Monthly Archives: April 2010

HM3: Fantasy armor, first pass

I've just posted the first 14 items in the still-under-development "Tops-Male-Fantasy-Armor" set for your early adopting pleasure to the HeroMachine 3 Alpha:

These are basically the twelve existing Fantasy Armor pieces from HM2 (though not the Expansion), minus the last two shoulder pads which are, for all intents and purposes, available in Shoulder-Right.

Two things I'd like to get your feedback on regards patterning and shading. I included semi-transparent shading on a couple of the armors, which overlay the controllable colors. Do you like that, or would you rather I made those areas solid black (line color)? Or leave them off entirely?

Regarding patterning, right now the patterns cover the entire item. I could restrict that, so for instance you wouldn't get pattern on the shoulder pads or whatnot. The catch is that anything that's color1 gets a pattern to it. So I'd have to rejigger how the colors are set up in the item to make that happen.

Anyway, let me know what you thing. I am now moving on to the many (many) fine suggestions posted by you all to complete the set. That's going to take a while, but I'll probably release them in stages as I get them done so you don't have to wait till the very end when it's all completely finished.

Multi-level badness

Some characters constrain themselves to just a bad costume, while others have bad costumes, bad sidekicks, bad gear, or bad dialog. But you rarely come across someone who pegs the meter on all of those levels at once, like Gold Key Comics' "The Owl":

The list of good purple costumes is pathetically short, and the insightful (i.e. "not blind") reader will guess that "The Owl" does not appear on it. A plain body suit may be enough to get you in the Blue Man Group but you've got to bring something better to the super hero game if you want to be taken seriously. The mask and the silly head tufts with yellow bags under the eyes don't help, making him look like nothing so much as a dyspeptic burlesque queen slowly wasting away in a "Former Starlet" nursing home, or maybe a failed Penguin henchman.

But what clenches this entire ensemble for the "Bad Costume Hall of Fame" is the wine-colored cape which is bizarrely attached to his wrists via the broken-off ass-ends of a tetherball. I cannot for the life of me imagine what good that possibly does. Did "The Owl" have a problem with his cape escaping at some point in the past, possibly in an effort to flee the scene of the fashion disaster in progress, thus necessitating some sort of leash?

As uninspired as he is on his own, though, "The Owl" gets outdone in the unfortunate costume competition by his girlfriend, the shockingly named "Owl Girl". There's nothing like red high heels to really set off a purple body suit. Maybe she was anticipating the great observation from "Good Morning Viet Nam" when the Robin Williams character advises the army change to a similar color scheme: "It's war, let's clash!"

So, bad costume -- check. Bad side-kick -- check. "But Jeff," I hear you say, "what else is bad about The Owl?!" Well I'm glad you asked, imaginary internet person, because if you carefully read the comics page you'll see that the bad pun to panel ratio is approaching one. I was trying to imagine what is worse than a character named after an owl, dressed in purple, standing next to another owl-themed purple-clad woman in red heels, who runs around spouting "jokes" that would embarrass Golden Age Robin, when I realized the answer was right in front of me -- if the "jokes" were puns that rhymed! That combination of badness is almost enough to rip the fabric of space-time.

Almost.

The only thing missing for the perfect combination of lameness, for that singularity of suck, would be if you combined all those things into one page and then finished it off with an incredibly silly set of gadgets like an Owl Mobile or, I don't know, maybe "Robot Owlos".

Wait, what's that ripping sound ... ?

(Many thanks to reader Kate, who once again has come up with a winner of a loser.)

SOD.111 – Ant Man

RP: Pecos Bill, carpet layer

(From "Nature Boy" number 2, 1956.)

Poll Position: On portals

We've talked before about various fictional universes we'd like to live in, but I want to take a slightly different angle on that:

{democracy:130}

Discussion after the jump.

Continue reading

SOD.110 – Gunslinger

RP: Words fail me again.

(From "The Black Terror" number 11, 1946.)

Character Contest 32 – It's a class thing

Your design challenge for this week is to create a super-powered modern-day character based on the name and general concept of a Dungeons & Dragons class. Examples from actual published comics would include the likes of Paladin, Wizard, and of course Rogue.

Note that in those cases the actual power set of the original class is sometimes only peripherally part of the actual character. Rogue does steal something -- powers -- which is pretty close, but she's not a trap springer or backstabber. You don't have to be limited like that, though; if you want, you can make a character named Rogue who would duplicate those D&D roles more perfectly. Or, you can go in a totally unexpected direction, say by making a psychic thief who steals memories or somesuch.

So, here are the rules:

  • All entries must be left as a link in a comment to this post;
  • Your linked character image should be on a publicly accessible web server (i.e. the UGO Forums or PhotoBucket or ImageShack or what have you);
  • The character must be named after one of the D&D classes on this list and should make me go "wow!" when I see it.

Next Monday I'll select the Finalists from all submissions, and one overall Winner who will receive his or her choice of either a custom item or a portrait of themselves, to appear in the final HeroMachine 3 version.

Good luck everyone!

Caption Contest 74 VOTE!

Many thanks to everyone who entered Caption Contest 74, I had some good laughs. I've picked out the Finalists, and now it's up to you to vote for the ones you think are funniest. Good luck everyone!

As usual, click on an image to see it full-sized, and you can vote for as many as you like. Results will be posted next Monday.

[polldaddy poll="3078251"]

Thor and Avenger designs

In my frenzy of blog-redesigning, I forgot my "Things I Like" post on Saturday. So without further ado, I would point you to Chris Samnee's "Thor: The Mighty Avenger" design sketches for his upcoming run on that book. It's got some great costume design tidbits from a really gifted artist, it's well worth a look-see. I like the hoodie built in to the cape on this page, for example:

Good stuff.