Trying out a new format today. It's up to you guys if you want me to continue or not. Hopefully these will get better in the future, this one is pretty much just a test run, to see if you like the idea or not. Sorry about my voice, I know I sound awful.
Anyway, todays question: What inspires you to create on Heromachine?
Leave your answers in the comments below and if you have any questions that you'd like me to use in a future video feel free to leave them in the comments too.
What inspires me? My imagination. Just when I’m out hiking, walking in the park, going to church, playing minecraft, etc. Just wherever I go, I just get a lot of ideas, and sometimes I try to turn it into a character.
In my case, creating on Heromachine IS the inspiration. Most of the time I use Heromachine, it’s to try to figure out what a hand-drawn character should look like. It’s extremely helpful, both to save on time and paper and also to help me to think of items and combinations thereof which I may not have considered otherwise.
1. I like the new method, JR.
2. I consider myself a funnel. Thousands of ideas bombard me every day. I have to work very hard to ignore the less relevant, less useful, and less entertaining ones. On top of that, many of my ideas fall to the wayside because they aren’t conveniently expressable or translatable to an available medium. Still more get forgotten or are left unfinished for all the usual reasons. Once in a great while, I have to start one over and trash the original as unsavable. Occasionally heromachine IS the random source that keys an idea, but usually it is a just a way to get some ideas out, which helps me relax or stay awake and feel like I am doing what I am meant to do without spending way too much money on art supplies. (I have done that many times in the past.) Creating is a compulsion, and my backlog is big enough to weigh down my whole world.
The OPMC contest is especially helpful to me because I can frequently manipulate the 3 items to express an idea in my backlog.
3. One obvious question for the group is ‘what other media do any of you use for art?’
Great Video JR, I really need to get my rear i gear and start my own videos it’s just been a hectic place here at my home lately some really bad things going in that I won’t get into. Add to that, the fact that I think I have only written a couple anime talks since I was first considering doing them on video format and those were spur of the minute decisions to write up doing videos sorta fell to road side.
As to the question you ask, I have for as long as I can remember been drawing and doodling but have always had major trouble drawing original artwork. I can look ( or could) at a picture and recreate it perfectly, even enlarge or reducing it in size if so desired however my own characters could not be brought to life satisfactory. Then I discovered HeroMachine 2.0 and have been hooked ever since. The down side of HeroMachine is that I have let my own art skills rust away! Drawing is one of those skills that takes continued practice and if you don’t use it all the time just deteriorates or so it seems to be the case for me anyway.
Awesome video and idea JR, I like the idea of getting to know the other users more.
I get inspired by many different things when it comes to creating a character, sometimes it comes from comics or movies and TV shows. Sometimes it can come from people in my everyday life, there is actually a character I created that was a healer and this actually was created to look like the doctor that fixed my broken arm back when I was younger. There is another character called Silver Owl that I created a while back, this character was inspired by Scatman’s character called Dark Swarm. I was so inspired by his villain that I had to make a hero that could fight against him. Like you said in the video, inspiration can be absolutely random.
I’ll answer your question in a moment, but first I have to say that you shouldn’t ever apologize for that lovely voice of yours.
I get inspired just by everyday life…movies,music,games. For example i always listen to music when i mess around with HM and when i feel like making something…badass i just look on YT for the most adrenaline pumping song i can find and immediately all these images pop into my head(cool poses,armor designs,backgrounds). That or i just start from a simple idea and expand it from there.
Most of my ideas begin either from a Heromachine contest or other people’s artwork. Red Bat came out of a pop quiz where I had to use three items; whereas, Nimu and Stellar were inspired by other people’s stuff. What’s fun for me is I never just stop with a character – I create a background for her, which leads to a bigger story and more characters. The idea for maintaining one giant universe to fit all my characters in comes from Isaac Asimov whose stories have always inspired me.
The cool thing is, by having a place to create (I’m talking about Heromachine, of course), my imagination is producing its own ideas. In fact, my next main character that will have her own section of my grand universe came from some newly cleared space in my brain; although, it may have been peppered with a little Star Trek and Doctor Who.
I mostly find inspiration in historical aesthetics, so when I plan out a character I tend to look at a lot of old paintings and then I try to modify the designs for the setting in question.
While working on the on a character I try to listen to music that I could imagine him or her listening to. That works surprisingly well, I’ve found.
I like this idea
What inspires me I tend to get ideas from stuff I’ve seen and I start thinking of ideas to use with it and try to see where it go when I do create it
I quite like this, actually.
My inspiration comes from within, mostly. Not in an arrogant way, but an imaginative way. I draw inspiration from my memories, whether they be from toys I’ve had, movies I’ve seen, games I’ve played, or other artworks. I look to all of those, expand on them, add really good music, and I’m on my way.
The video idea is great!
I consider myself a fairly ordinary user of Heromachine and thus almost everything that has been said about inspiration also applies to me. Except …I sometimes have the most awesome and vivid dreams which inspire me, especially when taking a little nap in the afternoon. This time when the mind wanders freely is a source of inspiration I would not want to miss. I had a line of characters that I published on the old UGO forums called BME mutants (never mind what that means), which can all be traced back to a dream I had in the middle of the night and when I awoke I had to write it down so I wouldn’t forget a thing. And this dream evolved into a set of 20 characters.
I thought the video was cool, though it’s also nice that the question was typed out, so if someone didn’t want to watch it, they didn’t have to.
You pretty much got me with trying to create my own comic book universe, though I think more of my posts come from HeroMachine contests, which is always a fun way to get ideas. I often talk to my friends about Superheroes, comics, and such, so I like incorporating their ideas too, and my closest friends are represented in my Fellowship of Superheroes. Lately I’ve been working on Green Shield’s story more, so that will be fleshed out more soon.
I liked the video and I liked being able to put a face and voice to the name.
I found HeroMachine while I was making characters for some RPGs and have been hooked ever since. Most of my inspiration comes from my over active imagination, but I also like to bring other peoples ideas come to life. I like to write down a quick bio and then put them together (kind of like a God), just a joke.