Author Archives: AFDStudios

Your character design challenge for this week is to come up with an image with HeroMachine based on the idea of the Zodiac sign "Aquarius". To help you out, here's a bit on the history of the name from Wikipedia:

Aquarius is sometimes identified with Ganymede, a beautiful youth in Greek mythology with whom Zeus fell in love and, in the disguise of an eagle (represented by the constellation Aquila), carried off to Olympus to be "cup-bearer" to the gods. Aquarius has also been identified as the pourer of the waters that flooded the Earth in the ancient Greek version of the Great Flood myth. As such, the constellation Eridanus the river is sometimes identified as a river being poured by Aquarius.

I usually think of Aquarius as being closely related to water, so pretty much anything aquatic-related would work on this one like a mermaid, or a mutant with water-control powers. You could also do an undersea research station, or the Aquarius Torpedo, or some other tech- or magic-related item if you don't want to do a person. You could play off the "cup bearer" concept if water doesn't appeal to you, or even riff off the great hippie tune "Age of Aquarius" with a peace-and-love poster homage to that era.

The contest rules are the same as usual:

1. Use only a HeroMachine applet (no PhotoShopping except for basic cropping) to create a PNG or JPG of your entry, named as [your name]-[character name].[file extension]. So DiCicatriz, for instance, would save his "Bayou Belle" character image as DiCicatriz-BayouBelle.png.
2. Post the image to a publicly accessible website (ImageShack, PhotoBucket, the UGO Forums, etc.).
3. Enter the name of your entry and a link directly to the image in a comment to this post. The image cannot have been used in any previous HeroMachine character design contest.
4. The link to your image should 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.
5. I'll choose a winner next Monday, who will receive his or her choice of any item or a portrait to be included in the final HeroMachine 3 program, or a "Sketch of the Week" style black and white illustration (you pick the subject and I draw it up however I like).

No limit on entries this week, so knock yourselves out. Good luck everyone!