Monthly Archives: October 2010

Like a "dead" super-hero, Friday Night Fights is back from the land of the unliving and crashing into your computer! Wait, maybe that's zombies I'm thinking of.

Regardless, the time has come again for an all-out, knock-down, drag-out fight pitting your creativity directly against other HeroMachine faithful in a week-to-week slugfest.

Here's how it works.

You have two weeks to come up with five HeroMachine creations. Starting on Friday, November 5, I will post all of the "Play In" entries in one big cage-match poll. On Friday, November 12, the top 16 vote getters will face off in a series of head-to-head matchups in traditional tournament bracket fashion. On Friday, November 19, the eight winners of each bracket will face off in another round of head-to-head matchups, and so on until we have one overall winner.

This is a bit different from last time, in that instead of just doing a "first come, first in" qualification process, this time everyone has a shot at getting into the tournament. Who actually does will be decided by the community at large, removing me as the gatekeeper.

Which brings us to the subject of "Theme". Your challenge in this Friday Night Fights is simple:

Create Robin Hood in Space.

That's right, you will come up with five Robin Hood characters, designed to work as a cohesive team in the same space-based setting. You might choose to go with a space opera look like "Star Wars", or a gritty techno-grunge "Firefly", or mech-dominated "Robo-Tech", or a magic-infused "Spacejammer", or something entirely out of your own imagination.

Will you design their look as a cohesive team, like the Fantastic Four, the original X-Men, and the Doom Patrol? Or will you go with a team of highly stylized individuals like the latter-day X-Men, the Justice League, and the Avengers?

Whichever way you go, Robin Hood and his Band of Merry Men must all come from the same shared, space-based creative universe, and they must include Robin Hood himself; Maid Marian; Friar Tuck; Little John; and their nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Here are the rules:

• By the close of business on Thursday, November 4, you must provide to me via email (afdstudios@gmail.com) five character images created via HeroMachine 3, that meet the following criteria. Note that your entry must include all five characters; incomplete character sets will be disqualified and will not be eligible for entry later on.
  1. Characters must include Robin Hood himself; Maid Marian; Friar Tuck; Little John; and their nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham;
  2. Images must be in JPG or PNG format;
  3. No outside manipulation by any image editor other than HeroMachine 3 except for basic cropping;
  4. Each submission must also include a brief description of the space-based setting the characters appear in, and a brief bio of each character.
• On Friday, November 5, all qualified entries of the Sheriff of Nottingham will be posted on HeroMachine.com in a single poll.
• On Friday, November 12, the top 16 vote-getters in the Sheriff of Nottingham poll will face off in a series of head-to-head match-ups featuring the Friar Tuck entries, with the #1 vote getter being matched against the #16 vote getter, #2 going against #15, and so on.
• On Friday, November 19, the eight winners of each Friar Tuck contest will again face off in a series of head-to-head match-ups, this time featuring their Little John entries. Brackets will be re-seeded at this time, with the #1 vote getter from the previous week matching up against the #8 vote getter, #2 vs. #7, and so on.
  The eight entrants who did not advance in the tournament will also have their Little John entries featured in an all-in cage match, with the winner receiving their choice of any HeroMachine 3 item they like.
• On Friday, November 26, the four winners of each Little John match-up will face off again in a series of head-to-head contests, this time featuring their Maid Marian entries. Brackets will again be re-seeded according to overall vote totals from the previous week.
  The twelve entrants who did not advance in the tournament will also have their Maid Marian entries featured in an all-in cage match, with the winner receiving their choice of any HeroMachine 3 item they like.
• Finally, on Friday, December 3, the last two contestants standing will clash with their Robin Hood characters, with the top vote getting as of Friday, December 10 being the overall victor, joining the previous FNF winner Kaldath in the Ring of Honor, and receiving a custom color character sketch of whatever they like (within reason!) by Jeff Hebert. The runner-up will receive a custom black and white character sketch.
  The fourteen entrants who did not advance in the tournament will also have their Little John entries featured in an all-in cage match, with the winner receiving their choice of any HeroMachine 3 item they like.

Hopefully that makes sense. To clarify a bit, here is the bracket, along with each week's character (not including the "Sheriff of Nottingham" play-in round):

To ease the burden a bit, I'll do a Caption Contest on Monday, December 1 instead of another character contest for those of you who don't want the stress of trying to do five characters and enter the regular weekly one as well.

If you have questions, please speak up in the comments. And good luck!