Happy Easter

Posted on April 8, 2012 by | Comments Off on Happy Easter

Today Christians around the world celebrate their holiest day, Easter. Americans celebrate the holiday by decorating eggs, so in that tradition our Pop Quiz for the weekend was to create an Easter egg in HeroMachine. Some folks went for the historic look while others took an approach more out of left field. Where presumably they're finding hidden eggs. Without further ado, here are all of our entrants!

While I love all the creativity, I am in a traditional mood today and so am going with an entry that took the approach of an actual dyed Easter egg. And that winner is ... FRM!

It made me feel happy and peaceful while looking at it. So congratulations to him, a sincere thanks to all of our entrants, and a Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it!

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Posted in Challenge Favorites

Pop Quiz: Easter egg

Posted on April 7, 2012 by | Comments Off on Pop Quiz: Easter egg

Get ready for your pop quiz, kids! In honor of the big Christian holiday tomorrow, your one-day quick-fire challenge is:

Make an awesome Easter egg in HM3!

To make this easier, I've just added two new items to Background-Shapes, one a big egg-shaped hole and one an actual egg shape. So you can put together whatever image you like, load the egg-hole on top of it, and Bob's your uncle!

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.

Good luck!

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Posted in Challenges, Pop Quiz

Racially offensive AND completely nonsensical all in one!

Posted on April 7, 2012 by | Comments Off on Racially offensive AND completely nonsensical all in one!

(From "Target Comics" number 1, 1940.)

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Posted in Daily Random Panel

HM3: Lighthouse

Posted on April 6, 2012 by | Comments Off on HM3: Lighthouse

I've just uploaded Frankie's prize for Caption Contest 118 to Background-Standard, a lighthouse and a cliff on which to perch it:

Originally I had them combined, but it was too limiting to try and get good color on both the buildings and in the landscape. But they're positioned by default to work together, so if you just turn on Multiples you can place the cliffs, then the lighthouse and they ought to fit together.

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Posted in Challenge Prizes

Open Critique Day 35

Posted on April 6, 2012 by | Comments Off on Open Critique Day 35

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.

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Posted in Open Critique Day

What happens in Mexico …

Posted on April 6, 2012 by | Comments Off on What happens in Mexico …

(from "Target Comics" number 1, 1940.)

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Posted in Daily Random Panel

HM3: Brodie helmet

Posted on April 5, 2012 by | Comments Off on HM3: Brodie helmet

I've just uploaded E350's prize for winning Caption Contest 117 into Headgear-Military, a WWI style Brodie helmet:

I'm fairly appalled I didn't have one of these in there already, and I'm very grateful to E350 for requesting it.

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Posted in Challenge Prizes

HM3: Freckles!

Posted on April 5, 2012 by | Comments Off on HM3: Freckles!

I've just uploaded Nick Hentschel's prize for winning Caption Contest 110, freckles:

These are now available in Head-Male-Faces. I also updated the Head-Female-Faces with not only these freckles, but all the wrinkles that were previously only available in the Male set. Holler if any of that gives you trouble.

In keeping with the wrinkles, I only did one cheek's worth of freckles; use the Multiples button and flip them to get them to be two-sided.

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Posted in Challenge Prizes

Dragontaur

Posted on April 5, 2012 by | Comments Off on Dragontaur

Last night I worked up the prize for Knighthawk's Caption Contest 108 victory. This isn't exactly what he asked for, but rather my interpretation of what his description inspired in me. So if there's something you don't like, blame me 🙂

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Posted in Challenge Prizes

A-policing we will go!

Posted on April 5, 2012 by | Comments Off on A-policing we will go!

Before we return to our regularly scheduled stuffed-bunny zombie adventure, I wanted to say a quick word of thanks to "Zombocalypse Now" author Matt Youngmark. He was kind enough to email me last week to say he appreciated that all of you were having fun following along with his story and to let me know that they have another Chooseomatic Book -- this time with a super-hero theme! -- coming out next week titled "Thrusts of Justice":

As you've seen here, Mr. Youngmark's writing jumps off the page and makes the entire "choose your own" paradigm a heck of a lot of fun. If you haven't already gotten your copy of "Zombocalypse Now", I highly encourage you to do so. And on April 11, go ahead and get "Thrusts of Justice" as well. I know I will!

And now, on with our regularly scheduled stuffed bunny versus brain-eating zombie thriller.

Continue reading →

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Posted in RPG Corner, Zombocalypse Now