Category Archives: Open threads

Creators Club 2016

Hi guys, JR here with the formal announcement of this years Creators Club Poster.

This years poster is being done by Stulte and the theme is Magic. So what you guys need to do is create a self portrait of yourself, either realistic or idealised, as some form of Fantasy based magic user, be it Witch, Wizard, Mage or other. You can show magic use if you wish and use poses other than the standard base pose, however we must insist on a few things. 1. The character must be forward facing, 2. Faces must be visible, so no masks or face coverings please, and 3. No backgrounds. Shading is optional, so you don't have to shade if you don't want to. And obviously all entries must be full-body pictures.

Of course, as with all previous CCP's, for your entry to be acceptable you must complete the following criteria. If you don’t then you don’t get on the poster.

1. Your entry must be in .png format. You must title it in standard contest entry style i.e. Username- Creators Club Poster (for example I would title mine JR19759- Creators Club Poster). Don’t screenshot the picture and send that in, export it as a .png please.

2. You MUST include the text for your entry. Mandatory. This is incase Stulte needs to re-export any of the files in a bigger or smaller format. You can include it as an attachment in the email or just paste it into the email, but you have to have the text accessible.

3. Your email has to be titled something applicable to the Creators Club, so its easy to recognise as not-spam.

4. You only have one entry, so make sure you’re happy with it before you send it in. It doesn’t have to be the worlds best creation, this is only for fun after all, but we don’t want endless revisions.

After you've done that, send your entry to Stulte at creatorsclub2016@gmail.com . Submissions will be open until Feb 1st as of today, so you've got a whole month to do your entries, just don't leave it to the last minute and not give yourself enough time. This is open to everyone, so you don't have to be especially prolific or a Power User or anything, just a part of the community. And remember, this isn't a challenge or anything, so just have fun with it.

If you have any questions, just leave them in the comments and Stulte and myself will try to answer them as best we can. If Stulte has anything else to add, I'm sure he'll do so in the comments as well. But with that, I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.

JR out.

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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.

Creators Club 2015

Hey guys JR here, bringing you the formal announcement of this years Creators Club poster, something which we are trying to get to be an annual thing.

This years poster will be done by MadJack who came up with the idea of doing a Days Of Future Past cover themed poster. Since we haven't done a superhero themed poster, I thought this would be a good theme (especially considering a certain film that came out last year). So, the idea is this; you guys have to create a self-portrait, either realistic or idealised, of yourself as a superhero. You can show powers and have poses other than the standard straight-on pose if you wish (zypping is also optional), but we must insist on two things. 1: Your character's face must be forward facing and 2: No Masks, we want to see all of your wonderful faces. Also, no backgrounds, MadJack will deal with all of that stuff when he puts the poster together.

For your entry to be acceptable you must complete the following criteria. If you don't then you don't get on the poster.

1. Your entry must be in .png format. You must title it in standard contest entry style i.e. Username- Creators Club Poster (for example I would title mine JR19759- Creators Club Poster). Don't screenshot the picture and send that in, export it as a .png please.

2. You MUST include the text for your entry. Mandatory. This is incase MadJack needs to re-export any of the files in a bigger or smaller format. You can include it as an attachment in the email or just paste it into the email, but you have to have the text accessible.

3. Your email has to be titled something applicable to the Creators Club, so its easy to recognise as not-spam.

4. You only have one entry, so make sure you're happy with it before you send it in. It doesn't have to be the worlds best creation, this is only for fun after all, but we don't want endless revisions.

Once you've met all of those criteria, send your entries to MadJack at madjack@starnberg-mail.de. Submissions will be open from today until February 10th 2015. This is open to everyone in the community, you don't have to be especially prolific or a Power User or anything, you just have to be a part of the Heromachine community. And remember, this isn't a challenge, so just have fun with it.

If MadJack wants to add anything, then I'm sure he'll do so in the comments, but other than that. JR out.

No Community Submissions

I'm being literal here. I got two people submit stuff in week one, and since then nothing. Ok, Skybandit did send in a number of his Movie reviews, but the idea here was not just to showcase one community members work (as good as they are), because otherwise we'd have just given Skybandit a blog spot. So what I will do is, first off say thanks to Skybandit and Herr D for participating, I really appreciate you helping out, and second, declare the submissions open again (here's the link for rules and stuff if you're interested: Link). However, as I'm not expecting anything neither should you guys. If I do get sent something (because I know that some people have expressed interest but haven't been able to put something together yet) I will feature it, but this is not going to be a weekly post anymore. I have sorted out something to fill tomorrows slot on the blog which I'm sure people will like, but unfortunately this looks like the end for Community Submissions, which is a shame.

And that brings me on to my next point, which I will try to be fair and civil about (something which I spectacularly failed to do in one of my DeviantART journals last week). The reason I started the Community Submissions was because people were complaining that there wasn't enough content on the Blog anymore, so I thought "hey, why don't we let people decide what the want to feature on the blog by letting them submit it themselves". And when I suggested the idea it was met with great enthusiasm. So for it to only last two weeks is hugely disheartening. Last week I was quite prepared to just give up all of my blog posting duties, with exception of the CDC's, because of it, though I have changed my mind since then, but my reasoning for doing so still stands. I honestly don't know if half the stuff I do is well received or not. The first Community Submission got a few comments, but the one last week got none. The Random Panels get a few comments, but it is so hard to find ones that a) haven't been used before by Jeff or in one of the Caption Contests and b) that I can come up with something witty to comment on in just a short title. And as for the Doctor Who reviews. Yes I know not everybody watches the show, but that is the only thing I do on the blog that I actually brought to the blog because I genuinely wanted to do it and I know there are more people on this site that watch the show that don't comment. Even though we don't often see eye to eye, Malfars comments on my reviews are usually the highlight of my week in terms of the blog, because it's the only proper interaction and discussion that any of the blog posts provide anymore. That's what I wanted the Community Submissions to be, a chance for the community to get together and discuss our individual interests. But instead what I got was a stunning and definitive yes followed by a stunning and even more definitive un-caring shrug. Thanks guys. What do you want me to do? And this is an honest question directed at you guys, all of you. You want more content. Well we have a new moderator in Linea24, who is hopefully going be bringing something to the blog at some point. And now I just want to know what you want me to do. Because obviously nothing I've been coming up with recently is clicking with you guys. Make your suggestions in the comments and I'll put together a poll in a few days time and you can all vote on what you want to see brought to the blog, provided the ideas are feasible obviously.

Anyway, to sum up (incase people just want to skip all the content to this post and just want the important points): There isn't going to be a Community Submissions post tomorrow, but people can still submit stuff if they wish. Leave suggestions for new Blog topics in the comments below.

Anyway, see you all tomorrow for my special Community Submission substitute. And sorry for being a grouch during this post. It doesn't feel good, but hopefully it gets the point across.

JR out.

New Blog Posts?

Hey guys, JR here and I have a question to ask y'all.

When I posted the most recent Character Of The Week, I posited the idea of bringing it back as a weekly blog post, rather than a sporadic thing posted when I feel like it, and the response has been pretty affirmative. So, I think COTW will now take up a place on the blog each Friday. However, one of the things that a number of people have said is that they'd like to see more topical posts on the blog, like there were last summer. My question is, is this a feeling that is shared by the majority?

Now I'm certainly willing to do more stuff, I have a bit of free time at the moment, and Kaldath has said that he'd be willing to do more than just the Caption Contest, but the thing is, we're not exactly sure what to do. I had a load of topics going last summer, but apart from the Big Question, there wasn't much response to many of them and even the interest in the Big Question waned after a while (although I stopped it because I had ran out of topics I wanted to discuss/ felt it was worth discussing). The same goes for the topics Kaldath used to run, such as the Anime Talks, Poll Position or the redesign contests. The problem here is, we can't tell how popular a topic/ blog series is. There isn't a view counter/ page visit counter that we can just look at, so we can't tell how many times a certain post has been viewed and the only way we can gauge a response is through comments left and, if we're being honest, the only posts that ever get above 10 comments are the Character Design Contests, which won't be going anywhere anyway. If we were to bring back old topics or start up new ones, it would need to be a two way street. We can't keep giving you content if there's no response to it, it just feels like "why are we even bothering if no-one's looking at it". You get where I'm coming from?

Then we have the problem of what topics do you want. I will admit I messed up the last weekly blog post I tried to get started, the Sharing Day Video Posts. Problem there was at the time I was finishing off uni, so I didn't have all that much time to do them in and when I did get time, something would always prevent me doing them properly, so one week I ended up not posting it and then I just fell off the ball and it went away. I could bring that back if people are interested, because I seem to remember there was a bit of interest in that. As for other stuff, you guys will have to tell us what you want. We can bring back some old topics (Big Question, What Were They Thinking, Sci-Fi Corner, Anime Talk etc.) or we could do something new, which you can give out some ideas. We could even change up a few of the old topics, for example maybe instead of Sci-Fi Corner there could be a Fantasy based blog series, discussing fantasy tropes and topics (though Kaldath would probably have to do this one, I think he's a bit more up on fantasy than I am). The one thing I'm not open to bringing back as a weekly series is the Power User Profiles. I originally only intended to do a limited 5 profile series, but my inner-fanboy got a hold and I ended up adding 15 or so names to the list of PUP's, so I think it's best we leave that alone for the moment. I'm not saying it's gone for good, but at the moment I can't think of anyone who I really want to profile and I don't want to force it. Besides, with the forums down I don't have an easy way of contacting people and asking if they would like to do a profile. And finally, and this really is hypothetical and I'm going to completely blindside Jeff and Kaldath with this one, really this will be their call if it were to happen, but I quite like the idea of community submissions. Now, a couple of months back, Herr D sent me over a review of some of the foreign language versions of Let It Go from Disney's Frozen and, after sending it over to Kaldath, we featured it on the blog. I really like the idea of having community members being featured on the blog, it makes the whole thing more interactive. Of course, we'd have to figure out a way to do this, the stuff featured would have to be topics related to stuff the site deals with (comics, sci-fi, fantasy etc.) and each week one submission would be chosen by the moderators to be featured, rather than just giving everyone permission to post on the blog, because that would be anarchy. This is of course, completely hypothetical at the moment, and if the forums weren't down I'd have run the idea by Kaldath first, so don't get your hopes up, it might not happen.

Anyway, sorry for the long rambling post. Let us know what you think about the whole blog post situations, if you would like to see more weekly posts and if so, what?

Weilyn – HeroMachine remembers one of its BEST!!

Today I write to honor the passing  of a member of the HeroMachine Moderation staff, Weilyn. I was saddened today to learn of her passing by a close friend of hers, our very own Stulte who created the image above in memorial to her! When HammerKnight due to health reasons had to step down as moderator for a time leaving the running of this place solely on my shoulders Weilyn was the first person I reached out to and invited to join the Moderation Team here at HeroMachine because I saw how helpful and friendly she was and KNEW she would be a wonderful moderator.

I remember how honored and excited she was to be a moderator and how eager she was to be able to give back to our community and help you all with all things HeroMachine! We private messages back and forth for several days as she grilled me on the things she needed to know to be an effective moderator and on how to posts to the blog and together with Her, Jr, and djuby I felt we had one of the finest group of Mods anywhere on the net!

I don't know any details of her passing but what I can say is the Weilyn will be missed dearly by many here on this site, and to her friends and family that many be reading this you have my most heart felt condolences! Rest In Peace My Friend!

( Below after the Jump you will find a few of Weilyn's HeroMachine Creations that I have selected as well as a Link to her Gallery on the forum )

EDIT: Added more of Weilyn's art below as suggested by Jr. 

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Open Thread

Open thread today, talk about anything you want to.

Open Thread #H1

I am having a open thread day for today. Due to some health problems I am going to have to cut the contest and challenges down to one per week. I really hate to do this. The last few Share Days have done really good, so I am thinking about posting more of them during the week. Isia and I can set the topics up to post during the week. I want to use today for everyone to give me ideas for topics. I want to have the topic to play hand in hand with Hero Machine. This way people can design characters for the topics and share them. A good example would be yesterday's Share Day Topic about fantasy races, you could post what you believe they should look like. So let's hear your ideas.

Open Thread: Anything Is Possible!

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HammerKnight was unable to do his usually Open Critique post today and since I am not very good at doing so myself I have decided to post an open thread instead. Leave an image for others in the community to critique if you wish, or discuss anything of interest to you in this thread. The possibilities are endless so long as you adhere to the rules of the site. Happy Posting!!!

Vacation Open Thread 7

This is your daily open thread, talk about whatever you like, of course keeping it clean and friendly.