Sorry for the outage, folks, a combination of a changed DNS table and a vacation at UGO HQ resulted in a site outage — the main host couldn’t communicate with the MySQL server, in a nutshell. How they got computers in a nutshell is beyond me, but there you have it.

I’ll be out til Sunday night at DragonCon in Atlanta, so posting will be very light. I’ll be keeping loose tabs via my iPhone but no promises on how quickly I can approve held comments and such.

I have scheduled “Daily Random Panel” posts for each day so you’ll have that, and by all means consider those “open threads” where you can talk about whatever you like. Otherwise though you’re on your own.

Have a great Labor Day Weekend! And if you’re going to be at DragonCon too, drop me a line and maybe we can say howdy.

Or at least, helps the local coppers nail a bad guy:

This fellow then proceeded to say something to the girl behind the counter that persuaded her to hand over loads of money.

Yes! It was a robbery!

By the time I realised what was happening he’d escaped with the loot. I gave my contact details to the bank and then ran like the wind back to my studio and set about hastlily drawing some pictures of the robber. I’d studied this guy quite intensely and could remember every detail of his likeness and clothes.

See, we don’t just draw people fighting crime, we actually fight crime with our drawings! So keep your eyes open out there, people, and if you find yourself in the middle of a robbery, remember the details and rush home to draw the perp in HeroMachine. The life you save might be … ok, there’s not really a life to save here, but at least you’d have a good story to tell.

(Hat tip to Ye Olde Bunche. Link is safe for work and kids, but his site overall is definitely not, so be warned.)

Wow, the “Beauty And The Beast: Wolverine” possibilities alone are staggering, as the Walt Disney Corporation moves to purchase Marvel Entertainment. I can’t wait to see Spider-Man kick Mickey Mouse’s butt. That punk totally has it coming.

Sorry about that, the site was down all day but should be back up now. Joy. There was some MySQL problem blah blah blah, hopefully the tech guys at UGO can make a change on the back end to make sure it doesn’t happen again next time.

Because I got nothin’. Talk about whatever you like folks, I’m off to an actual real-people, not-online party. Craziness! And yet, apparently this sort of thing is not only legal but encouraged. Strange.

I’ve been struggling the last couple of days trying to figure out exactly what you guys want when you say I need to work on “sleeves” next. Do you want an entire set of Tops that are the whole shebang — a vest portion and sleeves, broken out into just the vest; just the upper sleeve; just the lower sleeve; and the whole thing assembled? Or do you literally want an entire set of just sleeves, presumably at some point to be followed by a set of just vests?

If you mean you literally want just sleeves, do you want them broken out into upper and lower sleeves? Each complete shoulder-to-wrist sleeve, then, would actually be SIX items — upper right only, lower right only, complete right, upper left only, upper right only, complete left.

Or is that too complicated?

Just a heads-up, I’ll be in San Antonio all day helping a buddy move, so if your comments and whatnot take a while to get approved, that’s why.

In the meantime, consider this an open thread, talk about whatever you like.

Coming out of the discussion earlier in the week were several requests for a “help” post. So here it is! If you want to know how to do something in HeroMachine, or how to draw something specific by hand (or computer), or you wonder how an effect you’ve seen in comics somewhere was achieved, leave a comment describing what you want help with and I and the other commenters here will try to give you a hand.

You can also use this space to ask someone about a character they posted. For instance, if you can’t figure out how Imp gets those spiffy circle gradients behind his characters, you can ask him in the comments. No guarantees that anyone you ask will either see or respond to your question, of course, but hopefully someone will get you squared away.

I’m honestly not sure how this will work, or if it’s even what you were asking for, so by all means feel free to correct me if you were hoping for something else.

I’ll also be posting another “Hammerknight Recipe” later in the day, as I figure that fits under the concept of “Helpful Thursdays” too.

See you in comments!

Guys, I’ve been out of pocket all day, we got a nasty bug here with our dogs and I’ve been spraying our back yard with ammonia to try and kill it. In 104 degree Texas heat. I’m just blasted, and I still have quite a bit to do. So I will be posting both the results from the last contest and the new one, but not for a couple of hours yet at least. Before midnight, though!

In the meantime, cast your vote for whether you want a caption contest for old times’ sake, or a new character design one. If the latter, would you want a “Nineties Image Character” theme (make a character who might have been published enthusiastically by the 1990’s era Image line — thigh pouches, names with “War” or “Blood” get bonus points) or a “Self Portrait” contest where you’d put your HM self portrait up side-by-side with an actual photo of yourself.

I’ll count em up when I finally get done with the emergency animal spore patrol and go with that one.

Thanks for your patience! I wish I were more regular about this, too, waiting til this late at night blows.