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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!
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Author Archives: JR19759
Character Of The Week: Nug- Cyber Mask
Difficult decision this week. There's been at least 3, maybe 4 pictures that could have been featured this week, but I'm going to go with this one by Nug because it gives me a bit more to talk about.
Lets kick off with the best bit shall we. As I'm sure everyone has noticed, the colour on the visor here is truly stunning. The warmth and the depth is gorgeous, it really adds to the sunrise reflection effect that is being portrayed here. It also doesn't drown out the rest of the reflection, nor the face beneath the visor, which is good, making the image seem more realistic. I also like the fact that Nug put small highlighting shines in some of the hexagons on the visor. It's a little detail that just adds that little bit of polish to the image and just takes it that little bit further.
Nug said on his thread that he wasn't to happy with the hair on this picture. I personally can't see the problem. The slight glow that he has added makes the hair seem more natural than it would if it were just left unshaded. That combined with the fact that you can actually see the individual hairs for the most part gives a natural looking hair style with an un-natural edge, a very pleasant and eye-pleasing juxtaposition.
However, we now come to something I haven't done in a while, what's wrong with the picture. Nug is right, this picture isn't perfect, it could be improved. And for me, it's the jaw line. The metal part of the helmet is made from a cyber-torso, which is fine and the item works well for its purpose, but I don't like how Nug just left the bottom edge as it was. It gives the character an oddly shaped square jaw and it looks odd when you look at the characters chin. If he had masked the torso item to the same female head he had used for the chin, Nug may have been on to a real winner here. But just that one bit makes it fall short of perfection. But only just.
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Posted in Character of the Week, Cool Characters, HeroMachine 3, Things I Like
The Big Question ♯27
You know guys, the 200th Contest got me thinking, we've had two contests now where we've been asked to enter what we think is our best ever work. But what would enter if you had to pick someone else's work? What is you favourite piece of heromachine artwork that someone else has done?
It's not an easy decision this one, I mean there's been so many great artworks all the way from the classics from people like Zyp, AMS or djuby, to the more recent additions from 'machiners such as Valyndril, Jeimuzu or Stulte. But having considered it long and hard, personally, I'm gonna have to go with this one by SeanDavidRoss.
You know how, last week I said about when I first found the blog side of the site. Well this was one of the first pictures I stubbled across when I did find the blog. It looked like it was hand coloured then and still does. Ok, looking at it now compared to some of the more clean and neat shading styles that people have adopted since, it does look a bit rough in some places. But that really doesn't matter. It's still a stunning piece of art.
So that's my pick, now it's over to you guys. You can mention more than one if you so wish, I'm not that mean, I'm just interested and I don't have anything better to post today.
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Posted in HeroMachine 3, Sharing Day
Character Design Contest ♯98- Starting At The Beginning
This one's going to be interesting. What I want you to do this week is very simple. I want you to do is create a character. They can be anything, hero, villain, alien, male, female, strong-man, speedster or techie, does not matter. BUT, you can only use Heromachine Version 1...
Have fun. Oh and also, by entering this contest you are giving permission for the character/ characters you enter to be used in a future contest in two weeks time, ok?
As per usual, no limits on entries this week and the contest will close at midnight Saturday (blog time). The winner gets to claim a custom made item from dblade to be put into heromachine, so long as the item conforms to his prize rules, which you can find here: http://www.heromachine.com/forum/the-heromachine-art-gallery/dblades-whiz-bang-item-dispenser/. Please read the contest rules before entering, have fun and good luck.
Rules for posts, contests, and challenges that I am hosting: Original characters only, no copyrighted characters, no characters based on copyrighted characters, no characters based on RPG’s or other games. The characters must be your own design and not based on any character that might be copyrighted in any way. I have the right to delete any post that I believe crosses this line without warnings. Only post pictures and images that you have either created for this contest specifically or you know for certain have never been entered to a contest before. If you aren’t certain, don’t enter it, because I’m not going to go back through all of the contests and check.
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Posted in Challenges, Character Design Challenges
Character Design Contest ♯97 (The 200th)- Poll
[polldaddy poll="8434997"]
Unfortunately there were some people who didn't name their entries properly, and so didn't make it onto the poll. Still, I think there's enough creations on there to give everyone a hard time deciding.
So, here's how this is going to work. You can vote for your top 5, once a day, for a week. The result will not show when you vote, because I'm mean like that, and it helps build the tension. NO CANVASING FOR VOTES, anywhere. Share the poll by all means, but don't directly ask for votes. If you're found to do so you will be disqualified. Other than that, good luck, may the best 'machiner win.
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Posted in Challenge Favorites
Character Design Contest ♯96 (Mad Scientists & Monsters)- Winner
As suspected, there was a much lower voter turn out for this contest than last weeks, but it was still a decently close contest, with only 6 votes separating the top 2. But, of course, there can be only one, and this week that one is Skybandit for his Monster. Congrats Skybandit, please make sure you speak to dblade about your prize, and well done to everyone who entered.
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Posted in Challenge Favorites
JReviews: Doctor Who Series 8 Episode 12- Death In Heaven
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Posted in Fantasy & Sci-fi, Things I Like
Encourage An Artist
Our esteemed founder Mr Hebert posted this over on the Heromachine Facebook page earlier today and I thought I might as well share it here, because he's right, it does perfectly encapsulate what this community is all about.
There's no such thing as bad art, just unimaginative critics.
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Posted in Things I Like
Character Of The Week: RobM- Monument Builders Of Sirius
Ok, I've gone and broken my own rules again, because this picture was actually posted last week. But I already had written last weeks COTW post when this was uploaded and when I went back and looked at it again I thought to myself "I should probably feature this one next week". So I'm going to.
It's not often that we get a picture where I actually have to go into Heromachine to try and figure out how it was made and then, an hour later, I come out none the wiser. Rob if you could enlighten us as to how you managed to blend the grey portion of the face so seamlessly with the rock face, as well as how you managed to get the grey sections patterned without the white bits being patterned also, because I couldn't get it to work when I tried to do the same, I'd be very grateful. It's such a great effect and it really annoys me that I can't explain it….
Hang on. I just zoomed in on Preview and had a look at the face more closely. Are those background-floors? You sneaky bugger. Those are the wood/ stone texture uneven floors turned sideways! *facepalms* How did I miss that? Time to whip out the COTW slogan of "simple but effective" once again.
Anyway, my favourite part of this image isn't actually the planetoid face, it's the character carving it. Rob was the person who, if not created, at least made known the technique of backlighting with his CDC33 winning entry Moonsrise. And he's used the effect to great… effect (?) again here. The effect is, once again, stupidly simple, you create and pose a character and then make the colour full black, so the character is a silhouette. Then you make duplicates of the items/ body parts that you want to be backlit, and make the copies slightly bigger than the originals, place them behind the original body parts so that they are slightly showing, and change the colour so it is the colour you want (in this case yellow, but white is more striking). The effect can be quite stunning when done well, as Rob shows us here.
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Posted in Character of the Week, Cool Characters, Things I Like
