Monthly Archives: April 2011

Caption Contest 97

Sorry for the delay on this one folks!

With hearty thanks once again to Glenn3's "Say What? Pictures", your challenge this week is to come up with the best replacement dialog for this comics panel:

The best entry (as judged by yours truly) wins the author's choice of either any item they like or any portrait to be included in HeroMachine 3′s final release, or a custom black and white “Sketch of the Day” style illustration (you pick the subject, I draw it however I like).

All entries must be left as a comment (or comments) to this post. Keep ‘em clean (appropriate for a late-night broadcast TV show), but most importantly, keep ‘em funny! That might be a challenge given the nature of this week's panel, but I'm sure you can pull it off.

This week we have a cap of no more than five (5) entries per person, so make 'em your best!

Character Contest 62 – Female Finalists

The response to Character Contest 62, which challenged you to create a template available to everyone who uses HeroMachine 3 for a Fantasy Warrior, was huge. My sincere thanks to everyone who entered, I am once again humbled by your creativity and skill.

I've broken the results into two sections, male and female. I went through and picked out my favorites, limiting it to one entry per person in the interest of fairness even though there were some who had two or more I thought were outstanding. I ended up disqualifying any that had the arms in a non-standard position (that was one of the contest requirements this time around).

But hey, I've done the hard part, now you get to do the even harder part of picking a winner! After I show you all of the Finalists, I'll have a poll where you can vote for up to five (5) entries you think would be great templates to show to new users as a starting point. Polls close at 8 am Mountain Time on Wednesday when the entry with the highest total number of votes will win.

You can use whatever criteria you like for voting, of course, but as for me, here's how I looked at the initial entries:

  1. Is it awesome to look at?
  2. Is it relatively easy to duplicate or pick apart so the newbie can figure out how to do it on their own?
  3. Does it say "Fantasy Warrior" to me when I look at it?

Without further fanfare, I present the many Finalists for the Female Fantasy Warrior template for the first half of Character Contest 62:

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Character Contest 62 – Male Finalists

The response to Character Contest 62, which challenged you to create a template available to everyone who uses HeroMachine 3 for a Fantasy Warrior, was huge. My sincere thanks to everyone who entered, I am once again humbled by your creativity and skill.

I've broken the results into two sections, male and female. I went through and picked out my favorites, limiting it to one entry per person in the interest of fairness even though there were some (Felipe S. Card, Scorpidius, Sutter Kaine, and several others) who had two or more I thought were outstanding. I ended up disqualifying any that had the arms in a non-standard position (that was one of the contest requirements this time around), and although I picked out several Templars initially (PyroDude760, Myro, and a few others), I ended up leaving them off at the end because they were all just too similar.

But hey, I've done the hard part, now you get to do the even harder part of picking a winner! After I show you all of the Finalists, I'll have a poll where you can vote for up to five (5) entries you think would be great templates to show to new users as a starting point. Polls close at 8 am Mountain Time on Wednesday when the entry with the highest total number of votes will win.

You can use whatever criteria you like for voting, of course, but as for me, here's how I looked at the initial entries:

  1. Is it awesome to look at?
  2. Is it relatively easy to duplicate or pick apart so the newbie can figure out how to do it on their own?
  3. Does it say "Fantasy Warrior" to me when I look at it?

Without further fanfare, I present the many Finalists for the Male Fantasy Warrior template for the first half of Character Contest 62:

Continue reading

META: Delays

I just wanted to give everyone who was waiting on results for Character Contest 62 that I'm going to be later than usual posting results. There were a LOT of excellent entries and a) I'm having a hard time deciding, b) it takes longer to upload the images and format the post when there are lots of good ones, and c) my in-laws' departure has been delayed by weather and illness so that's slowing things down a fair bit as well.

Anyway, the results will go up before the day is done, but it will be later than I'd like. My apologies!

Why British cuisine still hasn’t caught on

(From "Wow Comics" number 9, 1943.)

The unfortunate intersection of character name and story title

(From "Wow Comics" number 9, 1943.)

Power User Profile: PapaKrok

This week's "Power User Profile" features frequent commenter, bug-hunter extraordinaire, and master of the horror-esque ultra creative illustrations you've come to love, PapaKrok!
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Apparently they DID have crack in 1943…

(From "Wow Comics" number 9, 1943.)

META: New home for custom items

I've just created a new forum on the UGO HeroMachine boards for the sharing of custom HM3 items along the lines of what Martian Blue proposed the other day. I've broken it down into several sub-folders so hopefully those searching for specific items will have an easier time finding them. If you have suggestions for different categories, by all means speak up. Currently they are:

  1. Male Clothing
  2. Female Clothing
  3. Backgrounds
  4. Companions / Complete Characters
  5. Headgear
  6. Weapons
  7. Miscellaneous Items

Currently they're all empty, so you've got a chance to be the first one to add anything to each of them!

Open Critique Day #16

It's time once again for another Open Critique Day! My in-laws are in town so I might be slower than usual responding today, but hopefully some of our other insightful and frequent commenters can pick up the slack and chime in if I'm absent for a bit.

If you have a HeroMachine illustration or another piece of artwork you've done that you'd like some help with, post a link to it in comments along with your thoughts on it -- what you think is working, what you're struggling with, etc. I will post my critique of the piece, hopefully giving some tips on how to improve it.

Of course everyone is welcome to post their critiques as well, keeping in mind the following rules:

  • Make sure your criticism is constructive. Just saying "This sucks" is both rude and unhelpful without giving specific reasons why you think it sucks and, ideally, some advice on how to make it better.
  • Each person should only post one illustration for critique to make sure everyone who wants feedback has a chance.
  • I will not critique characters entered in any currently running contest, as that doesn't seem fair to the other entrants. You can still post it if you like for the other visitors to critique, but I will not do so.

That's it! Hopefully we can get some good interaction going here and help everyone (me included!) learn a little bit today.