Caption Contest 121 Winners!

Your last challenge was to come up with the best replacement caption for this comics panel:

The funniest suggestions in my opinion were:

  • alphaalpharomeo: And then Batman punched his way of a stomach!
  • BenK22: The first time Peter saw Claire in a bikini.
  • Mr.MikeK: The real Napoleon Dynamite discovered!
  • Kaito94: “And then God said: Let there be Michael Bay!”
  • Xavierking5: The alien probe proved to have… complications.
  • E350: …he launches into an EXTREME HUG.

As you can see, we had some gems. But for me it wasn't really close, as I almost BLOOFed myself when reading the entry of ... Bael!

I'm such a sucker for that movie.

Well done, Bael, let me know what you'd like for your prize!

SODWA Contest Closed

Many thanks to everyone who entered the Super Omega Deathbattle Warzone Apocalypse Contest! The deadline has now passed, so no more entries will be accepted. Both Woody and I were astounded by the quality and quantity of submissions; you all did me proud. Your creativity truly amazes me.

Woody asked me to pass along this statement:

Alright, guys, I just want to congratulate all of our participants for submitting some of the coolest character designs I’ve ever seen. You completely blew me away and did things with Hero Machine that I didn’t even know were possible! We had almost 400 submissions, and attempting to narrow it down to only 9 was one of the most painful things I’ve ever had to do. It’s important to remember that I had to not only look at how good each design was, but I had to choose the 9 designs that would work well together when put into the final promo piece. That meant that I had to leave out more than a few of my favorite submissions in favor of designs that better served the overall color scheme or better represented a specific category of character. The Honorable Mentions are all of my favorite designs that I was unable to include in the promo piece due to these technicalities, and I will attempt to show off as many of them as possible during our Kickstarter campaign.

Later today, Woody will start announcing the Honorable Mentions on the project's Facebook page, five per day, with the nine overall winners introduced there on Friday. So if you want to be the first to know the fate of the submissions, be sure to like the SODWA page on Facebook.

For those of you who do not have or do not want a Facebook account, I'll follow up each announcement with a post here at the end of the day.

Many thanks again to everyone who entered, and good luck!

Bruce Wayne was a piker compared to this guy

(From "Target Comics" number 11, 1940.)

Pop Quiz 8 Winners!

Many thanks to everyone who participated in Pop Quiz 8, from our first-timers (welcome!) to old friends returning after a long absence (hi Solander!).

Since everyone only gets one entry with these single-day affairs, I like to show them all. So without further ado, your entries!

Continue reading

Final Contest Deadline TODAY!

This is your last day to get your submissions for the Super Omega Deathbattle Warzone Apocalypse Contest! The winners will get their characters painted in full color in a promotional piece for this new awesome game by professional artist Livio Ramondelli of “Transformers: Autocracy” and “DC Universe Online” fame.

Again, a perfectly valid strategy here is to pick out the nine most outstanding characters you've ever designed with HeroMachine and send them in as your entry. You're not limited to new characters only, folks, so go with your best. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!

And as Woody the Judge says, you don't need crazy backgrounds or super amazing manipulations, all they are looking for is the character design itself.

Finally, remember to peruse the official rules before committing.

PS: If you sent yours in, you should have gotten an email back from me acknowledging their receipt. If you didn't get that reply but you sent yours in, please email me (afdstudios@gmail.com) ASAP.

Pop Quiz: Headgear

Get ready for your pop quiz, kids! Your one-day quick-fire challenge is:

Make an awesome headgear piece in HM3!

Whether it be Viking inspired horned battle helms or modern European flower hats or futuristic space goggles, be creative, mix several different pieces together, and come up with something neat and original.

You only get one entry -- that's right, just one! So make it your best.

Most of the other rules are the same as for a regular contest, but instead of a whole week I'll announce the winner either tonight or first thing in the morning.

  • All entries must be in JPG or PNG form (BMPs are too big), posted to a publicly accessible website (like ImageShack, PhotoBucket, the UGO Forums, whatever);
  • Entries must be made as a comment or comments to this post, containing a link directly to the image and the character name;
  • Please name your files as [your name]-[character name].[file extension]. So DiCicatriz, for instance, would save his "Bayou Belle" character image as DiCicatriz-BayouBelle.png.
  • Please make the link go directly to the image (like this) and not to a hosting jump page (like this). If you see "preview" or "rotate" somewhere in the link you're probably doing it wrong.

The winner will receive their choice of either one item or one portrait to be included in the final HeroMachine 3 release, or one Sketch of the Day style drawing where you pick the subject and I draw it how I like.

Good luck!

(Image via.)

Insert "seaman" joke here

(From "Target Comics" number 11, 1940. Can I just say what a gold mine Target Comics has been? Every issue chock full of funny panels!)

HM3: New mask

I've just updated Headgear-Mask with TOOL's "Friday Night Fights 3" consolation round prize:

Note that color2 is the skull/torn up paint sort of stuff, so if you want just a pure mask in the general outline you can make color2 transparent.

Enjoy!

Note that this means my only two outstanding "named" prizes are a ten-speed bike for Nick Hentschel and an open umbrella for Dan. Then it's on to the replacement prizes and I will be caught up, finally!

Contest deadline looming!

Don't forget, you only have till Sunday night/crack of dawn Monday to get your submissions for the Super Omega Deathbattle Warzone Apocalypse Contest! The winners will get their characters painted in full color in a promotional piece for this new awesome game by professional artist Livio Ramondelli of “Transformers: Autocracy” and “DC Universe Online” fame.

Again, a perfectly valid strategy here is to pick out the nine most outstanding characters you've ever designed with HeroMachine and send them in as your entry. You're not limited to new characters only, folks, so go with your best. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!

And please, remember to peruse the official rules before committing.

PS: If you sent yours in, you should have gotten an email back from me acknowledging their receipt. If you didn't get that reply but you sent yours in, please email me (afdstudios@gmail.com) ASAP.

Open Critique Day #37

Although my new full-time (non-HeroMachine) job might keep me from actually getting to these before this afternoon, it's time for another Open Critique Day!

If you have a HeroMachine illustration or another piece of artwork you've done that you'd like some help with, post a link to it in comments along with your thoughts on it -- what you think is working, what you're struggling with, etc. I will post my critique of the piece, hopefully giving some tips on how to improve it.

Of course everyone is welcome to post their critiques as well, keeping in mind the following rules:

  • Make sure your criticism is constructive. Just saying "This sucks" is both rude and unhelpful without giving specific reasons why you think it sucks and, ideally, some advice on how to make it better.
  • Each person should only post one illustration for critique to make sure everyone who wants feedback has a chance.
  • I will not critique characters entered in any currently running contest, as that doesn't seem fair to the other entrants. You can still post it if you like for the other visitors to critique, but I will not do so.

That's it! Hopefully we can get some good interaction going here and help everyone (me included!) learn a little bit today.