Author Archives: AFDStudios

Open Critique Day #6

Posted on December 2, 2010 | Comments Off on Open Critique Day #6

It's time once again 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.

(Image ©2006, Harvey Levine.)

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Posted in Open Critique Day

RP: Worst. Circus. Ever.

Posted on December 2, 2010 | Comments Off on RP: Worst. Circus. Ever.

(From "Four Favorites" number 9, 1943.)

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Posted in Daily Random Panel

Chastity belts and fists don’t mix

Posted on December 1, 2010 | Comments Off on Chastity belts and fists don’t mix

Admittedly, "Night Fist" appeared in the pages of "Hitman", which means he's more of a joke than anything intended to be "serious", but I can't let the Greatest Bad Costume Element Since the Sword Gun pass without comment:

Those are giant wrist-guard punch-knife-style metal gloves with fists on the ends! They're fists you wear on your fists, like boxing gloves only even less functional. By my count, that's at least four kinds of awesome.

Throw in the faux Batman style metallic helmet and the chastity-belt leg chains (?!) and we've got a serious contender for one of the all-time worst costumes in comics history.

Setting that aside, how bad is the actual illustration? It looks like some of the more egregiously rank drawings in "Captain Canuck" from back in the day. His legs are a disaster, the torso looks like it had a bad run-in with an Imperial trash compactor, and I can't for the life of me figure out how he's pointing outside that metal fist glove.

Luckily he got shot to death by a bunch of criminals before the issue concluded, so at least the costume can lie in peace. Or pieces, which is even better.

(Image and character © DC Comics. Many thanks to reader Wesley for passing along this great image.)

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Posted in Bad Super Costumes

RP: Oh my …

Posted on December 1, 2010 | Comments Off on RP: Oh my …

(From "Four Favorites" number 9, 1943.)

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Posted in Daily Random Panel

Poll Position: Team-offs

Posted on November 30, 2010 | Comments Off on Poll Position: Team-offs

Our question this week involves groups of characters in primary colors gathering together to beat the snot out of each other. Namely:

{democracy:160}

Instead of me blathering on about this, I wanted to leave it open to you, the viewing public, who will doubtlessly know more about each of these groups than I do. So have at it in comments, and let me know which of these teams would be the winner no matter who else on the list they faced.

HeroMachine Commenter Force Super Discussion Mash-Up GO!

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Posted in Versus

Caption Contest 87 Winner!

Posted on November 30, 2010 | Comments Off on Caption Contest 87 Winner!

The votes are in and your winner for Caption Contest 87 is ... Doomed Pixel for this quality joke:

Congratulations to Doomed Pixel, who alas has a long history of not claiming his prizes. Maybe this will turn into another bonus for those of you who haven't won, as you'll get to vote on another replacement item!

The full results are as follows for those who are curious:

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Posted in Caption Challenges, Challenge Favorites, Challenges

HM3: Female Fantasy Armor Tops

Posted on November 30, 2010 | Comments Off on HM3: Female Fantasy Armor Tops

I've just added the Tops-FemaleFantasyArmor set to the HeroMachine 3 Alpha. Let me know if you spot any problems (other than the one that shows the pattern in the midsection that's supposed to be bare). As usual, if you don't see it in the list, clear your browser's cache and reload HM3.

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Posted in HeroMachine 3, News & Updates

Marvel Digital

Posted on November 30, 2010 | Comments Off on Marvel Digital

I just signed up for Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited -- does anyone else use that? How has your experience with it been? I'm looking forward to catching up on some of the comics I've missed over the last ten years, as well as looking through some of the oldies but goodies for Random Panel fodder.

I clicked on an ad in my YahooSports Fantasy Football page, which had a promo offer of $4.99 a month, or $59.88 for the year with a pre-paid year-long subscription. Once on the order page, there was a place to put in a promo code, and with a Google search I found CYBER3010, which apparently is their "Cyber Monday" price, expiring at midnight. Putting that in gave me an additional 30% off a yearly subscription rate for a final bill of $41.92. Not too shabby for all the comics you can read!

Note that I am not getting a cut of this or anything, it's something I was doing on my own and thought was a neat deal that might be interesting to you. If you sign up, or have been a subscriber already, I'd be curious to hear about what you think of it.

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Posted in Randomosity, Things I Like

RP: Tell it, sister!

Posted on November 30, 2010 | Comments Off on RP: Tell it, sister!

(From "Ultimate X-Men" number 131, © Marvel Comics.)

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Posted in Daily Random Panel

Character Contest 51: Alien Nation

Posted on November 29, 2010 | Comments Off on Character Contest 51: Alien Nation

Your character design challenge for this week is to create an alien. You could go all out and do examples of several different sub-species inhabiting a planet, or a super-hero with an alien background, or a fantasy alien invader (like the Mind Flayers), or a specific alien from literature (a named Green Martian from Burroughs, for example), or anything else you can think of that would qualify under the name "alien".

  • 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 -- we had an "Angels and Demons" contest and a "D&D Character" contest a while back, for instance, and I don't want repeats of stuff you already did for those;
  • 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, 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.

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Posted in Challenges, Character Design Challenges