Thanks to everyone who entered Character Contest 13, and congratulations to the finalists below for their outstanding work. Before getting into the meat of the submissions, though, I wanted to kick things off with Ian Healy's inspired cover, which would never get the Comics Code Authority seal but nonetheless is a hoot:
And now, the finalists!
Chase made a lot (a lot!) of entries this week, but "The Mr. Freeze Experiment" caught my eye for the great use of the helmet air-bubble attached to the wide-collared top and the faded-out head, which is an excellent technique:
Several folks took advantage of the new background items to good effect as well, particularly Vigilante (who had a lot of excellent entries) with his "Leopard", sidekick to the Black Panther:
DeisT had a late submission that also put together a wonderful environment which I wanted to highlight with his Hercules buddy, Artus Kloergan:
Andre turned in another great character in "Kayalla", a companion for Storm. I love the whole look of the character and the flying rocks technique is just inspired.
Jason Ransom had a non-super-hero entry in his Dark Vader sidekick, featuring a nifty headpiece and cool light saber thingies.
I loved Imp's concept of a demon possessed by a human in this "Ghost Rider" companion:
The overall winner, though, is Kaldath's "Iron Lad", Iron Man's new little buddy:
It's true there was an "Iron Lad" already, but he was definitely not a sidekick, and wasn't directly involved with Iron Man other than having also been in a version of the Avengers, so I think the entry still stands. I like how the costume is an homage to the main character without being a direct rip-off, and Kaldath handled the proportions of a youth very well.
Excellent job everyone, I am glad you had fun with it and hope to see you back for the next Character Contest, in two weeks!
Jeff thank you thank you thank you so much!
“Spanky the Butt Slapper” is a winner in my book! Well done!
Kudos to all this week’s finalists! I liked them all.
It’s a little frustrating. Looking back on my work last week, IthinkIgotthisclose to being a finalist. Maybe next week!
Well done everyone- I actually was gonna submit another entry, but I never got the time! Oh well. Anyway, congrats to the finalists and I especially like Leopard! I am a bit of a newbie and I want to try again next time- wonder what the next contest will be…
@Whit: I actually did have “Venutian Vanguard” and “Tai Chi Chihuahua” in the Finalists folder at one point, but they just didn’t quite make it in. It was super close though.
🙂 I thought Wonder Lad was my best, though–I NAILED the face! Don’t get me wrong, though, I love the challenge of these contests, and I’ll keep entering, win or lose. 🙂
Congrats Kaldath!
@The Powers That Be: So what’s the subject of the next contest?
Congrats everyone
Well done everyone :).
I knew Mr. Slightly-Peculiar wasn’t going to make it anyway, I like Imp’s best.
Hey Jeff you missed one Bat-Wing. lol.
-Artus Kloergan’s general design is pretty good, When I first saw him I was thinking Thor, probably the blonde hair
-The Darth Vader sidekick is pretty cool as well, he looks different then what’s normally submitted
-Hellion’s got some real potential in his design.
As I said before congrats everyone, the three I mentioned where probably my favorites of the winners, in no particular order, and in no way downing the other finalists.
Thanks for ackowledging my humble work Jeff! I thought putting some neat background scene together would add sth to this particular character itself…
My fav in those that made it here has to be Hellion! As far as costume design goes it’s bloody brilliant!!
the only flaw I can find about it is having used that cape which is Batman trademarked exclusively till the end of time (and prolly beyond…).
My congrats to all!
so what’s the next contest
@DeisT: I almost picked Hellion as the overall winner (as I seem to do every week with one of Imp’s!) but ultimately I felt Iron Lad had more of a “sidekick” feel while Hellion felt very much like he could stand alone as his own main title character. It was really close, thogh.
The next contest was just posted, and as we discussed it’s a caption one — I’m going to alternate caption contests with character design contests each week, so it’ll be caption-character-caption-character etc.
@DeisT, Champions (an unknown comic universe to me until recently) has a character by the name of Foxbat whom looks like a parody type character of wolverine and batman. Foxbat has the bat cape, so I don’t think the cape is trademarked to him only, is it?
http://lagorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/foxbat2.jpg
@MartianBlue: Love me some Champions! You know they have a 3D MMORPG world about to be up and running based on the City of Heroes model, right? They’re good guys there, and the HERO system is a lot of fun for folks wanting to play a super-hero RPG. I haven’t been able to try out the new MMORPG but it looks promising.
Congrats, kaldath!
@ Jeff, yeah that’s where I learned about it. The game looks great, especially the level of character custimization, the only thing I’m not sure on is their MT’s. They haven’t really given any info on how they’re going to work yet. Gamerzines gave away 10,000 closed beta keys not to long ago, I was fortunate enough to snag one, but haven’t had a chance to try it yet. They’re offering six month and lifetime subscribtion deals on their site, allowing access to Star Trek Online beta next year and some exclusive costumes.
Does anyone care that Ironlad was a member of the young avengers???
Wow and here I thought Ironlad was disqualified, had meant to make a few other entries also but didn’t have time to make any more this past week. Anyway THANK YOU Jeff! I’ll have the info for my prize to you shortly just need to consider what I want added to HM3 😀
Congrats to Kaldath; I really liked that one. My overall fav has to be Spanky though. I love the way the Punisher is like “Oh Christ, not again!”. 😀
I’m glad you guys liked Hellion; I wasn’t actually super-happy with the way he turned out, but meh. Maybe I’ll redo him sometime.
@tristan: I talk about that in the second to last paragraph … 🙂
Thanks so much! Can’t wait for the next contest!
congrats to all the winners