders) to object when they were shown to him. "Yeah yeah, metal sword sheaths, check, giant sleeves, whatever, have you seen the SIZE of this thing?!"

I can't decide what's going to give him away sooner, the flapping of his sleeves in the wind or the clanking of his leg-born display cases as he attempts to run over the rooftops. He'd have to waddle like Howard the frigging Duck to avoid banging those suckers into each other, not to mention the effect fifty pounds of metal strapped to his feet is going to have on his top speed.

I've seen a lot of impractical super-hero get-uppery in my time, but I think this might be the worst of all. It's a shame because the overall costume isn't bad, it's just the idea of an elite assassin walking around sporting the display rack from "Bubba's House of Discount Swords" for boots that ruins it.

Random Panel: Great moments in super-hero adventures

flame-1-1955-librarybook

(From "The Flame" number 1, 1955.)