Category Archives: Challenge Favorites

I am happy to announce that the HeroMachine community has decided that Hunters trump Hunteds, with the winning overall Hunter being "The Hunter" by Aegon Targaryen!

Aegon wins a black and white character portrait, so congratulations to him. That's a really gorgeous drawing, easily one of the best submitted to any contest so far. Well done! I particularly appreciate the way he's managed to make it look like the figure is aiming to his left, by scootching the face over a bit, and clever layering of the hair, ear, and antlers.

As for WHO he is hunting, that would be the overall vote winner in the Hunted poll, "XP45 Prototype" by Matt!

Matt wins any item of his choice, or a portrait of himself, to be included in HeroMachine 3. Congratulations, Matt, and thanks to everyone who entered!

Congratulations to TheNate for winning Caption Contest 69!

Nate, let me know what item you'd like to appear in HeroMachine 3's final version, or if you'd prefer a portrait instead.

Thanks to everyone who entered and to all the other Finalists!

The winner of Character Contest 26: Golden Oldies is ... Jake and his Minuteman redesign!

Jake wins his choice of either any item or a portrait of himself to appear in the final version of HeroMachine 3. Congratulations! It was a great looking illustration.

I also tip my hat to Gero's Spy Smasher and Kyle's Ms. Scarlet, as they were the next runners-up.

Thanks to everyone who entered!

It's time to pick your winner for Character Contest 26: Golden Oldies! I've picked out a handful of outstanding Finalist / Honorable Mentions from the many wonderful submissions made, and now you get to decide who will be the overall winner. For some reason, none of the "Bulletman" revamps worked well enough for me to count as a finalist, I'm not sure why. Maybe I just love the ol' guy too much.

Anyway, here goes, congratulations everyone! Voting is for one week, the winner to be announced next Monday.

• I liked Brons' overall design, and the idea of making Pinky a woman was intriguing as well.
• DiCicatriz' "Minuteman" looks a lot like a border-patrolling Texas kind of guy, which would make for some fascinating stories and character development, which is what you want out of a good retcon in my opinion.
• Gene's "Spy Smasher" did much the same for that character, placing him in the Middle East it looks like, which again is a good approach to what someone with that name would be doing in today's world, assuming he worked for America.
• I liked Imp's "Minute Man" for hearkening back to the Colonial namesake, while still looking kind of bad-ass.
• Jake's "Minute Man", on the other hand, has a great design to the overall illustration with the black hourglass and the faded out character. It's a really nice effect.
• Kyle's female take on "Ms. Scarlet", along with a really nice pose, clenched its inclusion here.
• Finally, Me Myself & I gave kind of a Zorro vibe to "Mr. Scarlet" which is neat. I get a feel that this is a real character.

Great job, to them and to everyone who entered. Using PollDaddy for the voting kind of limits me; I used to include Honorable Mentions (like Martian Blue's this time) that were funny or clever without being necessarily contenders for the overall title. But they one aspect or another was interesting enough to feature. With voting like this, I don't feel like that's necessarily fair, or fits, which is kind of a shame.

Anyway, thanks again to all our entrants!

Congratulations to Runt82 for taking home the gold with this fantastic entry for Caption Contest 68:

Runt wins any item of his choice or a portrait of himself, either to be included in the final HeroMachine 3 program. Well done, sir!

(Original image and characters © Sam Kieth and Image Comics.)

I am happy to announce the winner of Character Contest 25 is ... Anarchangel!

The margin of victory was one vote, but even crazier is that the vote for second place was even closer -- it was a tie! So our two runners-up, who will also be featured in the banner on a rotating basis, were (in order they appear below) Psycko Sama and Hammerknight:

Anarchangel wins either one item of his choice, or a portrait of himself, either of which will appear in the final HeroMachine 3 release. Congratulations to him, and to both Hammerknight and Psycko Sama! Great job to everyone who entered, my thanks.

I had a tough time deciding the Caption Contest 67 winner, there were several that I thought were really funny. To wit, these ones!

• Ian: Aaaaah! Butt-palm!
• Rick: Give me an…A!
• AbecedariusRex: “Is that a Brakash in your pocket or are you just happy to see me.”
• Runt82: Noooooo! It’s Roid-Rage Willie Nelson!
• Rob W: No, I will NOT tell you where I hid your steroids!
• Deadpool42: FOR THE LAST TIME I DONT WANNA HERE THE GOOD NEWS!!
• Frankie: “Oh, no! It’s the Alphabet Brigade. And this is only the beginning.”

After much hemming and a little hawing, I finally settled on Your Winner, The Inestimable Ian!

Thanks to everyone for participating, and to the Honorable Mentions above especially for giving me an extra chuckle or two. Well done!

Ian wins an item of his choice, or a portrait of himself, to appear in the final HeroMachine 3 product. Congratulations once again Ian!

Thanks to everyone who entered Character Contest 24: Super Enemies! Before I get into the Honorable Mentions and then the overall winner, I wanted to say a quick word to recap how I go about judging these things.

1. On Tuesday morning, I save all the image files that were entered into a folder, renaming them with the entrant's name and the character name. This can take quite a while.
2. Eat lunch, because come on, right-clicking and typing is hard.
3. Scroll through the entries one at a time and if an image piques my interest, move it into a new folder called "Finalists". This is mostly a gut-reaction kind of thing. Characters that show a solid sense of design and that make good illustrations are what I go for. Sometimes it might be one particular element or effect that has been done very well that makes me save it, other times it's just an overall impression.
4. Once the Finalists are all ready, I go through those one at a time more carefully. Some will get moved back to the general folder at this point for a variety of reasons, whether it be there were too many other ones like it (one of which maybe was better), or because it just doesn't hit me the same way, or because I just have too many Finalists and so the weaker ones don't make the cut.
5. Start writing the post. I usually haven't yet decided a Winner yet at this point -- something about the process of writing the summary of each one, along with why I liked it, helps crystallize the decision for me. Of course, other times one just jumps out at me right from the get-go and there's no doubt it's going to be the winner. But not usually.
6. Pick the winner and finish the post.

Note that the main criteria is "How good an illustration is this", with "How well does it fit the contest theme" coming in second. The point is to make a good picture, of a cool character.

I struggle sometimes with how arbitrary it all is, and how it's really just my own personal opinion, but there's not much I can do about that and still have a timely event. And hey, it's my site, so I get to be judge and jury, I reckon. That's one reason I was keen on Friday Night Fights, it gives someone besides me the chance to decide what looks good.

Anyway, on to the results for this week!

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