I spent a big chunk of the weekend working on the template for the upcoming HM Mini, and wanted to get your thoughts on it:
At this point I'm thinking the entire head will be one slot, consisting of the outline of the skull, the jawline, and the chin. Hair, facial hair, and the face would be separate slots as well inside the head slot. This means that when you scale (resize) or move the head, the face and beard will transform right along with it.
The hands also will probably be their own separate slot. That hasn't gotten a lot of traction in HM2.5, but I think partly that's because it was an add-on rather than being a core part of the program from the beginning. I really think having the ability to change out the way they're posed will help make the figures more distinctive.
Flash now lets you dynamically declare one movie clip (which is what the "slots" are) as a mask for another. So what I'll probably do is have one slot for "Hand-held items" with a drop-down box for you to choose another slot to mask it out with or not. That way if there's a cool sword you like, for instance, you could either drag it over the belt to make it look sheathed behind a sash, or you could drag it over to a hand and mask it so it looks like it's being held, or you could drag it over to the back and mask it out with the body so it looks like it's in a back sheath.
No junk!
(the previous comment was not very helpful to the discussion, and frankly, was probably a bit juvenile. I don’t know what came over me. It just flew outta my head. Y’know. It happens.)
I will say this: overall, the figure rendition is excellent. The hands are especially well done. Bravo, Jeffrey!
Will this end up as part of “HeroMachine3”?
Thanks John! I’d be disappointed if you WEREN’T juvenile ;-p
Danny, not sure if this will end up as part of HM3. I can bet that at least some of the items will transfer over, but as for the figure, I don’t know yet.
Love the pose. I hope it makes it to HM3. I am sure it has been asked before, but how about having an alternate pose. Say this above was the base pose but you could then choose an action pose as an alternate and everything you put into the base transferes over. Being a programming dummy, I probably just started a war in some small country…
The former nation of Slackerstan curses you Rick, as if falls to invading forces.
Alternate poses are tons of work, because you have to redraw pretty much every item over again. The plan for HM3 is to make the body parts like upper arm, forearm, hand, torso, upper leg, lower leg, and head separately movable so you can more or less pose the figure yourself, within limits.
Obviously that’s not as good as having a totally separate pose, but it’s something.
If it saves even a few slackerstansians… then I am happy. I was thinking abck to HM1 and the different poses there as well. Maybe just having different base “classes” (ie flyer, runner, etc” and then we can re-create the hero ourselves.
I never liked Slackerstan anyway…
I think it looks appropriate for the theme of hero making. I could see many good things come out of this individual pose.
the hand position makes the pose look kinda menacing, like he’s in attack mode all the time, plus not sure what you mean by movie clips are slots and that changes the hands. Sorry if that didn’t make sense just a little confused. I’m slow sometimes
Is that the way the abs and shoulders are going to stay? Cause the shape seems a little off.
i love the idea about being able to sheath a cool sword or something rather than it have to be in the hand. It frees the hands for other things. YAY
i don’t know if this is something you’re already gonna do or not. but is there a way to have diagonal layering? what i mean is sometimes on the current heromachine when you put a sword on the hip and you have a baggy sleeve from a baggy coat or shirt that covers up the sword you can’t put the sword (or whatever) on top of the sleeve without making it on top across the entire body. Or certain hair can’t be used with pointy ears and things like that.
Also are we allowed to give ideas of things to put into the minis and the next heromachine?
Anyway love the blog, love the character builders, this is great.
You can ignore the movie clip thing, it’s sort of inside-baseball.
The shoulders probably will stay that way, the abs probably will change a bit as I refine it. The shoulders are sort of between an athletic guy and a real brick-ish guy, which I think is good. You’ll be able to put shoulder pads on top of them if you don’t like ’em.
As far as diagonal layering, I’m planning on allowing you to move, scale, and rotate items, so you can put it wherever you like. Combined with layer movement, hopefully you’ll be able to get real close to what you want.
That figure makes me think of one of someone on their knees yelling towards the sky.
Wow, Jeff, this looks awesome! I likea likea likea it bunches! Nice to see that HM is still going places… this looks like a great start for your urban warrior project. I’m looking forward to its final result.
This pose looks to me like he is leaning slightly forward and looking up, not sure if that is what you were going for or not.
Its a great blaster pose, kind of looks like he is powering up.
ya cool but bad
you want some another one huh?
i want!
his hand is like little bent you must put it like he is not fighting because then people can’t see the figure.
the knee of the figure should be changed and should look a little more stronger then it is,and make his legs unbent and straighten it.
the figure also should be taller.
I definitely prefer this pose, to the second one!
Much cleaner, less ‘skeletal’ looking, and I think the components would be less likely to be ‘masked out’ by the body…
Can we get some less overly muscled people for the next HM.
Maybe a teenager body type. I use this for DnD charachters and I generaly play rouges and the like who are not the most muscular of people. There more of the lean wiriy sort. I understand this would mean a lot of work but Im just putting it out there.