Category Archives: HeroMachine 3

HM3: The ears have it

I added a few new Ears to the Standard set, including several intended to help make your own Headgears look right. Here’s a sample character created with the new items added today:

headmask

The mask consists of one of the Standard Heads, colored green; four eyes, two of which act as the mask’s eye holes (colored flesh tones), the other two of which are normal eyes layered on top; the circle Insignia, masked onto the Head and scaled horizontally to make it an arc and then colored flesh tones to make it look like the mask’s mouth opening; two of the new ears, colored to look like regular ears covered in cloth; two Eyebrows, with the right one moved behind the eye openings so the second color gets clipped off rather than intruding over the mask’s cutouts like the left one; and the rest of the normal facial features.

It’s more cumbersome to do it this way, but man, you can get some really nice effects. I could use that same basic setup and swap out a triangle Insignia to serve as the mouth opening instead. Or use the Square Insignia masked to the Head to make it look like the mask cuts off at the forehead. Or or or …

Yeah. Lots of possibilities. Have fun, holler if there’s something not working right!

Oh, I did notice that using the Insignia for a mask mouth opening kind of screws you for using a nose … I haven’t thought through what to do about that.

HM3: Mask eyes

I’ve just updated the “Standard” set of “Eyes” with four or five new entries meant to serve as eye holes for masks, either the ones in “Headgear Standard” or if you’re using one of the basic Head shapes as a full-face mask. I’ve only played around with it a bit but you can get some really nice effects. Let me know if it’s working for you, and if there are other shapes you would want to see.

HM3: Get your head in the gear. Game. Whatever.

I’ve just updated the HeroMachine 3 Alpha with the “Standard” set of “Headgear” items. I have some items to note after the jump.

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HM3: My mind is just FLAYED

With thanks to Brian in the comments of the last thread, I give you a Mind Flayer type of squid head:

mindflayer

It was such a good idea I jumped on drawing it before realizing that this isn’t really an “animal” head. So I put it in the Head slot’s “Aliens” set. Where it sits as the only current member, and which won’t get any more fully developed until I get the rest of the “Standard” slots filled. Which is unfortunate. So, I share it here so you can at least see how cool it is, because come on — that’s cool looking.

Incidentally, this is what it looks like while I’m actually in the source Flash files drawing these things. I have the default body template grayed out in the background so I can make sure everything is where it’s supposed to be and that it looks good on the figure. The light gray area is color1, the dark gray area is color2, and obviously the black lines are the lineart. The white and red are uncolorable areas, which you’re typically going to only see on things like these all-in-one heads, spots that are going to be the same color 99% of the time but which aren’t covered by one of the main three color areas.

HM3: Unleash the beast

I’ve just published the “Animals” set of items for the “Head” slot in the HeroMachine 3 Alpha. I started out working on Headgear, but the first two items in it were animal heads and I realized that unlike in HM2, I now had an actual “Head” slot that could be filled with items. So now you can replace the default human head with animal ones. Down the road I may take the advice of someone in comments, and make some “blank” animal heads, outlines of feline and reptilian heads and such that can be filled with facial features just like the human ones. But for now this is just a replacement of the old HM2.x full head-covering stuff.

Here’s a sample::

animalheads-new

By way of comparison, here’s a sample of the 2.x Animal Headgear items:

animalheads-old

In general I tried to make the heads more realistic and more dynamic. Thus you have the screaming chimp instead of the placid looking fellow. I included suggestions from the comments a few days ago as well (notably the horse and dragon heads, for instance), but if you’ve always wanted some sort of human animal hybrid and don’t see it in the complete set, let me know.

Also, note that you can use other items like the various horns from the “Ears” slot to add to these, making your own version. For instance, the more menacing male goat head I put in to replace the old friendly she-goat lacks horns. But you can add a couple from the Ears to complete it. Or you can add some of the animal ears if, for some reason, you wanted a bunny-goat beast. You get the idea.

Next, it’s back to HeadgearStandard, and I’m still working off your list in the comments to that post.

HM3: Cat tail added

I couldn’t find the comment asking for a plain untufted cat tail in BackplaneTail, but it’s in now.

HM3: Enter the Haberdasher

I’m going to start working on Headgear today, so let me know any specific requests you have in the comments. If you’ve made suggestions about Headgear items before in other posts, please re-submit them here if you don’t mind; it’s hard to go back through the old stuff and pick out onesie-twosie requests.

And yes, I’ll be including every current HeroMachine 2 Headgear item, so you can skip those.

HM3’s Headgear slot will include at least sets for Standard, Helmets, Masks, and Glasses. If you think of other big groups of headgear-related items that deserve to have their own set, let me know that too.

HM3: Tails, you win!

I’ve just updated the HeroMachine 3 Alpha with BackplaneTails, featuring twelve various rump-appendages, from fox tails to a really cool mechanical scorpion stinger. Hope you like them!

Also, I put up a modified MouthStandard set featuring the evil sideways tongue teeth ensemble, as well as a BackplaneStandard that includes squid tentacles.

HM3: Have Wings, Can Fly

I’ve just updated the HM3 Alpha with the BackplaneWings set. Enjoy! Holler in comments if there’s a wing of some sort you were hoping to see but don’t, or if you see a bug of some kind.

Also, I updated BackplaneStandard with the mechanical arm separated out into two pieces, so you can have one on the bottom layer and the other on the top, making it look seamless and yet overlapping the main character for a two-level effect with a little path running down the middle.

Cool HM3 characters

I wanted to make an open thread for people to post links to their HeroMachine 3 creations. Put yours up on the UGO Forums’ “Hero Archives” (or Flickr, Facebook, whatever) and put the link in the comments. I also wanted to put up a few from Imp, which I hope he doesn’t mind. But they were cool and each shows off a feature of HM3 that I suspect a lot of folks haven’t thought of.

(WARNING: Large images below, folks with slower internet connections take heed!)

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