Author Archives: AFDStudios

HM3: Belts fitted to the Female body

I've just updated the main HeroMachine 3 application with support for a new set of items, "BeltStandardFemale". It is a duplicate of the "BeltStandard" set, but with all of the items redrawn and/or repositioned to fit the Standard female body (the first one in Body-Female-Standard). The hip lines are different and the overall position of the belts lower than on the male, so now you don't have to move and size them manually (and still have weird angles that you have to mask to the body to get rid of).

Still to come in the great male-female conversion are all of the facial features, Neckwear, and Pants. And all of the alternate bodies. Ugh.

If you don't see the new set appear on the drop down list, clear your browser's cache (and only the cache, not cookies or other saved data!) and reload the page. If you see it on the list but it won't load, do the same thing.

HM3: Best foot forward

The following nifty (yes, I said nifty, I'm old) items are now available in FootRight-Male-Standard thanks to the prolific dblade. Enjoy!

dblade-shoes

HM3: You’ll put your eye out

These two nifty guns (the "Godeater" and the "Mare's Leg" from opposite ends of the historical spectrum) are now live in ItemRight-Rifles thanks to the mighty dblade:

dblade-rifles

HM3: Don’t get mouthy

Another set of new dblade items has gone live, this time featuring some really cool mouths:

dblade-newmouths

HM3: Yet more dblade goodness

I've just added the following dblade-drawn items to HeroMachine 3:

From left to right they can be found in Backplane-Standard, ItemRight-Miscellaneous, Headgear-Glasses, and Headgear-Standard. Enjoy!

New Barbario Game Trailer movie

Barbario is in another of those cool live-action Game Trailer movies, check it out!

HM3: More gloves and, finally, a seal

*tap tap* Is this thing on? Hello?

Excellent! I've just uploaded the following items, created by dblade, to the live HeroMachine 3 server:

If you don't see them in your previews, clear your browser's cache. The seal body is in Body-Monster while the gloves are in GloveRight-Standard. I have female versions of them from dblade but not in the program yet, and will upload them at some point as well.

I want to thank dblade for these and for all the other items he's contributed. You're a champ, Champ!

I also want to thank Kaldath and Hammerknight for keeping the blog side of things rolling along.

I hope you all have a great New Year's celebration!

“Hobbit” review

Thanks to my awesome full time employer, I got to see an ever-so-slightly advance copy of "The Hobbit" today. Plus I got a free glass of wine AND a free pizza AND a free peanut butter milkshake! Blogging retirement is AWESOME!

Anyway, here's my very quick review: It was good!

Here's my marginally longer review:

A little slow here and there, but it definitely held my interest. There are some fun set pieces with great fights, the portrayal of the Riddle Game is very good, and the story moves along well enough that I didn't feel cheated like I thought I would when I heard they were stretching it into three movies.

Having said that, I always felt like part of the charm of the Hobbit was that it was a small story that didn't bother us with all of the Big Goings On of the power players in Middle Earth. This version chucks a fair bit of that in favor of bringing in all the backstory with the battle against the Necromancer that Tolkien largely left out of the original narrative. I'm not sure I agree with that decision, but since it was made and this is the story Jackson chooses to tell, I do think he tells it well.

I'd give it a definite thumbs-up!

Is that Iron Man or Yellowjacket?

No, seriously -- is that Iron Man or Yellowjacket? Because the color is the latter while the armor is the former.

30 Characters Challenge 2012 Overview

I had a lot of fun doing the "30 Characters in 30 Days" Challenge this year. For convenience's sake, here's the set of all of the images in one gallery. Enjoy!