Character Of The Week- 27th July

Once again on Character Of The Week, I'm going to feature an image rather than a character (still Character Of The Week sounds better than Image Of The Week). This week we'll look at this image by the brilliant Moognation.

Now, whilst it might be taken almost directly from a series of images that did their rounds on the internet about a year ago, I felt I had to feature it because it's just so awesome. The feeling behind it is tangible, if you haven't ran around with some sort of towel or sheet wrapped around your neck like a cape I think you might be on the wrong site. This picture captures that childhood fantasy perfectly. The pose is right on the money and the proportions are near perfect (which is hard when doing children on heromachine). How Moog did the grass is very inventive, using the bunch of flowers in ItemsRight- Misc, it works very well in silhouette as representing the wild grass on the side of a hill.

The most striking part of this image is the colours. The fact that the majority of the picture is either in greyscale or silhouette makes the yellow, orange and purple of the sunrise stand out even further. And the inclusion of those three colours provides the picture with a feeling of warmth even though the picture is mostly dark and dull greys and black.

Finally, something I wouldn't usually highlight, the title. It sounds somewhat familiar but I can't quite place my finger on what. Either way it fits the picture perfectly, which is hard when titling non-character based pictures, and I can just imagine myself saying that when I used to play superheroes as a kid.

Overall, one of the best silhouettes I've ever seen in heromachine and, Moog, I hope you do more than just the two you've done so far, they are excellent.

Caption Contest #6 Results

For this weeks caption contest, I asked you to come up with some replacement dialogue for this panel.

After much deliberation, I've narrowed it down to the following.

Vampyrist- Day 10: They have not noticed I am not one of them yet.

Skybandit- As the High Council commands!

Tool- You guys have any chimichangas?

William A. Peterson- “Now, you’re probably wondering why I’ve called you together…”

Madjack- So YOU are those voices in my head? That explains a lot!

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When in doubt, kill everyone.

Power User Profiles: Trekkie

Some people have a certain style when using Heromachine that sets them apart from others, and todays Power User is one such person. Creator of the finest sci-fi armours and robot dinosaurs on the forums and only the second power user to have a name directly taken from a certain legendary tv/ movie series, ladies, gentlemen and alien lifeforms I give you Trekkie.

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Character Design Contest ♯33- Fly Me To The Moon

As Saturday was the 44th anniversary of the first moon landing, I thought that this weeks contest should be a celebration of that. So, what I want you to do is create the greatest space hero you can. I'm not looking for aliens here, I'm looking for human heroes. Think Green Lantern or Nova. You can go down the spacesuit route if you want or do explorers in their spaceship, what ever you want, just make it awesome.

Please make sure you have read the rules before entering. As usual, no limit on entries, so 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.

Screen Spotlight: The Justice League Movie- How Would It Work?

Considering some of the announcements that have been made in the last day or so, I think that now would be a good time to have a look at what DC need to do if they want to ever get their biggest and best team onto the screen.

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Character Design Contest ♯32 Poll

[polldaddy poll="7265224"]

Character Design Contest ♯31 Winner

The results of this weeks poll were close guys, only one vote in it. But, of course, it doesn't matter in the end how close it was because, as they say in Highlander- There can be only one! And this week that one is Anarchangel for Rhapsody.

 

Character Of The Week- 20th July

For this week's character of the week we'll take a look at Torog's Brain-Bot-3.0.

The thing that attracted me to this is the attention to detail used when constructing the subject. This is especially prevalent around the centre of the picture, the rocket mechanism made from the glove and shoulder items. The masking here really works, sometimes masking to join two items together can leave a mismatched line along the join, but here there doesn't appear to be one.

Also, the design is very well thought out, it looks like it could conceivably be used in either a comic or a sci-fi movie. The item choices work well together and nothing seems out of place. There is also a menacing quality to the machine, having no face (the essential part of the anatomy for human interaction, without it there is no emotion, something which is inherently unnerving to us) as well as the large, fearsome looking claws, which, coupled with the non-humanoid body structure, suggests something alien and antagonistic.

The final thing I like about this piece is how it is finished. The colour choices for the body  help the menacing aura, being dark and dingy. This is nicely juxtaposed against the bright and brilliant flame from the booster, although this may have been enhanced if there was some sort of reflective glow on the adjacent bodywork. Finally, the shading is very effective, especially on the claws and head. There are still some bits that could have been shaded where they aren't, but there is a very good contrast between light and dark, especially as the dark seems to be more prevalent on the main body whilst the light is more noticeable on the extremities, such as the head, booster and claws.

Caption Contest #6

This week, I want you to come up with the best bit of replacement dialogue for this picture

Caption Contest

 

Remember, keep it clean. You have until next Wednesday.