Author Archives: AFDStudios

Halloween Pop Quiz!

In the spirit of Open Critique Day, and in honor of Halloween, today you are going to be providing helpful costume design pointers to other Internet citizens bedeviled by poor fashion sense (for instance, these sad bastards) in our second one-day surprise Pop Quiz!

  1. Go out on the web and find an image of someone in what you think is a poor example of a Halloween costume.
  2. Grab the link to the outfit image, then redesign a better one in HeroMachine.
  3. In a comment to this post, give us your critique of the original (along with a link to the image), and a link like for any character design contest to your proposed re-design.

At the end of the day I'll pick a winner, who will receive their choice of any HM3 item or portrait, or a "sketch of the day" style custom black and white illustration of whatever they like (within reason). Then we can all go out tomorrow and celebrate by dressing up in slutty costumes and begging our neighbors for candy. As Jim Gaffigan says, when he was a kid that was cool, but try it now and they call the cops on you! Probably because he makes a hot Catwoman.

Good luck! And hurry -- just look how badly this guy needs your help:

Scary HM3 Halloween Cemetery

With profound thanks to Me Myself and I (meaning the frequent contest entrant and commenter, not literally me, Jeff Hebert) for putting this together, I am happy to present what may be the most ambitious Recipe to date -- MMI's Super Creepy Halloween Cemetery. I thought it would be the perfect fit for the Halloween week.

Next week we'll have another installment of Hammerknight's great "character archetypes" series, but this one was too perfectly timed to wait.

Thanks again MMI!

Note that if anyone else has recipes or how-to visual guides they'd like posted here, by all means send 'em on.

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RP: More wrongity wrong wrong

(From "More Fun Comics" number 11, 1936.)

I do not think that word means what you think it means

Atlas Comics briefly published a comic titled "The Grim Ghost", but I think maybe the fact that Dictionary.com didn't exist yet really hosed them, because this guy doesn't exactly look "Grim" to me:

Purple, aqua, and white aren't exactly the colors that spring to mind when I think "grim". A "g" word, yes, but not that particular one. And when I suggest that "The Gay Ghost" might work better, it's not in the modern derogatory sense but rather the more traditional "happy or festive" connotation. I mean, look at the guy -- that enormouse double popped collar and painted-on-jeans with flyaway purple bandanna clearly says to me that he's looking for a party. I think he's even got a frilled cravat, for the love of fashion!

My understanding is that he was some sort of revived pirate from the Colonial age or whatnot, so I can understand wanting to stick with the fashion that brung ya. But come on, one set of deep knee bends and we'll all get to see just how happy he really is, if you see what I mean.

Just going from the outfit, and knowing how much editors love alliterative character names, I think a better fit in addition to my earlier one would have been "The Happy Haunter", or the "Spectacular Spirit", or the "Phantasic Phantasm". Because the one thing I absolutely do not get from this guy is "Grim".

(Image and character © Atlas Comics.)

RP: Masquerade costume, riiiiiiight …

(From "Heroic Comics" number 1, 1940.)

Poll Position: Vote-Whoring With Wolverine

Shamelessly, I present the following Poll Position holiday-themed Wolverine question, pushing the boundaries of how shamelessly I can exploit a popular character to further my own popularity:

{democracy:156}

Forthwith to the rolling in the muck!

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Caption Contest 85 – Tiger Guy

Figuring you all are a) busy creating costumes for real life (Halloween in America is coming up this weekend!), b) busy creating digital ones for Friday Night Fights (deadline is NEXT Friday, so get busy!), and c) we've had a bajillion character design contests in a row, I thought we should return to our infamous blank captions.

In honor of Halloween, I challenge you to come up with the funniest replacement dialog for what looks like a Trick Or Treat encounter gone awry:

The rules are:

Entries must be left as a comment or comments to this post;
Keep it clean, appropriate for late-night broadcast television;
No limit on entries but be a good editor for yourself and don't just spam every idea that pops into your head, just the funny ones.

Deadline is next Monday, when I'll pick a winner, who will receive their choice of any HeroMachine 3 item or a portrait, or a "Sketch of the Day" style custom black and white illustration.

Good luck everyone!

RP: Bold words from Explodes Into Urine Man

(From "Heroic Comics" number 1, 1940.)

Character Contest 48 Winners

Character Contest 48 was a lot of fun, thanks to everyone for taking us on a tour of your most demented, funniest, and in some cases SUPER circuses!

I've picked out the entries that I thought were either just flat-out the best, or had some particular feature I enjoyed, or that were in some other way outstanding. If you don't see yours here, it's not that it wasn't good, it's just that only a few can make it in.

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META: Internet wilderness

Due to horrible Internet access all weekend and continuing today, all posting will be delayed till I can get to the library. I'm investigating alternate solutions for access so I don't go insane, but for today this is as good as it gets.