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Many thanks to Hammerknight for putting together the following tutorials AND a fun Halloween card, too! As always, click on any of the images to see them full size, and please let HK know what you think in the comments.
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Posted in Recipes, Tips & Tricks
(From "Captain Video" number 2, 1951.)
Comments Off on Random Panel: Oversharing, super-villain style
Posted in Daily Random Panel
I'm working my way through a great usability study Mark Shute did (for which he got an outstanding A+ in a 700 level course -- woot Mark!). Before I actually hack up the code, I wanted to present the basic layout and concept here for your input and feedback.
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Posted in HeroMachine 3, Previews
In general, you don't want to associate yourself with a chicken when planning your super-adventuring career. I'm not saying chickens are bad animals, I'm just saying they're stupid, prone to killing themselves in spectacularly foolish ways, smelly, cowardly, and tasty when deep fried, none of which are attributes you particularly want to identify yourself with.
Unfortunately, no one gave Black Talon the memo:
I get that he's a big scary voodoo guy, but somehow he missed the point that while chickens commonly appear in voodoo rituals, it's almost always as a result of having their heads chopped off and their blood drained into a bowl for drinking!
Besides the alarming connotations (has he never even HEARD of KFC?!), this costume has other problems. First, you never want to consider an outfit that involves a diaper. If you're incontinent or prone to wetting yourself when danger threatens, maybe super villainy isn't your ideal career choice.
Second, the hard and fast rule of super-adventuring is that no one can successfully pull off a bird beak as part of their headgear. Not even Hawkman.
Finally, no costume should ever involve bird feet. Ever. They look ridiculous and will inevitably trip you up if you need to flee the scene which, let's be honest, is quite likely if you're oblivious enough to name yourself after a chicken.
(Character and image © Marvel Comics.)
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Posted in Bad Super Costumes
(From "Bulletman" number 9, 1942.)
Comments Off on Random Panel: I sure hope he’s not just happy to see me …
Posted in Daily Random Panel
Ordinarily I'd be hosting a Caption Contest this week, but with Halloween I just can't resist. Your challenge for the week is a little more complicated than usual, because we're going THREE DIMENSIONAL! I'm looking for the best HeroMachine recreation of an actual, real-life Halloween costume. You'll need a photo of the costume in question, and then the HeroMachine recreation/update. You could try to go for an exact duplicate, or you could take the basic idea and make it better, whichever you like, but there has to be a real costume your design's based on.
To review, here are the rules.
The winner will be decided next Tuesday by me, Jeff Hebert, Bald Guy, and will be awarded the choice of either a portrait of their face as a line drawing or any item of their choice, to be included with the HeroMachine 3 full release.
Good luck everyone!
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Posted in Challenges
Without further ado, and with many thanks for all those who shared their creations as part of the event, I present the Honorable Mentions and the overall winner of Character Contest 19.
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Posted in Challenge Favorites, Challenges, Cool Characters
(From "Bulletman" number 9, 1942. How often do you get to combine Superman II and a backhanded country song title? I love my job!)
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Posted in Daily Random Panel
If you get the chance, head on over to Comics Alliance to read Chris Sims' take-by-take breakdown of great early Nineties video of Stan Lee interviewing Rob Liefeld. Chris is a very funny writer and the whole article is a quick and amusing read. Choice bits include:
3:09 - We've got to admit, there's something utterly hypnotic about watching Rob Liefeld draw pouches and armbands on a guy, and it's only made better by the pure joy in his voice when he explains to Stan that they're full of explosive boomerangs.
5:04 - As Liefeld rushes to finish the drawing on Stan's deadline, Stan starts joking about how his suggestion to add spikes makes Cross a collaboration, and starts referring to him as "my character" and "our creation." He's laughing. Rob's laughing. Steve Ditko is gritting his teeth.
Chris also makes a very telling serious point, though:
0:25 - This is quite possibly the most mind-blowing moment of the video, as at this point, it comes out that the latest issue of "X-Force" had sold OVER FIVE MILLION COPIES. Just to give you an idea, Diamond Comic Distributors' best-selling comic for July 2009 was "Captain America Reborn" #1, which came in just under 200,000.
Comics were big, huge, ginormous, incredibly big business. Like the real estate market, some of that was artificially inflated by speculating investors buying many copies of each big issue, but still, the industry today is a fractured, tiny portion of what it was then. Five million copies of X-Force, folks, that's a lot of paper being pushed to the public.
You can view the video on YouTube if you like. Chris' regular site is "The Invincible Super-Blog" and is a daily must-read for me, the guy's a hoot.
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Posted in Randomosity
Our Poll Position for this week asks you to put yourself in the position of a super-joiner:
Discussion after the jump.
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Posted in Versus
Three middle-aged nerds (including yours truly!) review all of the MCU movies in chronological order. Short, funny, and full of good vibes, check it out and let us know what you think!
Nerdmudgeon.com