Stealth — you’re doing it wrong.

(From "Mystery Men Comics" number 4, 1939.)

Stuff You Didn’t Know Was Possible in HeroMachine

[Panner is not only a fantastic troubleshooter and critique-giver, but he's also an expert digital archaeologist, uncovering hidden gems of knowledge when using HeroMachine 3. He was nice enough to put together some of his findings here to share with the rest of the community, for which I'm very thankful. Enjoy! -- Jeff]

HeroMachine has changed a lot over these latest months. In a short time we have seen the debut of a beautiful interface, extremely useful features, dozens of items to work with, and a forum for sharing creations. I don't think anyone will contest that these changes have made the HeroMachine experience a lot more pleasant and a lot less exhausting.

Since HeroMachine is currently in alpha stage, there are a few oddities that can be exploited to reach results that are unavailable when using the program as intended. Here I present three such exploits that all produce results you might have thought were impossible. I hope this will be educational or at least entertaining!

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Dr. NIMBY’s not-very-civil protest

(From "Mystery Men Comics" number 4, 1939.)

Power User Profile: Logosgal

A fixture in the comments sections, always positive and engaging, and a definite up-and-comer for a contest win, I am happy to present a little more information on one of the most active members of our community, Logosgal!

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And doesn’t he look THRILLED?!

(From "Mystery Men Comics" number 4, 1939.)

Caption Contest 100 Prize

Knighthawk and I have finished his prize for winning Caption Contest 100:

Thanks for the neat character to work on, Knighthawk!

Open Critique Day #21

It's time once again 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.

Just because he’s wearing a skirt doesn’t mean he’s that easy!

(From "Big 3" number 6, 1941.)

HM3: Hair-Female-Braids

I got a wild hair this morning (get it?!) and decided to throw together a set of braided female hair for HeroMachine 3. A few are from the current Female Standard set, but where possible even there I broke them up a bit. If you can find examples of other braids you'd like to see, now's the time to speak up or forever hold your split ends.

Curse of the Fisherthieves

When last we left our Lone Wolf, he was standing in a strange tavern, deciding whether or not to confront the dastardly fisherthieves who'd mugged him of all his worldly possessions. The alternative was to ignore them yukking it up at the table and instead chat up the local bartender. By a narrow five vote margin, we decided to go all Crazy Kai on the brigands:

I made a command decision that our last vote to confront these guys meant "see it through to the end", so out into the alley after them we go:

Huzzah! We have the absolutely vital Seal now, and our quest is not doomed to failure before even making it out of this flea-bitten crappy little town! Of course, given the history of the series, it's probable that the next time we turn right instead of left, we'll be crushed by a falling meteorite, but such is the hard-luck life of a Lone Wolf. You'll note that once again, our good fortune comes not because of anything we did, but simple dumb luck. We were too slow to follow them out of a door, and only got our Seal back because a fisherman -- clearly unused to moving about in wet conditions -- slipped on a water-logged rock. We really should mark us as having the "Kai Discipline of Dumb Luck (Both Good and Bad)".

Regardless, I've marked our ill-gotten booty on our character sheet:

We don't have our preferred Spear, but at least we're not totally helpless. We also don't have anything to eat, which, considering the fact that we're in the middle of a town where the Kai Hunting opportunities are likely to be minimal, could potentially be a problem. And finally, if we had a Backpack we could put stuff in it, if we had any stuff. Which we don't.

But we're alive, we have eight coins to rub together, and with the Seal we can at least in theory continue to pursue our Quest! Whatever that is, I've frankly forgotten. This is the same way I play video games -- point me at something to stab and I'm happy, meta-narrative be damned.

Thus, our decision is:

[polldaddy poll="5194423"]

I did not include the first option because we don't have the Kai Discipline of Tracking. However, I cheated and looked at the result, and we're not exactly missing out on anything -- I would have thought you could track the other Fishermen to wreak havoc and holy revenge on their sorry hides, but alas, that's not in the cards.

So what'll it be, folks?