HeroMachine Character Portrait Creator

Poll Position: From Myth to Life

Posted on March 9, 2010 by AFDStudios | Comments Off

Our Poll Position this week once again concerns bringing history to life:

{democracy:124}

Mythological characters were super-heroes before the medium of comics made it big. Which is right now causing twelve dozen history professors to gun up their Outrage Machines, but hey, I'm a simple guy. Still, you've got larger than life people, performing feats far outside the reach of normal people, and transforming their societies.

Which got me thinking, what heroes from out of time would, when brought to the present day, still be heroic? What impact would they have on our modern world? So let's take them from the top.

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Posted in Versus

SOD.068 – Druid

Posted on March 9, 2010 by AFDStudios | Comments Off

From a reference painting at "A Painter's Room". I'll put the black and white version after the jump.

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Posted in Sketch of the Day

RP: Never bet against dick clamps

Posted on March 9, 2010 by AFDStudios | Comments Off

(From "Police Comics" number 2, 1941.)

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Posted in Daily Random Panel

Character redesigns

Posted on March 9, 2010 by AFDStudios | Comments Off

The gang at Project: Rooftop have a cool new feature where they redesign an old public-domain character along modern lines, kind of like we've done a time or two with character contests here at HeroMachine.com. Their first pass is with "The Red Cross":

However, they've overlooked his greatest enemy -- the hypervigilant copyright attorneys employed by The International Red Cross. They're almost as vicious as Girl Scout lawyers!

I always like the thoughtful super-hero fashion design stuff at Project: Rooftop, and this looks like another great feature.

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Posted in Bad Super Costumes, Super-Hero Stuff

META: Redesign 2

Posted on March 8, 2010 by AFDStudios | Comments Off

Here's the second pass at the site redesign, taking into account the feedback from the last time around. Changes include:

new treatment in the top nav bar, including appropriate images for the three main HM versions;
different color treatment for the main logo;
icons for the "get connected" area below the search bar;
Dateline below the headline for each entry;
Tag line beneath each entry with links to comments and categories;
Bottom UGO links area.

(Click to embiggen.)

I'm feeling pretty good about this iteration, I'll incorporate whatever good suggestions come up in comments, then write it up and send it to UGO for feedback. There's still an awful lot of bright in-your-face color going on at the top thanks to the ads, but there's not really a way around that unless I go total grayscale for the top area, and I'm not willing to de-emphasize the links to the other HM versions enough for that.

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Posted in Meta

SOD.067 – Cap

Posted on March 8, 2010 by AFDStudios | Comments Off

Can't promise these'll be in color every day, but in response to the comments on the Superwoman redesign, here's at least one more. I do need to work on my coloring skills in Flash, particularly the need to figure out an easier way to consistently get the line colors right, so it's probably worth while for me to do at least some sketches that way.

(Captain America is a copyrighted character of Marvel Comics, Inc.)

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Posted in Sketch of the Day

Character Contest 29: Armorium

Posted on March 8, 2010 by AFDStudios | Comments Off

In honor of the wee-inducing release of the Iron Man 2 trailer today, Character Contest 29 challenges you to come up with the best "Power Armor" character you can. If you are chosen as the winner, you'll get either any item you like, or a portrait of yourself, to be included in the final HeroMachine 3 release.

Contest rules are simple:

Create a character using any version of HeroMachine you like;
Post an image of that character on any publicly accessible web site (like PhotoBucket, ImageShack, the UGO Forums, etc.) and put the link to that image in a comment to this post;
Include the name of your character and a one-sentence summary of their powers or personality, something to quickly identify them for the viewer.

I'll pick the Finalists next Monday, though this time we'll go back to the old system of me just picking the Honorable Mentions and overall winner, by request in the comments.

No limit on entries this week so knock yourself out!

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Posted in Challenges

Caption Contest 71 VOTE!

Posted on March 8, 2010 by AFDStudios | Comments Off

Congratulations to our Finalists for Caption Contest 71! You can vote for as many as you think are award-worthy until next Monday, when the overall top vote getter will receive their choice of either a portrait of themselves, or any item they like, to be included in HeroMachine 3. Good luck!

[polldaddy poll="2811384"]

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Posted in Challenges

Character Contest 28 Winner

Posted on March 8, 2010 by AFDStudios | Comments Off

Congratulations to Kaldath for winning Character Contest 28 with his unusually-posed "Spider-Cat", daughter of Spider-Man and Black Cat:

(Click to embiggen.)

We're at the point of needing to rename this the Kaldath Award, I think. Congratulations to him and to all the great entrants for that contest, it was some really nice work.

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Posted in Challenge Favorites, Challenges