Monthly Archives: December 2011

Super dating!

Each of the following women has dated a super-hero in a motion picture. The question before you is, which of these characters would you most want to date yourself -- not the actress playing the part, but the character.

[polldaddy poll="5777391"]

Four of these women -- Katie Deauxma, Mary Jane Watson, Tina Carlyle, and Vickie Vale -- have no super-identity of their own, while the others do. It seems to me the first question has to be, do you want to date someone with super-powers while you have none? The second question you have to ask yourself is, would you want to live in their particular iteration of the real world? For instance, the present depicted in "Watchmen" doesn't seem like very much fun, while the "Spider-Man" movies are pretty much just real world plus a few super characters, mostly living in New York City.

If you want to date a super-hero, you're looking at either an assassin (Elektra), a somewhat disturbed chain smoker (Laurie Jupiter), and a fairly normal woman who can turn invisible (Sue Storm). Personally, I'm at a point in my life where stable is good, so I'd have to go with Sue Storm out of that bunch. She's smart, she's brave, and she can throw a shield around me so I don't get hurt. That's a potent combination.

From the regulars, you have to think about their jobs. Mary Jane is an up and coming actress with a heart of gold, Katie is a sixteen year old girl, Vickie Vale is a gossip reporter, and Tina Carlyle is (if I remember correctly) an exotic dancer. Again, I'm going to have to go with normal, which means Mary Jane. Plus, redheads FTW!

So for me personally, it's between Sue Storm and Mary Jane Watson. Out of those two, I'm going with ... Mary Jane!

What about you? Who would you choose, and why?

That's what you get when your secret word is so stupid

(From "The Green Mask" volume 1, number 1, 1945.)

Character Design Contest 79: 'Tis the Season

Your design challenge for this week is to create a character or characters based on something related to the current holiday season. You could go with something Christmas related (Santa, the elves, flying reindeer, turbo sled, Wise Men, a hero named "The Shepherd", a villain named "The Swaddler", etc.), Chanukah (Maccabeus, eight members of the "Menorah" team, someone named Shamash, etc.), or you could go with something winter related (Solstice, blizzards, etc.). Your choice!

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 113 Winners!

Caption Contest 113 generated some of the funniest lines we've seen in a long time, filling in the missing dialog in this classic "Superman" cover:

Without further ado, here are the ones I thought were the funniest:

  • Mr.MikeK: Mutton Chop Powers Activate! Activate Dammit!
  • Nick Hentschel: “Well, that’s the end of THESE undies!”
  • Nick Hentschel: “Oh, no not DETROIT!!!”
  • GreenBat: I’ll never play Words with Friends again.
  • Worf: Wait! I haven’t told you the punchline yet!
  • DubbleYoo: So that’s why you never tug on Superman’s cape!
  • Joel: “So THIS is fourth class.”
  • William A. Peterson: But I haven’t learned how to MISS the ground, yet!
  • spidercow2010: THIS is the connecting flight?!
  • Lewis: “This is not statistically the safest was to travel!”
  • Myro: “Fine! You’re scarier than Batman! YOU’RE SCARIER THAN BATMAN!”
  • Niall Mor: These TSA pat-downs are getting way out of hand!

As you know, there can be only one overall winner, and this week I am going once again with ... Nick Hentschel!

I didn't honestly notice the line until Spidercow2010 pointed it out, so I thank him for that.

Thanks to everyone who entered, congratulations to all the Finalists, and Nick, let me know what you'd like for your prize!

I guess monologues don't count

(From "The Green Mask" volume 2, number 1, 1945.)

Sunset recipe by Nick Hentschel

Instead of the usual Power User Profile, we have a special treat today -- Nick Hentschel has graciously put together a nifty how-to recipe for your own sunset backgrounds! I know he put a ton of work into this, so please let him know in the comments that you appreciate the effort and the willingness to share.

Note that you can click on most of these screen captures to see them at maximum size. Without further ado, I give you Nick's recipe!

Continue reading

Khan, the early years

(From "The Green Mask", volume 2, number 1, 1945.)

Open Critique Day #30

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.

Pre-Internet LOLCats

(From "The Green Mask" volume 2, number 1, 1945.)

META: A reminder to back up your stuff

Folks, this is just a friendly reminder that the beginning of a new year is a great opportunity for you to protect your valuable creativity. In this case, you can do that by downloading any characters you have on the UGO Forums to your local hard drive for safe-keeping. We've had a couple of scares in the past with those boards in danger of going bye-bye, so it's only prudent to take steps to safeguard your characters. The end of a year is the time to be thinking of that kind of thing.

On a related note, you should also take the time if you have it to make both text and image backups of your HeroMachine 3 characters. The change the browser companies made earlier in the year to start wiping out Flash cookies by default was a good lesson that it definitely pays to be safe rather than sorry. So if you haven't been doing it before, load up the text strings of your favorite characters and paste them into Notepad or something just in case. Doing an image export is also a sound idea.

Create safely so you can safely create!