The Big Question ♯24

Last week we covered why Wolverine is so popular, now it's Spidey's turn. And that puts me in a bit of a corner, because I can't actually write a counter argument against him. I've been trying all week to come up with good arguments as to why Pete shouldn't be as popular as he is. The only decent one I could think of was the rubbish things Marvel have done with him on occasion (The Clone Saga, Civil War & Superior Spider-Man for example), but these are occasional lapses. Ok, they've all been terrible, but that's because Marvel have been heavily misguided in their approach during these periods. So what I'm going to do instead is say why I think Spiderman is one of the best superheroes. If you intend to comment on why you think Spiderman is so popular, can you skip the next bit, write your comment and then read, I want to hear peoples honest opinions without them being influenced by what I say.

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Thrusting Swords

That title sounds like a romance novel, doesn't it? Oh my.

Regardless, what it actually means is that I have published the following items to ItemRight-Blades. The intent is that you can combine the angled hilts with the angled blades to create the effect of a sword coming more towards the viewer rather than being held parallel to the plane of the canvas.

forwardswords

Open Critique Day

Back by popular demand. You know the drill, you post a piece of heromachine work (either finished or W.I.P) that you want an opinion on and myself and others will give our opinions and advice.

So, show us what you've got.

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.

Robot Hand

Per request from AMS, a new relaxed robot hand is now live in HandRight-Standard:

newrobothand

It's basically one of the items from Gloves with the glove part removed. Thanks to dblade for the original hand pose.

Whiz Bang Item Creation Week 3 Poll Results!

And the winner is...

Ent Foot

entfeet

Rhino Foot and Abomination Foot just couldn't keep pace with the Ent Foot.

I've already got the Ent Foot going...

http://www.heromachine.com/wp-content/legacy/forum-image-uploads/dblade/2014/01/Foot_Ent_SHOW.jpg

and I've started working on the Abomination (Special Five-Toed Edition) Foot...

http://www.heromachine.com/wp-content/legacy/forum-image-uploads/dblade/2014/01/Foot_Abomination_SHOW2.jpg

Now let's see if I can pull off a hat trick and finish the Rhino Foot.

How to use the Mask feature in HeroMachine3

Masking is the process of placing one item inside another, so that the masked item is only visible where it overlaps the masking item. Masking causes a lot of confusion, so let's look at a few examples at what this subtle and powerful tool can do.

The basic process works like this:

  1. Load the first item, the one you want to be 100% visible. For instance, you might add a nice button-down shirt.
    masking-1
    masking-shirt
  2. Load the second item, the one you want to be masked into the first one such that only the parts of it that overlap are visible. For instance, you might add a lightning bolt from Insignia-Standard. Position, scale, rotate, and otherwise place the second item where you want it to appear on the first one.
    masking-2
  3. Click on the second item (in our example, the lightning bolt insignia) to make it the current, active item.
  4. Under the Transform tab, click the Mask button. Your cursor turns into a little mask icon because super-heroes. I blame Robin -- be glad it's not scaled hot-pants.
    masking-masktool
  5. Click on the original item (in our example, the shirt). You're telling the program "Hey, I want to place the active item into this other item that I'm clicking on."
    masking-clicking
  6. Voila! You have masked one item onto another one. Like this:
    masking-masked
    Note that once it's masked, you can drag, rotate, or otherwise transform the masked item (the lightning bolt) around and it stays masked, only being visible where it overlaps the masking item (the shirt):
    masking-masked2

Using this same basic approach -- load the base item, load the second item, click mask, click the base item -- you can place items in your character's hands, apply a flag from Backgrounds to a banner or shirt, make a belt fit a non-Standard body, and much, much more. It opens up a staggering array of possibilities to take your portrait from a paper doll to a true illustration.

Side Hands

We already have one sort of similar item, but I just uploaded the following additions to HandRight-Standard:

sidehands

They can be used either for just hanging down empty for a slightly different posed look, or to imitate holding another item at something less than a straight-out-to-the-side angle.

Coming soon: swords that come out at an angle towards the viewer.

Creators Club 2014

Hey guys, JR here. I don't know if you guys remember but last year and in 2011 (don't know what happened to 2012) Hammerknight and Atomic Punk did Heromachine Creators Club posters, which you can check out here- http://www.heromachine.com/2011/06/02/2011-heromachine-creators-club-wanted-poster/ (2011) and here- http://www.heromachine.com/2013/05/02/creators-club-poster-2013/ (2013). Now, it would be nice if this became an annual thing, so I'm going to be doing it this year.

Now, the theme for this year is MiB ('Machiners in Black). Now Marx has recently provided everyone with a fine selection of suits, so there can be no excuses for sloppy dressing. Just make a self portrait (either realistic or idealised, it doesn't matter) of yourself in a black suit (sunglasses and other accessories optional) or a black dress if you're female and don't want to be wearing a suit. You don't have to do anything fancy, basic forward facing pose without any zypping will do fine, but I must insist on no backgrounds. When you are finished email your entry to me as a PNG transparent file WITH A TEXT FILE (preferably as a word document, don't paste the text into the email) so I can resize characters for consistency. Send your entries to me at jr19759@hotmail.co.uk. Please make sure you title the email something applicable like Creators Club or Machiners In Black, because if I get a (No Subject) email from an email address I don't recognise, it's going straight into my spam folder and you won't get to be on the poster.

Only one entry per person and please try to limit the number of revisions you do, because it's more than likely I'll just use the first one you send me. Please name your file as [your name]-[character name].[file extension] before you e-mail it. So DiCicatriz, for instance, would save his “Bayou Belle” character image as DiCicatriz-BayouBelle.png. He would save the Text as DiCicatriz-BayouBelle.txt.

I will be accepting submissions from today through to Feb 5th and I'll reveal the final poster sometime in February. This event is open to everyone in the community, you don't have to be especially prolific or be a power user or anything, just being a part of the heromachine community is enough.

And finally, remember this is not a contest, it's just a bit of fun to showcase the community and its members, so have fun with it.

Kaldath's Caption Contest #18 – WInner

Last Week I asked you to give me your best replacement dialog for this picture:

scary34

 

And here is my top five:

HammerKnight

”Holly crap, did I really get that drunk last night.”

One should never drink so much on New Years, you might wake up wondering what you did with the Goblin at the party.

**********

Wayne

“Oh PLEASE let this new guy be less weird than my LAST blind date.”

He was.

**********

Herr D

“I’ll be stuck here, FOREVER!” She knew no one would ever break her out of the tower, to be her Sir Shrek, and fix her hideous enchantment . . .

**********

Stevedore

“Oh, God, here we go again. Didn’t he take the hint from my last text?!”
- Desperate for a date, the Green Goblin swoops down with yet another chocolate-filled pumpkin for a disinterested Gwen.

**********

Stevedore

“Green scaly purple man… green scaly purple man…”
– Despite her best hand gestures, Ms. Stacy could not achieve a Vulcan mind meld!

And the Winner is ......................

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RedditMachine!

On a whim, I added this little fellow to Companion-Humanoids just now:

redditalien

Dress him up and post a link to your creation in this thread! I'll pick my favorite and that person will get a free custom illustration from yours truly of one of your characters.

Why? Why not! I love Reddit and thought this might be fun. I may even post these there in an appropriate sub if I can find one.

Enjoy!