Category Archives: Suggestions & Ideas

Feature requests, future version enhancements, and anything else you want the program to do.

Looking for new blog authors

Hey guys, JR here.

So, as I'm sure everyone is now aware, Kaldath is going part-time as Head Moderator and I've been promoted to co-Head Mod. As such, I'm going to try and get the blog more active again. My idea is, I want 3 more blog authors to write articles for the blog on a weekly basis (or if you so wish, more than one article on a weekly basis). The sort of things I'm looking for are topical discussions on relevant subjects, reviews of recent releases (comics, TV shows and films, possibly books if appropriate), possibly Heromachine tutorials if someone wants to try that out. If you wanted to bring back one of the old blog topics that are no longer around, that would be acceptable as well (obviously the CDC's and Pop Quizzes are not included here because djuby is currently running those, neither is the Friday Night Fights or the Hall Of Fame, as these are special topics).

Now, I'm looking for 3 people, as I said earlier, who are dedicated and reliable. One problem we've had in the past is we add a new blog author, they do one or two posts and then nothing. I don't want that happening again. So if you want to give it a go, email me at jr19759@hotmail.co.uk with the email subject title Blog Author Idea and an outline of your topic idea (if you can include an example that would be useful) and your heromachine username, then I will pick the three people that I feel have the best ideas and will be the most reliable, pending approval from Jeff of course. I would also like to make this clear that, these are not moderator positions, just blog author.

So, yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with.

With that.

JR out.

Submission Box: Suleman Tutorial – Clothing from an angle

Here is the second post in the new "Submission Box" feature of the blog. Once again it is a Tutorial from Suleman. I hope you enjoy .........

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Submission Box: Suleman Tutorial: Frankensteining

Greetings Fellow Machiner,

I am starting off a new feature for the blog called Submission Box. If you have something you'd like to share with the community be it a tutorial, a heromachine "recipe" A cool youtube video you found, a great article you found on the web you can email me and submit it for the submission box. I will take a look and if I approve I will post it on the blog. Submissions will be posted as I have time you look at them, so some days you will have 5 or 6 Submission box posts and some days you will not have any. ...

Well lets get started with our first Submission box, which is a tutorial from community member Suleman which you will find after the jump........

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New Post Idea

Now that we don't have anything on the Tuesday slot here on the blog, I was thinking "what would be a good idea to fill that slot?" I'd kinda like for it not be a rehash of something I've done before. Then an idea struck me, but I wanted to run it by you guys before I went a head with it.

The idea is kind of hard to explain, so I try to word it best I can. What I was thinking of doing is basically screen capturing myself making a character on Heromachine, narrating the process and then posting the video as that weeks post. Obviously it wouldn't just be me creating a whole character in one video, that video would be like 2 hours long and no-one has time for that, but instead it would be broken up into segments of around 20- 30 minutes (hopefully), say video 1 would be the base and posing, video 2 would be costume, video 3 would be hair/ face, video 4 would be background (if there is one) and video 5 would be shading and other finishing touches. That way it would take us all the way up to Christmas and then we can go from there. Also, it gives you guys a chance to have some control over the content, because you can make suggestions for things I can do with the character for the next weeks video (basically like a community character build only with one person doing the actual building). It might also help some of the newcomers with some of the more advanced aspects of Heromachine 3, such as shading and posing.

And the good thing about having this as a Tuesday slot, is that I'm not working on Tuesdays so I'll be able to record the video same day and, because I'm in the UK, if I record in the morning it should be up at the regular time for all you guys across the pond.

So what do you guys think. If you like the idea, we can start next week (so you can make suggestions in the comments if you so wish, just remember, when it comes to posing, I'm no DeliriousAl). If not, then I'll try to come up with something else.

JR out.

No Community Submissions

I'm being literal here. I got two people submit stuff in week one, and since then nothing. Ok, Skybandit did send in a number of his Movie reviews, but the idea here was not just to showcase one community members work (as good as they are), because otherwise we'd have just given Skybandit a blog spot. So what I will do is, first off say thanks to Skybandit and Herr D for participating, I really appreciate you helping out, and second, declare the submissions open again (here's the link for rules and stuff if you're interested: Link). However, as I'm not expecting anything neither should you guys. If I do get sent something (because I know that some people have expressed interest but haven't been able to put something together yet) I will feature it, but this is not going to be a weekly post anymore. I have sorted out something to fill tomorrows slot on the blog which I'm sure people will like, but unfortunately this looks like the end for Community Submissions, which is a shame.

And that brings me on to my next point, which I will try to be fair and civil about (something which I spectacularly failed to do in one of my DeviantART journals last week). The reason I started the Community Submissions was because people were complaining that there wasn't enough content on the Blog anymore, so I thought "hey, why don't we let people decide what the want to feature on the blog by letting them submit it themselves". And when I suggested the idea it was met with great enthusiasm. So for it to only last two weeks is hugely disheartening. Last week I was quite prepared to just give up all of my blog posting duties, with exception of the CDC's, because of it, though I have changed my mind since then, but my reasoning for doing so still stands. I honestly don't know if half the stuff I do is well received or not. The first Community Submission got a few comments, but the one last week got none. The Random Panels get a few comments, but it is so hard to find ones that a) haven't been used before by Jeff or in one of the Caption Contests and b) that I can come up with something witty to comment on in just a short title. And as for the Doctor Who reviews. Yes I know not everybody watches the show, but that is the only thing I do on the blog that I actually brought to the blog because I genuinely wanted to do it and I know there are more people on this site that watch the show that don't comment. Even though we don't often see eye to eye, Malfars comments on my reviews are usually the highlight of my week in terms of the blog, because it's the only proper interaction and discussion that any of the blog posts provide anymore. That's what I wanted the Community Submissions to be, a chance for the community to get together and discuss our individual interests. But instead what I got was a stunning and definitive yes followed by a stunning and even more definitive un-caring shrug. Thanks guys. What do you want me to do? And this is an honest question directed at you guys, all of you. You want more content. Well we have a new moderator in Linea24, who is hopefully going be bringing something to the blog at some point. And now I just want to know what you want me to do. Because obviously nothing I've been coming up with recently is clicking with you guys. Make your suggestions in the comments and I'll put together a poll in a few days time and you can all vote on what you want to see brought to the blog, provided the ideas are feasible obviously.

Anyway, to sum up (incase people just want to skip all the content to this post and just want the important points): There isn't going to be a Community Submissions post tomorrow, but people can still submit stuff if they wish. Leave suggestions for new Blog topics in the comments below.

Anyway, see you all tomorrow for my special Community Submission substitute. And sorry for being a grouch during this post. It doesn't feel good, but hopefully it gets the point across.

JR out.

New Blog Posts?

Hey guys, JR here and I have a question to ask y'all.

When I posted the most recent Character Of The Week, I posited the idea of bringing it back as a weekly blog post, rather than a sporadic thing posted when I feel like it, and the response has been pretty affirmative. So, I think COTW will now take up a place on the blog each Friday. However, one of the things that a number of people have said is that they'd like to see more topical posts on the blog, like there were last summer. My question is, is this a feeling that is shared by the majority?

Now I'm certainly willing to do more stuff, I have a bit of free time at the moment, and Kaldath has said that he'd be willing to do more than just the Caption Contest, but the thing is, we're not exactly sure what to do. I had a load of topics going last summer, but apart from the Big Question, there wasn't much response to many of them and even the interest in the Big Question waned after a while (although I stopped it because I had ran out of topics I wanted to discuss/ felt it was worth discussing). The same goes for the topics Kaldath used to run, such as the Anime Talks, Poll Position or the redesign contests. The problem here is, we can't tell how popular a topic/ blog series is. There isn't a view counter/ page visit counter that we can just look at, so we can't tell how many times a certain post has been viewed and the only way we can gauge a response is through comments left and, if we're being honest, the only posts that ever get above 10 comments are the Character Design Contests, which won't be going anywhere anyway. If we were to bring back old topics or start up new ones, it would need to be a two way street. We can't keep giving you content if there's no response to it, it just feels like "why are we even bothering if no-one's looking at it". You get where I'm coming from?

Then we have the problem of what topics do you want. I will admit I messed up the last weekly blog post I tried to get started, the Sharing Day Video Posts. Problem there was at the time I was finishing off uni, so I didn't have all that much time to do them in and when I did get time, something would always prevent me doing them properly, so one week I ended up not posting it and then I just fell off the ball and it went away. I could bring that back if people are interested, because I seem to remember there was a bit of interest in that. As for other stuff, you guys will have to tell us what you want. We can bring back some old topics (Big Question, What Were They Thinking, Sci-Fi Corner, Anime Talk etc.) or we could do something new, which you can give out some ideas. We could even change up a few of the old topics, for example maybe instead of Sci-Fi Corner there could be a Fantasy based blog series, discussing fantasy tropes and topics (though Kaldath would probably have to do this one, I think he's a bit more up on fantasy than I am). The one thing I'm not open to bringing back as a weekly series is the Power User Profiles. I originally only intended to do a limited 5 profile series, but my inner-fanboy got a hold and I ended up adding 15 or so names to the list of PUP's, so I think it's best we leave that alone for the moment. I'm not saying it's gone for good, but at the moment I can't think of anyone who I really want to profile and I don't want to force it. Besides, with the forums down I don't have an easy way of contacting people and asking if they would like to do a profile. And finally, and this really is hypothetical and I'm going to completely blindside Jeff and Kaldath with this one, really this will be their call if it were to happen, but I quite like the idea of community submissions. Now, a couple of months back, Herr D sent me over a review of some of the foreign language versions of Let It Go from Disney's Frozen and, after sending it over to Kaldath, we featured it on the blog. I really like the idea of having community members being featured on the blog, it makes the whole thing more interactive. Of course, we'd have to figure out a way to do this, the stuff featured would have to be topics related to stuff the site deals with (comics, sci-fi, fantasy etc.) and each week one submission would be chosen by the moderators to be featured, rather than just giving everyone permission to post on the blog, because that would be anarchy. This is of course, completely hypothetical at the moment, and if the forums weren't down I'd have run the idea by Kaldath first, so don't get your hopes up, it might not happen.

Anyway, sorry for the long rambling post. Let us know what you think about the whole blog post situations, if you would like to see more weekly posts and if so, what?

HeroMachine Blog & Forums

header-heromachine-tech8

Hello folk, With 2014 here I thought I'd make a few inquires. First I would like to know, how many of you here that read the blog use our forums? and if not why not? Secondly since this post will be shared on our facebook and google+ pages I'd like to know from our social media communities, do you folks visit the site and read the blog or read the forums ? Again if not why not ? I will be checking the Facebook and Google+ pages to see your responses.

Next I would like to ask you blog readers what additional content you would like to see us cover here. I can't make any promises, and I certainly can not speak for JR, dblade, CKnap, or FRM on this, however I will give any of your suggestions due consideration and if I feel confident I can cover the content you suggest I will give it a try, as time constraints allow anyway. I would also like to add that I plan on experimenting a bit with Vlogging and submitting some of my posts as Youtube videos instead of a written article and I plan on doing my first video within the next few weeks and record an Anime Talk review.

Thank you all for taking the time to leave me your feedback, it is my hope to hear from all of you. It is my wish to keep our content here on the blog and forums fresh and help bring the HeroMachine Community to that next level!

What do you think about furniture?

I'm considering adding a set of items to the "Background" slot that would contain set decoration types of things like beds, chairs, walls, doors, etc. Stuff like this:

furniture

Would that sort of thing be helpful?

No “WWTT” Today/ Open Critique Day

Sorry about this, I know I did the same thing on last week's Sci-fi Corner and Big Question. Uni has just started to get really hectic and I haven't been able to find much time to come up with stuff to write about. Hopefully I won't be getting rid of either, I'll try to get them in when I have time or if there's something come up that I feel merits special inclusion, but this week it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

On a slightly more positive note, I have found another person to do a Power User Profile and I've contacted another two (at time of writing), so thankfully the PUP's won't be going anywhere for at least another week.

Anyway, we haven't had an Open Critique Day in a while, so feel free to use the comments below as such or to make suggestions for subjects for any of the above mentioned topics that you'd like to see covered (What Were They Thinking, Sci-Fi Corner, Screen Spotlight, Big Question or Power User Profiles) and if I like 'em I'll try to cover them.

To quote AMS; 'Cheers'

New Blog Topic Ideas

I'm not going to do the Monday Night Movie Club this week, because it hasn't been getting much interest over the last few weeks. Instead I thought I'd take this opportunity to try out some ideas for new blog topics. I've made a list of things I think could work, which I'll explain after the jump, and you guys can vote for which one you like best or add your own suggestions.

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