The HeroMachine forums on UGO give creative folks like yourself a chance to show off their best creations. From time to time they al get together and vote on the characters they think are the most outstanding, resulting in a “Hero of the Week”. I’m going to try to do better about re- posting those here so more people can enjoy them, and to encourage others to post their stuff to the forums. Anyone is welcome to join up (it’s free); hopefully others will like your style and nominate one of your heroes.

Real Name: Richard Baden
Powers: super-strength, ability to influence emotions in others (specifically, able to create states of extreme terror), radically slowed aging
Bio: Jacob Sarne was a physicist working at a US government installation in Wyoming in the late 70s. He was a brilliant scientist, a likeable guy, and had the love of a good woman. Unfortunately, Sarne’s girlfriend’s ex, Richard Baden, was the jealous sort… and a just a bit sociopathic. One night this guy broke into the base where Sarne worked and confronted him, demanding that he stop seeing his girlfriend. Sarne refused, and the two fought. During the struggle, a key piece of machinery was damaged, subjecting the two to strange, extra-dimensional particles.

When the smoke cleared, the two fighters also discovered that the woman they both loved had died during the conflict. Each blamed the other, and a decades-long grudge was born…

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(From “Master Comics” number 57, 1944.)

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This one is fun! The idea is that some group of extra-dimensional omnipotent beings has pulled characters from across all the various publishing universes to compete in team-on-team tug of war contests. Here are the teams (Marvel and DC get multiple teams because, come on, Marvel and DC):

I don’t want to prejudice the vote, but you have to think the only thing Batman is contributing to DC Team One is some Bat Lubricant for the rope, because he’s got no business hanging out with those heavy hitters. As for their Team Two, the biggest question is who disintegrates whom before the starting gun sounds for the first match.

Anyway, have fun, and by all means let ‘er rip in the comments about which group you think has the edge, and which is going to get turned into paste by the opposition.

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Thanks to everyone who voiced their opinion in the Olympian Games’ Target Shooting Competition! On behalf of Game-master Hammerknight, I am happy to report the following characters are our winners:

Gold Medal: Bullseye (Marvel)
Silver Medal: Green Arrow (DC)
Bronze Medal: Deadpool (Marvel)

I have to say, I’m a bit surprised to see Green Arrow take the silver. I just never thought of him as supernaturally gifted, or as having paranormal abilities like some of the others on the list, but apparently there’s a lot of love for normal humans out there. Go Team Homo Sapiens!

After four events, Marvel takes the lead with six medals, DC has five, and Dark Horse still gets the one token medal.

Thanks to everyone who voted! Now you know what to do if you see any of these guys in the middle of a fight — duck. Not that it’ll do you any good.

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Jake and I have finished his HM3 prize for winning Character Contest 26 (Golden Oldies), a kobold body in Companions-Standard so Jake can outfit him like a regular character:

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I finally completed Blue Blazer’s prize for winning Caption Contest 54, and have posted his Stretchy Arms to BodyMaleStandard in HeroMachine 3. You can place most gloves on them with a bit of manipulation, and if you use the Masking feature you can get a spandex look pretty easily. Enjoy!

I’m not sure what I have going on there in that image, sort of a Michael Jackson meets “When I Think Of You I Touch Myself” by way of Reed Richards. Or something. But you get the general idea.

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Kaldath was in the right place at the right time, and I was able to get his HeroMachine 3 prize for the just-concluded Character Contest 28 (Child Of …) done:

It’s shown here colored, obviously, and in its default size and position. For longer fire-hair, you can use the Multiples setting, move one of the items all the way to the bottom of the stack, then scale it way up on the y-axis, like so:

Hopefully this will help make your fire-related characters easier to bring to life. Thanks to Kaldath for picking a great item for his prize!

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TheNate has approved his prize for winning Caption Contest 64, and it is now live in HeroMachine 3 under the Insignia-Standard set:

It works well either as a straight Native American style chest symbol, or if you scale it up and make it somewhat transparent, it can serve as a great body tattoo. Nice suggestion, Nate, thanks!

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The old D&D rules about the crazy possible consequences of drinking two active magic potions at once used to fascinate me. I don’t know what is about to happen to this fellow, but it ought to be fun finding out. For us, if not so much for him.

I’m still trying to learn how to do color for comics-style panels using Photoshop. I found a couple of tutorials with good tips, so on this one I was trying to figure out flats (big blocks of single colors that serve as the base) and having line art on a separate layer with no white fill for coloring, and so forth. Some day I’d really like to learn how to do a full-on painterly style of image, without black lineart, but just color serving as the borders of the shapes.

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(From “Master Comics” Number 57, 1944.)

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