Author Archives: AFDStudios

Data vs. Robocop

Posted on September 18, 2012 | 19 comments

If you haven’t heard, they’re remaking “Robocop”, the classic Eighties movie about a policeman cyborg with pouty lips and a literal chrome dome. Why, except for the robot parts and the penchant for violence, they could be talking about me!

Anyway, it got me thinking about the old character, and combined with the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” stuff at Dragon*Con, I came up with this concept for a versus:

Now, Data’s not inherently a warrior, but he can hold his own, while Robocop’s not exactly an intellectual. I’m not saying he’s dumb or anything, but they just hustled him out of Home Depot for hitting on a toaster oven.

We’ll set aside the technological advantage Data would have from his century with the phasers and the transporters. We’ll give them both Robocop-era weaponry, then set them down in the rocky desert, all Gorn-style. Who would win?

[polldaddy poll=”6543331″]

19 Comments

Posted in Versus

However he DOES like long walks on the beach

Posted on September 18, 2012 | 5 comments

(From “Captain Courageous” number 6, 1942.)

5 Comments

Posted in Daily Random Panel

Caption Challenge 129 Results!

Posted on September 17, 2012 | 4 comments

We had some great entries for our last Caption Challenge, thanks everyone! You were tasked with coming up with a funny caption for this random comics panel:

Without further ado, my personal favorites were:

Gero: Not all the New Gods were better off after Infinite Crisis…
chrisglen: Unfortunately for Highfather, he hasn’t seen Super Size Me. Can Morgan Spurlock save him in time?
Daniel: Darkseid’s latest ploy to hide the Anti-Life Equation in Happy Meal puzzles didn’t go according to plan.
JWMan: This week on Undercover Boss…
Twiggy: Grimace gets an upgrade
Herr D: Complaints mysteriously stopped at one location.
BenK22: You’re going to get it his way.
Myro: “Despite knowing the Anti-Life Equation, Darkseid was not trusted with the recipe for the secret sauce.”
Calvary_Red: I hope you appreciate, Kal-El, that everything that happens from this point is on your hand. The grills will rain fire, the grease will boil, the streets will run red with the ketchup of billions served.

My overall top line, however, has to be from JWMan, “This week on Undercover Boss …” I do like that show, and I think Darkseid going undercover at the Apokolips McDonald’s is hilarious.

Thanks again for entering, everyone!

4 Comments

Posted in Challenge Favorites

Character Design Contest One Hundred!

Posted on September 17, 2012 | 189 comments

The very first Character Design Challenge/Contest was held on April 21, 2009, more than three years ago; it’s a little stunning to me that it’s been going on for three years. Wow. The theme on that initial foray was the randomly chosen word “Capstan”, and the winner was the legendary Imp:

I bring it up now because after all this time, we are at the One Hundredth Edition of this bi-weekly exercise in creativity! That’s right, 100 times I’ve thrown out an idea and you all have owned it, coming up with awesome image after awesome image.

I wanted to do something special to commemorate this centennial edition, so here goes:

I want to see your best HeroMachine work of all time.

Every person gets one, and only one, entry, with the exception that it cannot have won a challenge before (to keep it fair). You can have entered in a contest in the past, though, it just can’t have been the overall winner.

I want this to be as much a gallery of your awesome work as it is a contest, a celebration, if you will, of your creativity and artistic vision. I am sure I will be blown away as always.

Next Monday I will put all submissions into a big huge poll that everyone can vote on. The following Monday, the top five vote-getters will each win a custom character sketch, drawn by me, of the winning character. That’s five, five, FIVE winners, people!

The usual guidelines for submitting entries apply, of course:

Continue reading →

189 Comments

Posted in Challenges, Character Design Challenges

Meanwhile, in the Bat Cave

Posted on September 17, 2012 | 4 comments

4 Comments

Posted in Daily Random Panel

Pop Quiz 27 Results!

Posted on September 16, 2012 | 12 comments

Thanks to everyone who was willing to take a swing at the new items for our last Pop Quiz. Without further ado (and with thanks to the free Wi-Fi at the Denver Airport), here they are:

Continue reading →

12 Comments

Posted in Challenge Favorites

HeroMachine 2 Companions

Posted on September 15, 2012 | 22 comments

A request was made to import the Companions from HeroMachine 2 into HeroMachine 3. I’ll be honest, I’d forgotten how many items there were in the old one that don’t have an analogue. But before I go whole-hog into this, I want to check in and make sure this is a) something you want, and b) how you would want it.

The reason I didn’t import these wholesale is that the art style is so drastically different between the two iterations. I can redraw them all, but in the process they’re going to look a lot different. Here’s a sample:

Continue reading →

22 Comments

Posted in HeroMachine 3

Cops and Crowds

Posted on September 15, 2012 | 6 comments

The Companion-Humanoids set has just been updated with the following items:

Let me know if you like the way the silhouetted group turned out. I wasn’t sure what to do with Color2, so I drew in the skin areas. If it works well, I have probably four more silhouette groups I could give the same treatment to.

6 Comments

Posted in HeroMachine 3, News & Updates

Pop Quiz: Fun with New Items

Posted on September 15, 2012 | 31 comments

Happy Saturday, folks! Your one-day quick-fire challenge today is to create an awesome image using one of the new items I posted this morning from either Background-Cityscapes or ItemRight-Pistols. To refresh your memory, those items are:

Edited to Add: You can also use the new Companions:

You can use one item, or all of them, or anything in between. You can use an item once or a thousand times, so long as there’s at least one of the new ones in there somewhere.

You only get one entry — that’s right, just one! So make it your best. Most of the other rules are the same as for a regular challenge, but instead of a whole week I’ll announce my favorites either tonight or tomorrow morning. Elaborate backgrounds aren’t necessary, though if you’ve got one it’s fine.

All entries must be in JPG or PNG form (BMPs are too big), posted to a publicly accessible website (like ImageShack, PhotoBucket, the HeroMachine 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;
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). Here’s a quick-start guide on how to do that for various image hosting services.

I’ll pick one entry as my personal favorite, which will get to be featured in the side bar to the right for ultimate glory! As a bonus you’re allowed to say you won the Internet for a few days.

Good luck!

31 Comments

Posted in Challenges, Pop Quiz