I finally completed Blue Blazer’s prize for winning Caption Contest 54, and have posted his Stretchy Arms to BodyMaleStandard in HeroMachine 3. You can place most gloves on them with a bit of manipulation, and if you use the Masking feature you can get a spandex look pretty easily. Enjoy!
I’m not sure what I have going on there in that image, sort of a Michael Jackson meets “When I Think Of You I Touch Myself” by way of Reed Richards. Or something. But you get the general idea.
Posted in Challenges, HeroMachine 3
Kaldath was in the right place at the right time, and I was able to get his HeroMachine 3 prize for the just-concluded Character Contest 28 (Child Of …) done:
It’s shown here colored, obviously, and in its default size and position. For longer fire-hair, you can use the Multiples setting, move one of the items all the way to the bottom of the stack, then scale it way up on the y-axis, like so:
Hopefully this will help make your fire-related characters easier to bring to life. Thanks to Kaldath for picking a great item for his prize!
Posted in Challenge Prizes, Challenges, HeroMachine 3
TheNate has approved his prize for winning Caption Contest 64, and it is now live in HeroMachine 3 under the Insignia-Standard set:
It works well either as a straight Native American style chest symbol, or if you scale it up and make it somewhat transparent, it can serve as a great body tattoo. Nice suggestion, Nate, thanks!
Posted in Challenge Prizes, Challenges, HeroMachine 3
The old D&D rules about the crazy possible consequences of drinking two active magic potions at once used to fascinate me. I don’t know what is about to happen to this fellow, but it ought to be fun finding out. For us, if not so much for him.
I’m still trying to learn how to do color for comics-style panels using Photoshop. I found a couple of tutorials with good tips, so on this one I was trying to figure out flats (big blocks of single colors that serve as the base) and having line art on a separate layer with no white fill for coloring, and so forth. Some day I’d really like to learn how to do a full-on painterly style of image, without black lineart, but just color serving as the borders of the shapes.
Posted in Sketch of the Day
Many thanks to Hammerknight for putting together recipe cards for two more poses. Let him know in the comments that you appreciate his work putting these together, and any requests you might have for additional help topics. Click on any one of these to embiggen it.
Posted in Recipes, Tips & Tricks
I am finally getting to the many back-logged contest prizes I owe people. The first to get approved is this Rocketeer-styled aviator jacket for Ian’s Caption Contest 67 victory:
When I get to converting all the various Male tops over to the Female template, this one will go along with them.
Thanks for the request Ian, I think it’s a great addition!
Posted in Challenge Prizes, Challenges, HeroMachine 3, News & Updates
You KNOW he’s got sandwiches in that utility belt somewhere …
Posted in Sketch of the Day
If your super power involves running away, there are two things you want to avoid when it comes to setting your your heroic identity.
First, you want to avoid choosing yellow as your primary color, because (news flash!) in our culture, yellow is the color of cowards. You rarely want to combine running-away powers with cowardice.
And second, on the off chance some dim-witted criminal misses the whole “I’m bladder-voidingly afraid” vibe, you probably don’t want to name yourself anything even vaguely reminiscent of, in fact, pissing yourself.
And yet, I give you “The Whizzer”:
Super-heroes use costumes to send a message about themselves, whether that message is “I’m a bright icon of hope” for Superman or “I’m about to kick you in the face and you won’t even see it coming” in Batman. It ought to go without saying — and apparently, tragically, it most definitely went without saying where The Whizzer could hear it — that you don’t want to send a message that says “Please don’t hurt me or I’ll pee on both of us.” I would bet you’d have a hard time inspiring fear in anyone besides the men’s room attendant with that kind of look.
But let’s say somehow you have attracted a Rogues’ Gallery of epically clueless proportions, who have, against all odds, completely missed the fact that you’re depicting yourself as a galactic-level coward. In that unlikeliest of events, the very last thing you would want to do, the absolute worst way you could possibly reinforce the unfortunate stereotype of your moniker, would be to mount a chicken on your helmet. And yet:
Oh sure, he’ll claim that’s an eagle, but I think the preponderance of evidence would clearly show it’s a chicken. Because I’ve met eagles, my friends, and I can assure you, not one of them would be caught dead hanging out with the King of Wee. Even future guests of KFC have more pride than that.
(Many thanks to reader Kate for once again pointing out an awesomely bad Golden Age costume!)
Posted in Bad Super Costumes
Three middle-aged nerds (including yours truly!) review all of the MCU movies in chronological order. Short, funny, and full of good vibes, check it out and let us know what you think!
Nerdmudgeon.com
