RP: A “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” rewrite sneak preview!

(From "Planet Comics" number 1, 1940.)

Open Critique Day #12

It's time once again 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.

RP: The birth of Paradise Island

(From "Planet Comics" number 1, 1940.)

End of the Road?

The results were tighter than I'd have thought, but ultimately we have opted to be Mucho Machon and eschew the use of our Oracular Safe Word, and instead stand by watching the ship trundle off in the loving metallic arms of Doctor Octopus' filthy love spawn. Let's see the consequences of our decision:

Well. That's ... humph. I'd say ending up as landfill is a pretty fitting end, since we largely spent this adventure standing around watching things happen. To our credit, we DID manage to reject a life of The Matrix, so yay us. I like to imagine that in the giant landfill we find, "Toy Story 3" style, all the items we need to return to power. Or, we get eaten by a trash monster, which seems a lot more likely.

So thus our foray into the Cavern of Time draws to an ignominious close. Or does it?

[polldaddy poll="4654391"]

So what'll it be folks, flip back and change out decision like we all know we did with the actual books Back in the Day, or chuck it into the trashbin of history (much like our adventurer!) and move on to something completely different?

HM3: The name’s the thing

When you save your character image in HeroMachine 3, it will now have the name of your character (if any) as the default file name instead of "hm3-beta". The name comes from the last character you saved or loaded.

Note that this is preparation for the long-awaited "quick save" and "undo" features, the next major code change initiative. Woot!

RP: Best. Stink lines. Ever.

(From "Planet Comics" number 1, 1940.)

HM3: Bug tweaks for layering

I just posted a minor update to HeroMachine3 that hopefully will fix some of the layering and "stuck item" problems people were having when loading up saved characters.

I'll explain the nitty gritty after the jump for those who are interested.

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HM3: Transparent PNG

I've just added a third format option when exporting your character's image in HM3 -- "PNG (transparent 400x600)". This is basically just adding in an option for the way it used to be.

When you click it, the size gets reset to 400x600, the Area gets reset to "Character", and all other options are grayed out since you can't make any of the other sizes or head shots export with transparency. Choosing regular old PNG or JPG turns them all back on, though.

This should help those, like DiCicatriz, who use the characters with transparent backgrounds to paste into an image editor for either larger group shots, or just to have in a custom setting.

Let me know if you run into any problems using it. All other options will continue to export with a white background.

RP: I bet the trigger’s shaped like a finger

(From "Planet Comics" number 1, 1940.)

Poll Position: Planet Wolverine

I'm taking a break from the "Greatest Ever" series of questions this week for some good old-fashioned butt whooping:

{democracy:172}

Discussion to follow!
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