Character Design Contest ♯138 (Am I Evil)- Winner

Posted on September 20, 2015 by | 5 comments

So, this weeks poll was all about villains right, so of course it would be greatly contested to see who would come out on top. But I never expected it to be this close. Coming into the final few hours of voting, there were ties for both 1st place and 3rd place, which, had it stayed that way, would have been both unprecedented and hilarious. But unfortunately, some voting happened and we don’t have any ties on the board what-so-ever. And the person who stole away the win from under the noses of everyone (and, looking at the entry, quite possibly murdered them in the process) was AMS for his entry Johnny Crazy. Congratulations AMS and can we get someone to go and check to see if Yin, MadJack, Anarchangel and Vampyrist are alive please?

ams-JOHNNY-CRAZY

5 Comments

Posted in Challenge Favorites

JReviews: Doctor Who Series 9 Episode 1- The Magicians Apprentice

Posted on September 19, 2015 by | 6 comments

So, a new series of Doctor Who has begun. And we all know what that means. I am back again to ramble on in a timer-wimmy wibbley-wobbley fashion about the episodes. And due to the fact that I don’t have a TARDIS of my own, I guess that the beginning is the only place we can really start.

Oh and by the way, River Song alert (a.k.a SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not that River Song was in this episode, because that wouldn’t be true. Anyway, getting on with it).

Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in Fantasy & Sci-fi, Things I Like

Pop Quiz – Ode To Autumn

Posted on September 19, 2015 by | 5 comments

On September 19,1819 John Keats wrote “Ode to Autumn.”e5caef65481653c8fbf02c22159aa102

Your Pop Quiz challenge this time around is to celebrate autumn in any way that moves you – using Heromachine of course. Could be a landscape, a character, something abstract…whatever floats your boat.

There is no prize. There is no poll. The winner is chosen by me.

You only get one entry so be creative, and above all else, have fun!

All entries must be in JPG or PNG form (BMPs are too big), posted to a publicly accessible website (like the HeroMachine forums,ImageShack, PhotoBucket, or whatever);

  • Entries must be made as a comment or comments to this post, containing a link directly to the image and the character name;
  • The image must be new and designed specifically for the Pop Quiz;
  • No copyrighted characters please – they will be deleted.
  • Please name your filesas [your name]-[character name].[file extension] before you upload it. 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). See this post on how to get the direct link for most sites.

This contest will close at 9pm Eastern on Sunday, September 20th.

5 Comments

Posted in Pop Quiz

Suleman’s Tutorials #1: How to get started with basic shading in HM3

Posted on September 19, 2015 by | 1 comment

One of our own community members Suleman has put together a series of tutorials for HeroMachine 3.0 and has graciously allowed me to post them here on the blog for your use and enjoyment. I will be posting one a week for the next several weeks on Saturday morning, and here is our first one below after the Jump!

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1 Comment

Posted in Tips & Tricks

OCD (Open Critique Day) #32

Posted on September 18, 2015 by | 6 comments

How this goes:  You post a work of yours, finished or WIP, and then others give you critiques on your work. I do not mind if you post non-HM pictures or piece of writing. Just make sure that you only post pictures that are your own design and not any that are copyrighted or based off of copyrighted characters. 

Also, if you post a work, it is highly recommended that you also give someone else a critique.

Even this is called Open Critique Day, I allow (even welcome!) for you guys to post and discuss on this for the weekend until 11:59 pm Sunday.

6 Comments

Posted in Open Critique Day

Character Of The Week: Linea24- Guide Arthasi Cerca

Posted on September 18, 2015 by | 6 comments

This weeks COTW was very tough to choose. We had exceptional work from classic ‘machiner’s like AMS, Vampyrist and Vengeance, the usual high standards of COTW stalwarts like Anarchangel and Stulte and stunners from lesser recognised ‘machiners in Angel of Chaos and Lef. We even had the return of the legend that is dblade. But I ended up choosing this piece by Linea because it had something that the others just lacked slightly. If you look at the Also Awesome section down below, all the pictures are quite static and standard pose, and I’m not belittling any of these guys in any way, I can’t pose to save my life. But if we look at Linea’s here, that raised arm on a sideways pose, the lowering of the hat so it covers one eye, the flowing dress. It sets the whole thing off. This picture has a life of it’s own. The fact you can only see one of the characters eyes and that costume hides most of her face bar a slight glimpse of the top of her smiling mouth, gives the character such a mysterious and mischievous personality, it’s hard not to love it. And that gets it character of the week for me.

Gallery: Linea24’s Astra Universe

Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in Character of the Week

Kaldath’s Caption Contest #72: Results

Posted on September 16, 2015 by | 3 comments

Last week I asked for you all too caption this GIF:

Deadpool

And the top five entrants as judged by me are:

**********

GuyGenesis
Deadpool “Everyone treats Deadpool like a door mat! ANY ONE ELSE WANT TO WIPE THEIR FEET?!”
**********
dreadyacht
Deadpool: What a lovely day! Nothing can g-

Hulk: Deadpool! Am I getting warm?

**********
William A. Peterson
“Okay, so Hulk was mad about that putting his hand in a bowl of water while he was asleep thing! But, THIS is so far from his usual stomping grounds that he’ll NEVER…”

{STOMP!!!!}

**********

Nug
“I am one with the wind and sky

Let it go, Let It G-”

**********

ams

“Mondays are the best day of the week! I said, Mondays are the best day of the w……UGHHHH”

 

**********

And your Winner is …………………………

Continue reading →

3 Comments

Posted in Caption Challenges, Challenges

Pop Quiz Results

Posted on September 14, 2015 by | 3 comments

Four great entries this week.

Nug used some very innovative pieces to come up with cool – sort of retro – design.

yellow_by_nugarius-d99hmdm

Love the murky look of Vampyrist’s entry; great colour choices.

Vampyrist-YellowSub

The shading and very effective use of just a few items cleverly repeated makes Stulte’s entry top notch.

Stulte

And finally Herr D chose a whimsical approach – nice colouring and textures.

HerrD-YellowSubmarine_zps0njw19yc

And this week’s winner – and the winner of a custom made Captain design inspired by their submarine is…

Nug!

Join me in congratulating Nug, and all the other entrants. Nug’s prize will be posted on my Forum page and on Deviant Art when I get it done…with any luck, no later than Friday.

See you Saturday.

 

3 Comments

Posted in Pop Quiz

Character Design Contest ♯139- Colourful

Posted on September 14, 2015 by | 34 comments

So, very simple idea for this weeks contest. What I want you guys to create is a superhero or villain that has a colour themed name and costume. Examples of this would be guys like Green Lantern, Red Tornado, Black Panther etc. so the characters name must include the main colour of their costume. Easy.

As per usual, no limits on entries and the contest will close at midnight Saturday (blog time). 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 characters 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.

34 Comments

Posted in Challenges, Character Design Challenges

Image

CDC Question + Extra Posts?

Hey guys, JR here and I’ve got a few quick questions for you concerning my posts on the blog. Firstly, the weekly Character Design Contests seem to be dropping in popularity. Over the last couple of months we only seem to be averaging less than 20 individual participants each contest. Sure some of those participants may enter multiple times (Cliff and Outcast are notable for this, certainly recently), but last year we’d get at least 25-30 each week on average, and that’s before we even get to the polls, which used to get no less than 180 votes each week last year and frequently broke the 200 vote mark (last weeks vote was the highest we’ve had in a month and it got 130 votes). And I’d be interested to know why this is. I don’t want to stop doing the CDC’s and will try to do everything in my power to keep them going, but I don’t want it to get to a point where we’re just having the same old people in the polls, not because they were the best entries, but because no-one else entered. And while we’re on the subject of the CDC’s, if anyone has any suggestions for themes, please leave them below. It would help a lot for those times when I’ve been busy and haven’t had time to come up with a theme for the week (which almost happened this week, I actually put together this weeks contest an hour before it went up, which is late for me as I’d usually have it all sorted the night before).

And on that note, there is obviously a lot less blog content of late, due to both Kaldath and my own IRL job commitments. I know Kaldath asked about volunteers for new blog authors a while back, but that has gone quiet. I’m not in a position to give anyone authorship permission and I’ve not exactly got a vast expanse of free time at the moment, so what do? Well, it was suggested to me yesterday that I bring the Power User Profiles back. Great, I literally have to do nothing except receive an email and post it to the blog for that one, so it would be viable. Only problem is, we could only come up with one new person to profile. So that’s where you guys come in. If you can think of anyone you’d like to see profiled, leave them in the comments and if I see at least 5 I like, then I’ll make it happen.

So yeah, comment please. It’d really help out a lot.

And with that, JR out.

11 Comments

Posted on September 14, 2015 by in Meta, Open threads