"Say, by shouting …"

(From "The Green Mask" number 6, 1940-ish.)

Character Design Contest 77: Sporty!

Your design challenge for this week is to create character or characters based on something related to sports. It might be something funny like "Catcher in the Rye" which is an actual baseball catcher on a loaf of bread, or a big 40's style goon named "Pinch" (for pinch runner) or a soccer-themed villain named "Sweeper". Or you could take a page from Stan Lee's book and design characters based on sports team names. You could design a team based around chess pieces or poker cards, or built around transforming NASCAR vehicles, or ... really, just about anything, so long as it's in some way related to something sporty! Just, you know, try to come up with something better than Superpro:

The rules are the same as usual:

  • All entries must be in JPG or PNG form (BMPs are too big), posted to a publicly accessible website (like ImageShack, PhotoBucket, the UGO Forums, whatever);
  • Entries must be made as a comment or comments to this post, containing a link directly to the image and the character name;
  • The image cannot have been used in any previous HeroMachine character design contest;
  • Please name your files as [your name]-[character name].[file extension]. So DiCicatriz, for instance, would save his "Bayou Belle" character image as DiCicatriz-BayouBelle.png.
  • Please make the link go directly to the image (like this) and not to a hosting jump page (like this). If you see "preview" or "rotate" somewhere in the link you're probably doing it wrong.
  • All entries must be in by next Monday, when I'll choose a winner.

The person with the winning entry as selected by our expert panel (i.e. me) will win their choice of a) a portrait to go in HeroMachine 3, b) an item to go in HeroMachine 3, or c) a custom black and white "Sketch of the Day" style drawing (also by me).

Good luck, everyone!

Caption Contest 111 Winners!

Many thanks to everyone who entered Caption Contest 111, which reaffirmed my belief that massively violent panels make for the best captions:

We had a ton of great submissions, so without further ado, here are some of the ones that I thought were particularly funny:

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Sometimes you just need to see a guy getting hit in the face

(From "The Green Mask" number 6, 1940-ish.)

Power User Profile: headlessgeneral

Our Power User to profile this week did well in the last Friday Night Fights and always comes through with interesting character designs. I give you headlessgeneral!

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Real men can admit to peeing themselves in fear

(From "Airboy" number 11, 1945.)

Open Critique Day #28

Folks, it's time for another Open Critique Day!

If you have a HeroMachine illustration or another piece of artwork you've done that you'd like some help with, post a link to it in comments along with your thoughts on it -- what you think is working, what you're struggling with, etc. I will post my critique of the piece, hopefully giving some tips on how to improve it.

Of course everyone is welcome to post their critiques as well, keeping in mind the following rules:

  • Make sure your criticism is constructive. Just saying "This sucks" is both rude and unhelpful without giving specific reasons why you think it sucks and, ideally, some advice on how to make it better.
  • Each person should only post one illustration for critique to make sure everyone who wants feedback has a chance.
  • I will not critique characters entered in any currently running contest, as that doesn't seem fair to the other entrants. You can still post it if you like for the other visitors to critique, but I will not do so.

That's it! Hopefully we can get some good interaction going here and help everyone (me included!) learn a little bit today.

The secret life of super-heroes

(From "Airboy" number 11, 1945.)

Combat at the Quik-E-Mart

When last we left our post-Apocalyptic road warrior (no relation), we were deciding whether to get the heck out of Dodge in our Dodge or to eat dirt and stick it out. Wouldn't you know it, our bravery overcame our survival instincts and we dove for cover:

In the drugstore! I hope one of our choices is to ask him to pick us up some candy bars.

Now, we have a choice here, but I figured from the responses last time that you all were game to be aggressive in an attempt to rescue our cohorts, so I made a command call and decided that if we weren't meant to fire this rifle, it wouldn't be clutched in our cold, dead hands. Or something.

Hey now, according to that illustration we should have two rifles! I guess we'll just have to muddle through with our singleton, though. Pulling out the handy-dandy random number chart, I close my eyes, dart my pen down, and get ... a five. Adding that to our prodigious Shooting score of five, we are at a comfortable ten. Meaning:

WE RULE! One shot, POW, right through the heart. Take THAT, Mel Gibson! And I'm pretty sure we did it without a Samson-like power-mullet.

Once again we're left with a directional dilemma. Do we try to join our compatriots in the store and join forces, or do we hop behind the wheel of our Hot Rod Ford and run the bastards down? I'm interpreting that second choice as not being "run away" but rather "get to a better fighting location, and/or run some leather-clad punks over." Being a CYOA, however, it could just as easily result in our driving over a cliff to our fiery death.

So what'll it be, intrepid survivors?

[polldaddy poll="5679188"]

That's right, we fight for MAN boobs!

(From "Airboy" number 11, 1945.)