Community Submissions

Ok guys, so, me and Kaldath have decide we'll give the whole community submissions idea a shot. The idea here is, you write an article, send it in and we might feature it on the blog.

Now of course, there are rules. The article has to be something broadly applicable to the site. This basically means we're looking for articles that will cover either arts type subjects (whether it be directly Heromachine or other arts areas, such as Cartoons, Film, Music (if you so wish) and obviously both digital and traditional art) or just generally "Geeky" subjects, such as Comics, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Games (both traditional Board Games or Video Games), that sort of thing. We won't be posting anything that include discussions on Politics, Religion or anything Illegal (such as Drugs, Hacking or Music/ Video/ Software Piracy).  We don't mind exactly what style of article you do. It can be a review, a discussion (provided obviously it complies with the rule on banned topics), a How-To guide or just a plain write-up. Just make sure its something you're passionate about that you're covering, because it shows and that's what makes a good article.

Finally, I'm sure you're all thinking "yeah, that's all well and good, but how do I submit my article for it to get posted?" Well, I'll be handling the submissions so you have to send them to me at jr19759@hotmail.co.uk. The way this is going to work is, the Community Submissions will take the Thursday slot on the Blog, so a new article will be posted every Thursday (provided we get people submitting). Submissions will be open from Thursday, after that days post has gone up, until Midday Wednesday, after which I will look through that weeks submissions, pull my favourite and that will be the weeks post. If your article doesn't get chosen, don't worry. I will probably hold some back incase we have a week where there aren't any submissions or you could just try again the next week, if you feel so inclined. When you send your article please make sure you mark the subject as HM Community Submission and include your username as well, so I know who it is from and what it is, because if I get a random email from an address I don't recognise, it's going straight in my spam folder and won't get seen. Also make sure that your submission is attached to the email as a Word file rather than anything else, because most computers run Word and it just makes it easier.

I think that's everything. If Kaldath has anything to add I'm sure he'll say so in the comments, but for now, consider the first week of submissions open. I look forward to seeing what you've got and hopefully we get enough submissions to warrant me doing all of this.

Kaldath's Caption Contest #44

Once more into the breach we go my friends! It's "Caption Contest" time once more and as usually I turn to you fellow machiners to come up with your craziest, wittiest, and down right funniest dialogue for the following image!!

SM and DP

 

The normal rules apply, which are: You are limited to Three (3) entries which are due by 11:59 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday September 30th.  Of course I as always expect you to keep your entries no worse then PG-13 in nature and that you follow all the normal rules of the forum when writing your caption for the above image. That being said I wish you all Good luck!

Kaldath’s Caption Contest # 43 – Results

Last week I asked you all to give me you funniest dialogue for this image:

Clark Kent face

 

After reviewing the entries these are my top five from those submitted:

 

ams
Superboy: What the heck is wrong with this chick…?

Phantom Girl: THE FORUMS ARE DOWN! THE FORUMS ARE DOWN!

Skybandit
SB: (This artist sucks!)

PG: My EYES are HUGE and my NOSE is GONE!

Herr D
SB: What’s she obsessing about NOW?

PG: MY SHOES DON’T MATCH MY PURSE!

Sabrina
SB: Is she okay?

PG: I’ve seen the future of our universe! 52 WHY!?!

 

Phatchick
PG- “Like OMG! That is sooo totally lame. Like gag me with a spoon!”

SB- “Which ’80s are we in again?”

**********

and our winner is ..........................

 

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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?

Whiz Bang Prize Update #2 (Backwards Bending Robot Leg)

UPDATE: Piece finished! Just need to do Color2. I updated the picture below.

Old: Here's an update on the leg. One more piece to go. I hope people don't mind me sharing the progress. Missing the forums at the moment. SAD FACE.

Leg_Mech_ExtremelyEpicFINAL

 

Character Design Contest ♯91- Seven Deadly Sins

Another throw back contest for y'all this week. Much like witht eh Western Zodiac contest we did a few weeks ago, Jeff ran a couple of contests based around the seven deadly sins (which btw one of which was my first ever contest entry 😉 ) so I think it'll be interesting to see how people take on this one and how people have improved if they were around to have entered first time around. In case anyone doesn't know what the Seven Deadly Sins consist of, they are Lust, Greed, Gluttony, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride. Now, the idea here is to represent one or more of these sins through a character or a scene. You can do more than one in one picture, but ti has to be obvious which sin you are trying to represent. Also, a word of warning, I know lust is on that list, that does not give free pass to be explicit. PG-13 please.

As per usual, no limits on entries this week and the contest will close at midnight Saturday (blog time). The winner gets to claim a custom made item from dblade to be put into heromachine, so long as the item conforms to his prize rules, which you can find here: http://www.heromachine.com/forum/the-heromachine-art-gallery/dblades-whiz-bang-item-dispenser/. 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.

Character Of The Week: Mudslide by Anarchangel

Ah, the lesser spotted COTW post, some what of an endangered species, mostly due to the fact I want it to be special when I do post it, so it's not weekly anymore. But anyway, just because the forums are down doesn't mean we're not getting awesome artwork to feature. For example, Anarchangel posted this to his deviantart page earlier.

Ok it hasn't got as much of a "Wow!" factor as the last few COTW's but I felt this deserved to be featured because its very inventive. You don't see many mud/ slime creatures in Heromachine form, mostly because they're very difficult to do, but AA managed to pull it off in a very impressive way, just by using the elasticated arm as a base and working from that. And I think we can agree that the final product works very well.

One final thing, would you guys like me to make this post weekly again once the forums are back up and running (whenever that may be). I have said why I'd like to keep it a occasional post, but if you guys want it weekly again I will oblige. There's plenty of great heromachine work out there deserving to be featured for me to make it weekly again.

Character Design Contest ♯90 (Insect Themed) Poll

[polldaddy poll="8321463"]

Character Design Contest ♯89 (Everyday Heroes) Winner

This weeks poll ended nice and close, only two votes between our top two, who had been trading places all week. But I guess homaging certain iconic images does pay off, because this weeks winner is BabyVroomVroom for their character Gust. Congrats BVV and well done to everyone else who entered.

89 BabyVroomVroom- Gust

JReviews: Doctor Who Series 8 Episode 5- Time Heist

New episode, new review time. Not much to say about this one.

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