Thanks to Hammerknight for putting together the first ever “HeroMachine Creator’s Club” poster! Click on it to see it in a much larger version in all its glory, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! And that the floating Jeff heads don’t freak you out.
Nice job Hammerknight and everyone who submitted a self-portrait!
Once again, Happy New Year everyone!
I wanted to preserve the submissions for each of the four Friday Night Fights rounds, since I didn’t realize the PollDaddy system would remove the images once voting was closed. So without further ado, here are all received submissions!
Caution: Lots of big image files follow, so if you’re on a slow connection, beware. Images are in order of the weekly themes, going Super Hero - Sci-Fi - Fantasy - Open.
Congratulations to the winner of the first ever HeroMachine Friday Night Fights contest — Kaldath! Here’s his final winning entry for posterity:
Kaldath wins a custom color illustration by yours truly of whatever he likes. Each of his rounds was a blowout, so either he’s just that awesome, or he has lots of friends who like to vote, or a combination of the two. Well done, sir! For those of you who don’t know, Kaldath also won the very first HeroMachine character design contest a while back.
To further honor his success, here are his other three winning FNF entries (click to see at their original size).
Week 1, Super-Hero (Ramses):
Week 2, Sci-Fi (General Falgar):
Week 3, Fantasy (Jenel-LaDamor-DeCaye):
Our runner up, and the winner of a black and white custom character illustration, is none other than Imp! As always, his characters showed a lot of originality and excellence. Here are his four entries:
Week 1, Super-Hero (Crescent):
Week 2, Sci-Fi (Rough Night at the Office):
Week 3, Fantasy (Barbarian Queen):
Week 4, Open (Little Death Machine):
Both of you guys were definitely worthy finalists, I am pleased as punch at the high quality of your entire slate of characters. Thanks to you both for sharing your creativity with us!
The same goes for so many of the other fourteen competitors as well. This wasn’t an easy challenge, and there were some truly inspirational illustrations submitted. I salute each of you.
I did, however, want to particularly single out Zyp, who won the “West Coast Avengers” Open contest with his absolutely fantastic “Inferne”:
I mean no slight to the other great entries, but this may be the best thing I have ever seen come out of HeroMachine. Zyp wins any item or a portrait to appear in the final HeroMachine 3 version.
Congratulations to Kaldath, Imp, and Zyp, as well as to all the great folks who participated! Hopefully we can have another set of Friday Night Fights after the holiday. Until then, keep creating!
I think maybe the holidays have gotten everyone a bit busy, as there weren’t a ton of entries this week. In light of that, I wanted to thank those who DID submit an illustration by highlighting one design by each of them. So here go our highlights!
The “Greek Mythology” character contest produced a lot of fantastic entries, so thanks to everyone who took the time to participate! I’ve selected a handful as Honorable Mentions, and of course one overall winner (who receives either a portrait or any one item of their choice for inclusion in the final HeroMachine 3 version) for your viewing pleasure.
Lots of great entries this week, thanks to everyone who entered! I’ve selected a few after the jump to feature as Honorable Mentions before getting to the overall winner, but I think the level of performance this week across the board was very high. Just to recap, this was the contest where you had to produce an illustration based on a randomly generated character name.
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Without further ado, and with many thanks for all those who shared their creations as part of the event, I present the Honorable Mentions and the overall winner of Character Contest 19.
The character contest challenge this week was to take a common phrase of two words (or three if you could swing it) and turn that into a super-powered pair of characters, like “Hawk and Dove” or “Love and War” or “Cloak and Dagger”. A lot of the entries were very good, but the featured pair weren’t really a phrase like that. For instance, I think Crinold’s “Gaia and Quicksand” are marvelous illustrations, but “Gaia and Quicksand” isn’t a saying:
Having said that, I thought the following submissions were great examples of good illustrations that also fit the contest concept. Well done all!
Many thanks to everyone who entered Character Contest 16! This was a tough contest to design for, and even tougher to judge, as there were a lot of high-quality submissions. You all did a nice job, and even if I don’t include yours in the “Honorable Mentions” below, rest assured I still very much enjoyed it and you have my thanks.
Before getting to the more serious entries, I wanted to present Hammerknight’s succinct summary of the biggest change from the Golden Age to today:
And with that, awaaaaaaaaay we go!
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In lieu of my usual “Bad Costume Wednesday”, I wanted to take this chance to show you some of the stellar outfits I saw while at Dragon*Con this past weekend. I was really blown away by the time, dedication, hard work, and imagination people put into assembling these costumes. What struck me the most was not only how good they looked, but how much fun they were having. Almost without exception, they were eager to stop for pictures, and were happy to strike the most super-heroic of poses.
When you see comic-book clothing brought into the real world, you’re immediately faced with problems you never have to consider when you’re just drawing lines on a page. How do you hide the seams of a soft boot top as it joins with the shoe? Where does Flash’s zipper go? How do you keep a cloth face mask from slumping off your cheeks? These guys and gals have dealt with all of that and more (don’t ask me how they go pee, for instance, I’m pretty sure it involves some sort of complicated AMA-certified device).
So without further ado, I bring you the Best of John and Jeff’s Magical Mystery Dragon*Con Tour in photos.
