I just finished duplicating some of the more common components into other slots, and created this preview character showing three different Coat items (one in Coats, one in Overshirt, and one in Undershirt) and two Companions (one in the Back slot and one in Tail). Should be fun!
One of the reasons I wanted to start this blog was so that all of you out there would have the chance to be involved in an ongoing development project by providing insight and input throughout. Over the last few months there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity for that, as the Expansion was in the “grind the items out to the additional templates” mode.
But now that the 2.5 expansion is finally getting to the wrapping-up stage, it’s time to start discussing what you would like to see next out of the HeroMachine team. I’ve been talking with the UGO team, and here are the ideas we’ve put forth as big projects. I’d like to know what you all think about them, or if there are other things you’d like to see us work on.
In the next couple of weeks I’ll be releasing some additional Expansion items, including a nice set of firearms by the invaluable Mark Shute. Since people seem to like guns and other assorted firearms, I thought I’d provide a preview of what they look like (click the image for a much larger version):
One of the things Mark does much better than I is creating drawings of mechanical items with clean, crisp lines that convey a sense of solidity. My Flash drawings tend to look like they were drawn with a brush, while Mark’s are more like those rendered with a good set of technical pens. It works much better for these kinds of things, and I have to admit I learn something every time I work with his stuff.
This next expansion to the expansion is going to add several hundred items to the set, thanks to Mark, including some really nice shirts and belts, among many others. You can see the full set of items he’s submitted here.
The “robot” skin probably takes longer to draw than any other single item in the program, but I think the one for the male Brick has turned out the best of all:
