Return to the Cave of Time!

The time has come once again to embark on an exciting Choose Your Own Adventure! This time we are braving the classic "Return to The Cave of Time", only in its updated and expanded iPhone edition. So even if you've run it before, prepare yourself for more adventure, more challenges, more harrowing excitement than you remember. Once more, into the breach!

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RP: Trouble on the Honeymoon

(Lifted from "Comically Vintage".)

HM3: Celtic Knots

Me, Myself, and I ... um, and I ... have finished his prizes for a couple of contest wins, now available in Insignia-Nature:

He requested a strand of Celtic knots to use as a facial tattoo, but after chatting about it, we thought it would be more versatile to break the string into individual bits that can be manually strung together so you can get just the effect you're going for. Here's an example, showing one of each of the knots all lined up:

Because of the way the strands run, to get the colors to work exactly right you might have to flip alternating instances, and then rotate them 180 degrees, to line up properly. Hopefully you'll find them useful.

Yankee Doodle Don’t

As you'd expect, the 1940s saw a multitude of patriotic-themed super heroes hitting the comics newsstands even as real war raged across the globe. Few realize that in the same venue, another deadly conflict burned out of control -- a war on fashion, led by Yankee Doodle Jones:

Who says you can't combine striped pants, a leather wrestling belt, purple star-spangled vest, and a light blue puffy pirate shirt and make it look good! Oh, right -- this guy.

As jarring as it is to see purple and aqua on an outfit that's ostensibly based on the flag of the USA (which, need I remind you, contains neither purple nor aqua, nor wrestling), even worse to my bleeding eyes is the jaunty red flight-attendant cap he's sporting. I can just imagine him leaping into this heated battle with the heinous Nazis screaming "Coffee, tea, or ME!"

The bad costume is what brought us here today, but I can't close without saying a word or two about the name. "Yankee Doodle Jones"? Really? There's nothing like an implied "Dandy" to make your enemies tremble in fear. Or possibly titillation, depending on their proclivities. But perhaps this was just the forerunner of a whole clan of Yankee Doodles, like Yankee Doodle Sam and Yankee Doodle Fred and of course, cousin Yankee Doodle Betty.

"Darling, the Yankee Doodles are coming over for dinner tonight, so be sure to break out the good star-spangled purple and aqua table cloth, won't you?"

(From "Yankee Comics" number 4, 1942.)

RP: Future Politician Pilot speaks

(From "Wonder Boy" number 18, 1955.)

Poll Position: Sidekicks

I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion in last week's Poll Position regarding the greatest comic-book villain of all time (you voted for The Joker by a wide margin), so I wanted to continue it this week, albeit in a lighter vein:

{democracy:166}

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RP: The further adventures of Daddy-Man

(Image courtesy of Comically Vintage.)

HM3: Prize updates

You may recall that last year I exercised my executive privilege to revert a bunch of unclaimed contest prizes back to the community. You all came up with a ton of suggestions for those unused prizes, and voted on the ones you most wanted to see happen. Since then, some of those items have been done and some remain, while others have been chosen as prizes by new winners. I wanted to update everyone on the status of that ongoing effort, so here's the current list:

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Terminal Knees

Watson Bradshaw requested a set of legs that would terminate at the knees, as if the character were kneeling. Since that's been requested by lots of folks, I thought it would be wise to go ahead and publish the first pass at it for general comment, though since it's Watson's prize he gets the final word. Here's the screen grab of it:


It's now live in "Body-Male-Standard" and once we get it finalized (i.e. Watson says he likes it), I'll do a set for the female body as well. Let me know what you think, changes you think it needs to be fully functional, etc. I put in one for the left and one for the right leg.

Character Contest 55: Capricorn Won!

Despite recent attempts to subvert the sublime perfection of the modern Zodiac system with the discredited "sidereal" horoscope model, we here at HeroMachine central remain committed to our stated goal of doing a Character Design Contest for each heavenly sign. This is our last chance to honor Capricorn, the sign of the Goat, so off we go!

Remember, the goal here isn't necessarily to create a character named "Capricorn", though you could certainly do so if you wanted. Rather, the goal is to be inspired by any aspect of the name, history, or images associated with the sign to create something that looks awesome. For example, since the symbol is a goat (sometimes with the rear end of a fish), you could do something related to the animal portions. Or you could find examples of famous Capricorns and do a character based off of them.

From Wikipedia:

The constellation is usually depicted as a goat with a fish's tail. One myth says that when the goat-god Pan was attacked by the monster Typhon, he dove into the Nile; the parts above the water remained a goat, but those under the water transformed into a fish.
Capricorn is sometimes depicted as a sea-goat, and sometimes as a terrestrial goat. The reasons for this are unknown, but the image of a sea-goat goes back at least to Babylonian times. Furthermore the Sumerian god Enki's symbols included a goat and a fish, which later combined into a single beast, the goat Capricorn, recognized as the Zodiacal constellation Capricornus.

"The symbol of the goat rising from the body of a fish represents with greatest propriety the mountainous buildings of Babylon rising out of its low and marshy situation; the two horns of the goat being emblematic of the two towns, Nineveh and Babylon, the former built on the Tigris, the latter on the Euphrates; but both subjected to one sovereignty."

For more inspiration, you could go to Google Images and do a search for "Capricorn". Or just click that there link, to save yourself some keystrokes.

The rules are the same as usual:

  • 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;
  • The image cannot have been used in any previous HeroMachine character design contest
  • 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.
  • All entries must be in by next Monday, when I'll choose a winner, who will receive his or her choice of any item or a portrait to be included in the final HeroMachine 3 program, or a "Sketch of the Week" style black and white illustration.

No limit on entries this week, so knock yourselves out. Just make them good!