Your Character Design Challenge this week is to create the most awesome illustration possible featuring the idea of an every-day super-powered individual, like the sort of thing you would see in the TV show "Heroes" using HeroMachine 3.

In other words, you want someone (or someTHING) that looks like they might exist in the everyday world, only they have super-powers. For example, I used to play a guy in our Champions game named "Tempest", who had super-speed powers. But his "costume" was basically just a jacket and a Cubs cap (he lived in Chicago). The distinguishing marks were a lightning bolt pattern on the leather coat and a blue hourglass tee-shirt. But you wouldn't think anything of him if you passed him in the street. Here's how he looked:

So no spandex-and-capes, these are the kinds of characters who could pass for regular folks.

I'll pick my personal favorites when the week is over, with the one I like best being featured in the right column for the week. The rules otherwise are the same as always:

• 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 cannot have been used in any previous HeroMachine challenge;
• Please name your files as [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.
• All entries must be in by next Monday, when I'll choose my personal favorites.

No limit on entries this week, so knock yourselves out. Just make them good!

Hi everyone. My name is Ian Thomas Healy and I drop in here from time to time to enter contests. I'm a writer of superhero fiction, and I have a new novel coming out on September 1 of this year, called THE ARCHMAGE. It's a sequel to my novel JUST CAUSE, which you may have heard of or possibly even read. Anyway, to celebrate the upcoming release, I'm hosting a character contest here on HeroMachine.

What I want is for you to make me a character from any of the Just Cause Universe stories or the novel JUST CAUSE itself. Right now, there are three ebook short stories online, and two of them (GRACEFUL BLUR and THE SCENT OF ROSE PETALS) are free, so you don't even have to spend any of your hard-earned money to enter. The third short story (THE STEEL SOLDIER'S GAMBIT) is only 0.99 USD, and the ebook version of JUST CAUSE is $2.99, so if you decide to pick characters from either of those tales, you aren't risking much money, and I promise you're getting a lot of bang for your buck. The normal HeroMachine character contest rules apply:

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Your Character Design Challenge this week is to create the most awesome illustration possible featuring the idea of a Big Bad type of villain using HeroMachine 3.

We're talking city-threatening, nation-engaging, Justice League-level sorts of things here, stuff that will strike terror into the hearts of supermen and superwomen (and even superdogs!) everywhere. Sure, Paste Pot Pete and The Joker are great one-on-one threats, but I'm going for something bigger and badder here, something that would require a whole team to take down. Or just, you know, Superman. Same diff.

I'll pick my personal favorites when the week is over, with the one I like best being featured in the right column for the week. The rules otherwise are the same as always:

• 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 cannot have been used in any previous HeroMachine challenge;
• Please name your files as [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.
• All entries must be in by next Monday, when I'll choose my personal favorites.

No limit on entries this week, so knock yourselves out. Just make them good!