HM3: Standard Female load working

With sincere apologies for taking so long on what was, at the end of a day, a very easy fix, I have updated HeroMachine 3 so that when you pick the "Standard Female Load" option on the start screen, you actually get a female and not a glowering male warrior. What you now get is this:

new-female-standard

Note that while the Standard Male appears in black and white and nude, the female has color and items. That's because a lot of the female items don't go in the right place or aren't positioned properly to fit on the standard female body. In order for the rotation, scaling, and positioning to hold, I have to have an item actually present on the canvas. That way when you change it to one you actually prefer, it's in the right spot. Also too, colors are nice.

All of this is temporary (for certain very long values of "temporary", as history has shown to my embarrassment) until I get all the items converted, duped, and/or recreated so they're in the right spot by default. As time has gone on I've realized I will have to abandon my original plan of loading up standard items that are rotated on the fly to be right, and instead will have to just create whole new female sets where everything's in the proper place without fiddling with it.

Kaldath’s Caption Contest #3

Your challenge this week is to give me your most witty, and or funny replacement dialog for the following image.

funny-comics-12

 

 

Contest closes at 12 Noon EDT ( GMT-4) Tuesday May 28th. Limit of Three (3) entries per person. Please keep it clean!

Anime Talk: Western Bastardization

Robotech_wallpapers_3

 

This weeks Anime Talk I want to discus the Western Habit of taking an Anime series and then severely altering  it but editing out scenes, and or completely changing  the dialog so that the series is no longer anywhere near what the original source material was. One of the biggest offers of this is series known as Robotech. What we know as Robotech was originally three separate and unrelated anime series Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, Super Dimensional Calvary Southern Cross, and  Genesis Climber Mospeada. These three Anime were bought buy the company that made Robotech and were nearly completely rewritten and meshed together. 

 

There are many other examples of this happening also,  The Original Voltron ( Originally named Beast King GoLion in Japan ) was another series that was heavily rewritten for the original, and The Anime Sailor Moon was edited to turn it from a Teenager and Young Adult show  into a kiddie show on Western tv.  I an an anime fan find this to be a bad thing and the only reason I can think of for it to be happening is that I think that the predominate point of view in western culture  is the cartoons are for kids, that adults wouldn't want to watch them and so they must be edited and changed to remove any of the adult themes and stories. What do you all think about the Bastardization of Anime for the western Market ? Do you think it is a good thing, a Bad Thing, or does it just not matter to you ?

Just For Laughs

Superhero Name

Dare Devil truly trying to earn his title “The Man Without Fear” ?

Poll Position: SuperHero Archetypes

 

This weeks poll position asks you which of the following SuperHero Archetype is your favorite?

 

The Brick: Characters whose primary power set is based on strength and endurance. Examples of a Brick character would be; The Hulk, Superman, and The Thing.

The Blaster: Characters whose primary power set is based on some form of long ranged energy blasts. Examples of a Blaster character would be; Cyclops, Havoc, and Wildfire.

The Gymnast: Characters whose primary power set is based on Agility and flexibility. Examples of The Gymnast character would be; Spiderman, Dare Devil, and Nightcrawler.

The Speedster: Characters whose primary power set is based on superhuman speed. Examples of The Speedster character would be; The Flash, Quicksilver and Max Mercury.

The Psionicist: Heroes whose primary power set is based on Psychic powers. Examples of the Psionicist character would be; Jean Grey, Professor X, and Emma Frost.

The Andriod/Robot: Characters who are in reality A Robot or Android. Examples of the Android/Robot characters would be; Vision, Red Tornado, The Original Human Torch.

The Gadgeteer: Characters who rely primarily on Machines, Weapons, and or Gadgets. Examples of the Gadgeteer character would be; Batman, Ironman, and Green Arrow.

The Transformative: Characters whose primary power set is based on changing his or her physical form in some manner. Examples of the Transformative character would be; The Wasp, Mystique, and Sandman

The Mystical: Characters whose primary power set are Magical in nature. Examples of The Mystical character would be; Doctor Fate, Raven, and Dr Strange.

Other: I am leaving the poll open for you to add your own Archetype to include any I may not have thought of .

[polldaddy poll="7117388"]

I would have to say that my favorite would have to be the Mystical character, I am a Huge fan of Doctor Fate and also as a fan of Fantasy novels have always had an attraction to Magic. So what is your favorite ? Take a moment to vote and leave a message in the comments below to let us know!

Character Contest #23 “Greek God Hero” – Winner

The Winner of Character Contest 23, the last Poll by HammerKnight before JR took over is:

 

Corona by Vampyrist

Character Design Contest 24- Inhuman

Ok, for this weeks character design contest I want you guys to design something monstrous, something primal, something completely inhuman. No elves, dwarves, vampires (unless in bat form), angels or anything classed as a fantasy being or race. Trolls, ogres, demons and werewolves all count as long as they are as beast like as possible, but I want you to be as imaginative as possible, so feel free to make up your own creatures. No limit on entries, so go wild.

As with Hammerknights contests; 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.

Doctor Who Review

As this season of Doctor Who has now finished, I thought I might as well run down what I thought of the series and then you guys can have your say. Beware, there may be some slight spoilers, so unless you are River Song, or you don't mind getting slight hints, don't read.

I'd like to start off by saying I'm not a fan of the new format of splitting the series in two. Less episodes means less tension build up over the series. I miss trying to spot the little clues that they used to scatter around to hint at the final episode. And it means we seem to have lost the two parters, which are often the best episodes of the series (Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances, Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit, Silence In The Library/ Forests Of The Dead, Time Of Angels/ Flesh and Stone; to name but a few). The stories seem to be a bit too condensed this series (i.e. from The Dalek Asylum onwards), but it has been especially noticeable in this half.

However, having said all that, I have quite enjoyed this half of the season. Journey To The Centre Of The Tardis was a very good episode, even if the ending was a bit meh, I loved all of the references to Old Who that they put in there and it was nice to see a bit more of the Tardis interior other than the control room. Hide and The Crimson Horror where probably my favourite episodes, Hide was nicely scary at some points and Diana Rigg was brilliantly nutty in The Crimson Horror. It was good to see them bring back some of the old foes, which was what really excited me about this season, and they didn't let me down. The Ice Warrior episode was as good as should be expected from Mark Gatiss, a man who certainly knows his Who, and I love the retro redesign they've given the Cybermen. I'm also glad they brought back the Great Intelligence as the big bad guy, shame they couldn't have given him some yeti, but evil snowmen and the Whisper Men will have to do. On the subject of the Whisper Men, with all of that stuff at the start of the final episode, the rhyme about them and all that, I was expecting them to be more intimidating, have more substance, but instead a good metaphor for their impact would be when Strax tries to kill one and it just goes straight through it, they were a nothing villain. However, I'm not saying that the final episode was bad in any way, it was an excellent finale for the season in my opinion, I had a veritable Whogasm at the end. It leads on to the 50th anniversary episode very nicely, they explained Clara's role in a way that was very satisfying and didn't give her some massive cosmic meaning like Rose, Donna or Wilf and thankfully it didn't try to answer the big question that they had almost been threatening to answer.

However, this does lead me onto the weak links, the first two episodes of the half. The Bells Of Saint John started out good but as soon as you thought you knew what was going on it jumped to another place and left the whole episode feeling quite empty. However, it was miles better than The Rings Of Akhaten. Now, great old Who reference at the start aside, this was possibly the worst episode since the Absorbalov waddled onto our screens. Unthreatening bad guy overload. The weird masked guys could have worked out quite well as the villain, or even the henchmen to the mummified alarm clock thing, but no, we have to have another sentient sun, lots of meaningless babble and the corniest mass sing-along this side of Disney. This episode could easily have made way for any one of the other episodes to be stretched into a two parter, or it could have just been chucked completely and another episode could have been filmed instead. It's such a shame that the only alien planet episode of this series had to be the worst.

Anyway, that's my opinion, now lets hear yours.

Open Critique Day #7 / Art vs. Writing

Hi, there!
I'm Weilyn, and I'll be posting here on Sundays for the Open Critique Days.

Some people might say that the major appeal of OCD was Jeff's professional input, and that without his critique it's simply not the same thing. I can't argue with that, mainly because those people are absolutely correct.

Still, OCD is a pretty integral part of the blog, so I will keep it running, and to make it a little more interesting I will not only offer my opinion of any artwork posted in the comments, but also a little something extra.

This little extra thing will vary from week to week. It might be a short review of an underappreciated comic, a reflection on pop-culture, a poll, a joke or a silly anecdote. Just throwing this concept at the wall, to see if it sticks 😉

Please post your artwork in the comments section below. Avoid copyrighted characters and characters from copyrighted settings.

 

And now, a little something extra: Art vs. Writing

What is more important to a comic, the script or the artwork? Can a good comic have its terrible artwork redeemed by great writing, and vice versa? One might argue that seeing as how graphic novels are a visual medium, the visual elements are what define the entire thing, and that those are therefore more important. But one could just as easily make the argument that a story is worthless without a solid script, no matter how pretty the pictures are.

Personally, if I had to choose (and I do, because I asked the question in the first place) I'd go with artwork on this one. I've never been able to get through Maus, for instance. I know the story is amazing, but since I can't find anything engaging about the artwork, I find myself wishing I was just reading a novel instead.

What do you think?