Monthly Archives: July 2013

Hiatus

Once again I most apologies, as I sat down to write my Poll Position, Anime Talk, Random Panel, and Caption Contest posts I found that I was simply drawing a blank on what to write. Truth be told I am in so much physical pain at the moment that the old creative juices are not flowing and ideas on what to write have been hard to come up with for several weeks as a result. Due to this pain issue I am taking a few weeks away from writing for the blog as I try and get my pain levels back to normal. I will still be handling my Moderator duties in the forum, just not writing until I feel myself again. Thank you all for your understanding!

Power User Profiles: Herr D

Ages ago, in the mists of time when Jeff still did all of the blog posts, there was this thing called Power User Profiles. The idea was to highlight certain members of the Heromachine community who make a big contribution to the community. I always loved this topic on the blog, so I thought I'd bring it back for a few 'machiners who I think really deserve the title Power Users. This week, a very unique creator who has a definite style to all his pictures and certainly to his comments. So please welcome, Herr D.

Continue reading

My Apologies!!

I Had a very bad weekend this past week, a combination of intense pain, rage, and depression and so I forgot all about my Posts I was suppose to write up for today.  I am still not feeling all that well at the moment so I am going to take a nap right now, but I plan on getting those posts written later tonight and posted either this evening or tomorrow.

Character Design Contest ♯32- Keeping It In The Family

For this weeks challenge I want you to create a family based superhero team (like the one shown above).

Rules Specific For This Week: Each submission picture must include at least 2 characters that are related to each other in some way (Husband/ Wife, Brother/ Sister, Grandparent/ Grandchild, Parent/ Child), larger group shots are allowed. I will allow the use of external programs to put together larger group shots (more than 3 people), but ONLY for that purpose, not for effects and shading. Anyone taking liberties with this will be disqualified (believe me when I say I will be able to tell).

Please make sure you have read the rules before entering. As usual, no limit on entries, so have fun and good luck.

Rules for posts, contests, and challenges that I am hosting: Original characters only, no copyrighted characters, no characters based on copyrighted characters, no characters based on RPG’s or other games. The characters must be your own design and not based on any character that might be copyrighted in any way. I have the right to delete any post that I believe crosses this line without warnings. Only post characters that you have either created for this contest specifically or you know for certain have never been entered to a contest before. If you aren’t certain, don’t enter it, because I’m not going to go back through all of the contests and check.

What Were They Thinking- The Death And Rebirth Of Superman

This week, I'd like to talk about a quite contentious subject, something I like to call the Jesus Effect. Of course, we all know that comic book characters don't age like we do, but apparently they don't die like we do either. And the blame for this I lay squarely at the feet of Superman.

Now, don't get me wrong, his was not the first rebirth. It happened as far back as 1963, when Lightning Lad from the Legion Of Superheroes managed to die in January and then be resurrected in September (only for that to be reteconned as some-one else using his form, gotta love DC continuity), but after extensive research, I can only find four others who have died and been resurrected prior to the death of Superman story in 1993. These being Lex Luthor, who died in a plane crash but was then later revealed to have cloned himself to escape death by cancer and faked his other death (?), Iris West Allen, who was killed by Reverse Flash but resurrected in the 30th century, Alfred Pennyworth, who was crushed by a boulder but then returned to life using a regeneration ray (Holy WTF Batman!?) and Kang The Conquerer, who, let's be honest, has so many alternate forms it doesn't really matter when he dies.

However, if we look at the list of characters resurrected post-DoS, the list is alarming (and consists only of DC and Marvel characters I might add). 69 for DC, 102 for Marvel. Now that is just ridiculous. When a list contains a fairly decent Avengers team, the big 3 of DC, 3/4 of the Fantastic Four and Aunt May from Spider-Man, you kinda have to admit things have gotten out of hand. It's the ways these deaths are removed as well, some of them are clumsy at best (see Captain America) were as some they just couldn't be bothered (Graviton I'm looking at you there).

I know all characters are valuable intellectual property, and killing them in an event is a good way to boost its sales, but this is getting ridiculous. When even a long forgotten character like Barney Barton (died 1969) can be brought back to life (resurrected 2011), I think it's time to take a step away from that big red reset button and say "Hold on, I think this one has been over done before, maybe we should think of something else."

Sorry about the rant. Just had to get it off my chest.

If you have any ideas for this or any other of my blog posts, either say below or PM me in the forums. Laters.

Pop Quiz – July 13 – Winner

This week's winner is Atomic Punk! Great idea and very well done. Congrats!

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Character Design Contest ♯31 Poll

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Character Design Contest ♯30

The winner of this weeks poll (getting nearly 50% of the vote I might add) is Can't Draw for his Texan superhero Lone Star

Character Of The Week- 13th July

This week, we're going to look at not so much a character, more a scene by the master of Heromachine comic covers; RobM.

Incoming Message

Now, the main thing that attracted me to this piece was the lighting, especially on the wrist projector and the right hand. There are some good hints here on how to get really bold lighting effects, so I asked Rob about how he did them and hopefully he won't mind if I put up here what he said in reply:

"The wrist protector is one item from ItemRight Polearms with one gradient background shape masked to it and another laid on top. The masked gradient background shape has 25% second color and 0% line color. The pink glowing line color on the wrist protector is a result of the 25% darker magenta red gradient combining with the item's 65% gray line color. Then there's a second gradient background shape (the brighter gradient under the yellow disk) at 50% x 20% size laid on top.

The right hand is actually two hands. I masked the bottom portion with the thumb to an insignia so that I could use the darker prime color on the hand's under side. The layer below is a full hand where I used a lighter color for the prime color. Then I laid gradient background shapes over each finger at strategic places with the prime and second colors at 50%. It's tough to do shading on hands because masking works differently for hands than it does for other items."

Whilst these might be the most striking aspects of the picture, it wouldn't be half as good with out some of the finer details, such as the glow on the glove item underneath and to the side of the projection (especially on the wires, which can be very easy to overlook).

Also the projection its self is very well thought out. By a combination of a slightly transparent main focus (the helmet) along with the horizontal line effect and the clouds from the background items (masked to the beam) gives a very good impression of static interferance as usually seen in sci-fi war hologram communications.

Finally we come to the background. The best thing about this is that it doesn't distract attention from the main focus of the piece in the foreground. By using earthy, dull tones and a lighter than black line colour, it contrasts with the clear, bold and precise foreground to give a distinct feeling of depth to the picture and suggest a murky, mysterious and dirty world beyond what we can see.

Very well executed.

Pop Quiz – July 13 – This Day in Music History

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On July 13, 1974 - Eric Clapton's "I Shot The Sheriff" was released.

In honour of this musical milestone, your challenge this week is to create an amazing sheriff character. So draw partner!

You only get one entry so be creative, and above all else, have fun!

All entries must be in JPG or PNG form (BMPs are too big), posted to a publicly accessible website (like the HeroMachine forums,ImageShackPhotoBucket, or 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 must be new and designed specifically for the Pop Quiz;
  • Please name your files as [your name]-[character name].[file extension] before you upload it. 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). See this post on how to get the direct link for most sites.

Contest closes at 9:00am eastern on July 14.