Category Archives: Challenges

Socrates and I have finalized his prize for winning Caption Contest 21. Here's the great description Socrates sent me:

As for my prize, I'd like for you to do a picture of my longtime roleplaying character Captain Thorn. He's sort of a World War One/Victorian era British adventurer, refined yet savage at the same time. I made a picture of him using heromachine which is fairly accurate which can be found at http://freewebs.com/captainthorn/captainthorn.jpg (the pants aren't really right though)... his hair is steel gray but whitening at the temples due to age, cropped short, his skin dark and sunbronzed and weathered with age, never without a five o'clock shadow and a cigar in his mouth. His clothing is basically safari gear, adventure type garb with a cowboy-style gunbelt and holster. He's roughly forty-five or so http://tristram.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/facemaker.jpg is a pretty good depiction of what he looks like. always has a sort of shiteating grin on his face.. sort of a cross between Indy, Doc Savage, and James Bond with a little Crocodile Dundee thrown in there. A shot of him firing a Webley pistol would be just great

I actually ended up doing two different versions of the illustration because I couldn't decide which I preferred. I did this one first, which I liked:

(click for a larger version)

But then I decided that I really wanted him to be fighting a big cybernetic gorilla. So that's what I did:

(click for a larger version)

Remember kids, and this is an important tip for any of you parents out there too, everything's better when there's a cyborg ape involved. You can write that down.

If you want to win your very own custom illustration of whatever you like, put on your thinking cap and head over to Caption Contest 23, going on now!

Rob Rogers and I have finalized his winning prize for Caption Contest 20. He chose one of the main characters from his excellent novel, "Devil's Cape" (on sale now, go get your copy if you haven't already, it rocks!), named "Doctor Camelot":

This was a fun one to do, I don't usually have an entire novel of source material from which to draw. Rob gives great direction and feedback, too, which also makes things both easier and more fun. Hope everyone likes it!

And don't forget, you too could win your very own custom black and white illustration if your entry is selected in Caption Contest 22!

We've finished the prize for Caption Contest 19, won by HeroGallery. We decided to do one of his HeroMachine creations, Callavera (seen here). The first rough "pencil" sketch looked like this:

HeroGallery requested some changes, specifically "could you made him stand, and one gun is pointed at the viewer and give him an angry expretion [sic] too". So it was back to the drawing board (well, drawing mouse pad anyway) and we finally settled on this version:

It's not too late for you to win your own custom black and white illustration of whatever you like thanks to Caption Contest 21, going on now!

Jester and I completed his prize for winning Caption Contest 14! Here is the description he sent me:

He's about ten feet tall, and has a slightly broader chest and shoulders than the Heromachine image. The helmet he's wearing was surprisingly close to my initial vision of him, but it would be nice if you could shave off that... tower-looking thing on the top, remove the spikes and shorten the "tusks" coming off of his cheeks. Also, I'd like to change the spikes on the shoulderpads into studs, and get rid of the chain connecting them.

I'd like the insignia tweaked abit if possible; it would be really neat if you could make it look like the design was etched into his chestplate, rather than having a picture of a castle on his chest.

His right gauntlet is a little tricky... His giant ball-and-chain mace-thing is actually attached to it, and it contains a forearm-mounted mechanism that can "reel" the chain back in if his whirls the chain or tosses the ball. So his right gauntlet should be kind of bulky and mechanical, if you can kind of picture what I'm trying to describe.

As for his pose... It would be neat if he was sort of sideways to the veiwer, his shoulder thrown back as if he was going to swing foward and stab someone with the giant spikes on his sheild (which, coincidentally, is strapped on to his armored left arm). The "mace's" chain should kind of be dangling and twirling, as if he had just released the mechanism in his gauntlet, allowing the chain to drop. He should aslo be gripping a length of the chain, to keep the mace from hitting the floor. Her sould be glaring at the veiwer, his eyes (which are dark; ignore the white-eye look in the HM image) barely visible beyond the eye-holes in his helmet.

And here's the HeroMachine character he created as a guide:

Finally, after the jump is the illustration we settled on as his prize.

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