Author Archives: AFDStudios

HeroMachine competitor

Posted on October 22, 2008 | 35 comments

My Portuguese is a bit rusty but thanks to Google Translator, I’m pretty sure the guys who do Her-O-Matic have a new version in the works, previewed here:

And here’s another preview of the app:

What do you all think? It’s got some really cool features, most of which (I think) are going to be do-able in the HM Warrior Mini, and then in HM3. Particularly the heads and hands and legs and such being swappable. The only big think I can see they have that I don’t is the texturizing, but I have a pretty good idea how to do that. Is that something you’d want?

On the other hand, I don’t see that in their version you can scale, rotate, or move objects, and I think you’re going to find with the Mini that they are key features, which are going to make for some very powerful options.

They also don’t have item previews, little versions of each one that you can scroll through. How important is that to you?

Anyway, they’re doing a nice job, and I was curious what you thought about it. If there’s anything you see that you want HM3 to have, let me know in the comments.

35 Comments

Posted in Previews, Suggestions & Ideas

Revised mutant turtle armor

Posted on October 22, 2008 | 14 comments

I have heard the lamentations of the women (and the commenters) and have revised the one “Top” item I had for the HM Warrior Mini:

Is this one better?

14 Comments

Posted in Previews

Warrior Mini first figure

Posted on October 22, 2008 | 14 comments

I only have one of each item type drawn, but using most of them gave me the following image from the early HeroMachine Warrior Mini:

Not super exciting yet, but a promising start. If you have any items you’d like to see included, now’s the time — guns, helmets, combat jackets, you name it. Post a link to an image in the comments and I’ll go have a look.

I have to say, at this stage of the FaceMaker development, the thing that most surprised me was what a big change the ability to change the line color.

In the Warrior Mini, the biggest two surprises are how much being able to move and scale items is, along with the utility of masking. Pretty neat, I can’t wait to get it to a usable point so you all can tinker with it.

14 Comments

Posted in Previews

The Frog-Man cometh

Posted on October 22, 2008 | 12 comments

I suspect that somewhere deep in Super-Hero Comic Book Publisher HQ is a machine whose sole purpose is to take a random animal and mash it together with the word “man” to produce a new character. That’s about the only explanation I can come up with for Marvel’s “Frog-Man“:

The Frog-Man costume is worn by student Eugene Patillo, and as a character he’s played for comedy. Which doesn’t excuse this outfit, from the Cookie-Monster-like mouth hiding the eye slits to the bad color scheme to the most egregious offense against the costume gods — a pair of Underoos covering a frog’s genitals.

First, look, this is a family blog, but come on — amphibians don’t have external genitalia. That’s just a biological fact, or at least a fact-like statement I made up without checking against Wikipedia because I’m just that lazy.

Second, the kid is in a full-body rubber costume, why does he need underpants on the outside? Couldn’t he just have made an outfit like a giant frog, without worrying about the naughty bits since the actual bits in question were already covered by the aforementioned full-body rubber costume?

I’m not saying Vincent Patillo’s little boy is an idiot, but at least judging by that outfit he’s a few lily pads short of a pond, if you know what I mean.

(Frog-Man © Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. And they’re welcome to it.)

12 Comments

Posted in Bad Super Costumes

Random Panel: Flash gets his salad tossed

Posted on October 22, 2008 | Comments Off

Comments Off on Random Panel: Flash gets his salad tossed

Posted in Daily Random Panel

Caption Contest 32: Electro-Santa

Posted on October 21, 2008 | 48 comments

Santa’s got his … er … “thinking” cap on, so you know it’s time for another titanic, world-spanning, unbelievable HeroMachine Caption Contest! (Forgive me, I got possessed by Stan Lee for a moment there). Come up with the best replacement dialog for the panel below and win your very own custom black and white illustration from professional artist Jeff Hebert (like these!):

As always you see, we post to you these rules three (sorry, got possessed by Dr. Seuss there for a minute):

No more than three entries per person;
Keep it appropriate for late-night broadcast teevee;
Leave your entry in the comments to this post.

Good luck, everyone! As always, the winner will be announced one week from today (Tuesday).

48 Comments

Posted in Challenges

Contest 31 Winner!

Posted on October 21, 2008 | 2 comments

The winner of Caption Contest 31 and his very own custom black and white illustration of whatever he likes is … Whit!

I think what sold me on this one was imagining him saying that in a really smarmy voice like Jim Carrey from “The Mask”, and how delightfully un-self-aware the comment is. Well done, Whit!

The other Honorable Mentions from this week are:

Jasper: “Oh boy, oh boy I finally get to play Gordi!
TheNate: Dirty mouth? Clean it with new Orbit Breath of Death chewing gum.
Gregg 1: Does this eye-grate make me look fat?
Gregg 2: I’m Jared and I lost 435 pounds eating at Subway!
Level: Thanks for the lift, not everyone in North Dakota’s gunna pick up a hitchhiker wearin’ a bucket on his head.
The Icedaemon: “Colgate Rad – guaranteed 100% clean, 100% white teeth. [tiny font] side effects include spontaneous mutation, skin cancer, desire to wear impractical headgear, death, photosynthesis…[/tiny font]”

I actually typed The Icedaemon’s up in Photoshop to see how it would look all fonted-out, but it didn’t quite click. And I loved Level’s blog-reference to that Random Panel the other day, that was funny. And had Jasper not misspelled Geordi LaForge’s name, he might just have come away with the win.

Well done all around, thanks everyone!

2 Comments

Posted in Challenge Favorites, Challenges

Random Panel: No one shares the skies with Superman, not even SANTA!

Posted on October 21, 2008 | 5 comments

5 Comments

Posted in Daily Random Panel

Warrior Mini mask update

Posted on October 20, 2008 | 14 comments

I had planned to start drawing items for the Warrior Mini first thing this morning, but I got caught up in building the “masking” part of the applet.

And I’m glad I did, because it rocks.

Here’s a screen grab of a very simple masking effect. I added two lightning bolt insignias, colored the same and rotated to face each other at an angle. I masked one with the Body to get a Lightning Lad effect. I had to duplicate the Body to serve as a mask for the second lightning bolt insignia, but it came out really neat:

This feature is a little bit complicated, but I think it’s going to be totally awesome. You can make all new uniform effects by, for example, choosing an insignia shape like a chevron or circle or square, and masking it with the body shape. That gives you a form-fitting uniform element like (for instance) a big half-circle colored shape on the top half of the figure.

Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll have enough items, and the code in good enough shape, for you all to play with. I am very excited by the way this is turning out! This is another one of the key HM3 features that I’ve been sweating, and now that I know how to do it, it should be (relatively speaking) a piece of cake to implement for that version.

14 Comments

Posted in Previews