Category Archives: Pop Quiz

Pop Quiz 3 Results

Many thanks to everyone who took yesterday's Pop Quiz! I asked you to create a "Monster Manual" style creature, and boy did I get some great ones! Rather than picking and choosing, here they all are in one place. A couple of folks submitted more than one entry, so for them I just took the first one they put in.

Note that I've got a new feature installed -- just click on any image and a Lightbox style slide show will start showing you the image, the author, and the name. You can arrow through all of the entries in a row. I hope this makes it easier to view them. Let me know what you think.

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Pop Quiz Monster!

Updated: Due to the site being down for much of the day, this Pop Quiz deadline is moved to tomorrow.

I haven't done one of these in forever, but I'm sick of Open Critique Day and I want to see more of what you all can do. So here's your one-day Pop Quiz challenge:


Make a cool monster.

You only get one entry -- that's right, just one! So make it your best. No backgrounds or elaborate scenes, just an illustration of a monster like you'd find in "Fiend Folio" or the classic "Monster Manual". I'll also need a description and name for the beastie though that shouldn't be in the image itself.

Most of the other rules are the same as for a regular contest, but instead of a whole week I'll announce the winner either tonight or first thing in the morning.

  • All entries must be in JPG or PNG form (BMPs are too big), posted to a publicly accessible website (like ImageShack, PhotoBucket, the UGO Forums, whatever);
  • Entries must be made as a comment or comments to this post, containing a link directly to the image and the character name;
  • Please name your files as [your name]-[character name].[file extension]. 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). If you see "preview" or "rotate" somewhere in the link you're probably doing it wrong.

Good luck!

Halloween Pop Quiz!

In the spirit of Open Critique Day, and in honor of Halloween, today you are going to be providing helpful costume design pointers to other Internet citizens bedeviled by poor fashion sense (for instance, these sad bastards) in our second one-day surprise Pop Quiz!

  1. Go out on the web and find an image of someone in what you think is a poor example of a Halloween costume.
  2. Grab the link to the outfit image, then redesign a better one in HeroMachine.
  3. In a comment to this post, give us your critique of the original (along with a link to the image), and a link like for any character design contest to your proposed re-design.

At the end of the day I'll pick a winner, who will receive their choice of any HM3 item or portrait, or a "sketch of the day" style custom black and white illustration of whatever they like (within reason). Then we can all go out tomorrow and celebrate by dressing up in slutty costumes and begging our neighbors for candy. As Jim Gaffigan says, when he was a kid that was cool, but try it now and they call the cops on you! Probably because he makes a hot Catwoman.

Good luck! And hurry -- just look how badly this guy needs your help: