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!
- Online name used in HeroMachine environs: Logosgal
- A photo (or drawing) of you in "real life":
What’s that? You say you wanted a picture of my face rather than of me hiding behind a professor and giving him bunny ears?
Picky, picky…
My friends said I look like a nerdy superhero in this, so I guess it’s an appropriate one to share with the HeroMachine community. 🙂
- Real name: Lydia
- Real city/state/country: St. Louis, Missouri, USA
- Real job: Undergraduate Majoring in Linguistics, Writing Tutor Consultant, and Day Camp Counselor. If I survive doing all those things concurrently this summer, I should graduate next year, and I hope to eventually become a linguist for a missionary organization and/or a novelist.
- Real age: 21
- Gender: Female
- Relationship status (married, single, in a long-term relationship, dating someone, "it's complicated", etc): Single.
- Online archive of your creations: I just started this thread, so there’s not a lot up yet, but that’s where they’ll go eventually.
- The best piece of HeroMachine art you've created: I consulted a professional artist (my mother), and she narrowed it down to two for me. Since I’ve already inflicted my “Pisces Pieces” poster on most of you, I’ll go with this one:
It’s sort of an in-joke from one of my linguistics classes.
- Favorite all-time geeky movie if any: I’m not usually very good about “all-time favorites,” because I tend to like lots of things and have a hard time picking one I like best. That said, I guess I’ll go with Stranger than Fiction, mostly because the fiction writer in me loves the scene where Karen Eiffel meets Harold face-to-face, and because I want to take a class with Prof. Hilbert. If that’s not a geeky enough movie in general, I also really liked the recent Star Trek movie.
- Favorite all-time geeky book if any: There’s a favorites question I really can’t answer. Reading is pretty much my all-time favorite thing to do, and I don’t think I could ever pick just one book for all time. I will say, however, that the best thing I’ve read recently is the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson, who is a genius when it comes to plot twists.
- Favorite all-time geeky TV show if any: Doctor Who.
- Favorite all-time comic book character if any: Assuming we’re talking about characters that mainly come in physical, published comic books, Spider-Man.
- If you could have one super-heroic power in real life, you'd choose: Flight. Preferably powered by telekinesis so that I could also use my powers on things I’m too lazy to stand up and get from across the room.
- In your leisure time you like to: Ideally? Read, write, play violin, bake, collect rocks, draw—pretty much anything generally creative. In reality, I often tend to play Flash games and read webcomics instead of engaging in my more productive hobbies. And of course I also spend a good chunk of my leisure time with HeroMachine.
- Character design turn-ons (things you love to see that make for a good design): Tell me a good story and I’ll always have something to like about you. In terms of HeroMachine designs, I also love the pictures that use items in creative ways and don’t necessarily even have people in them, or that do something amazing that I wouldn’t have thought of or can’t easily figure out how it was done.
- Character design turn-offs (things you hate to see that make for a bad design): At the risk of repeating every other Power User, details. I think I what find most disturbing is when proportions are just slightly off, especially when you can tell something was resized because it looks obviously stretched. It’s also annoying when lines or pieces don’t match up quite right. I can be pretty big on the perfectionistic stuff.
- Best tip for a HeroMachine newbie: The “transform” tab is the real magic of HeroMachine 3. Experiment and have fun with it! Most features are pretty self-explanatory, but there are a couple that I wish I’d understood better when I was starting out.
One: Masking. I didn’t start using masking outside of basic putting patterns on things and making it look like hands are holding things until recently. So I’m not really the person to explain it, other than to say that you can do a lot more than just put patterns on things and make it look like hands are holding things. The Custom Item Archive on the UGO forums has some amazing examples of masking tricks, though.
Two: The “All Items” grouping. I’ve seen this feature take some criticism in the forum and blog comments, but I think that like the best of villains, it’s just misunderstood. It doesn’t behave the same way as the other groupings do, but to me it’s been the most useful grouping of any. The trick is to think of it as a “temporarily do something to the whole picture” button. Need to see what’s on the sides of your widescreen picture? Use the move arrows to move the picture until you can see the part you want. Need to work on little details? Do the same thing in headshot view. Having trouble with the face of a character who’s upside-down? Rotate the whole picture and work on it rightside-up. (I admit that I still haven’t found a use for changing the size of the whole picture, because it’s hard to keep the proportion right.) Changes you make using that grouping won’t save, so it’s easy to move the picture back to where it started by clicking “reset.”
- Any personal message you'd like to share with the HeroMachine community about Geek Life: One thing about most of the geeks I’ve spent time with is that we love a good argument—Star Trek vs. Star Wars, Mac vs. PC, transformational linguistics vs. non-transformational, Marvel vs. DC, and on and on. That can be a great thing, but sometimes, especially when talking to a non-geek, I think we can take that argument too seriously and discourage future interaction with said person. There are times when it’s best to fight to the last, and there are times when it’s best to let the other person be wrong. If you can learn to tell the difference, you will go far among geeks and non-geeks alike.
Also: Enjoy what you do even if you can’t do what you most enjoy, learn new things, get fresh air every now and then, don’t forget to be awesome, and thanks for being such a welcoming and supportive community!
Thanks for sharing that with us, Logosgal, I know I speak for the whole community when I say how much I appreciate the time and kindness you bring to every discussion. Also, I heartily endorse your movie and book choices. Sanderson rules. In a similar sort of vein I'd also recommend Patrick Rothfuss and Brent Weeks for anyone looking for modern, well-written fantasy books that are not in the typical "Lord of the Rings" vein.
On that note, I am now out of Power User Profiles, so if there's someone you'd like to see profiled here, please chime in in the comments and let me know who you'd nominate.
