Category Archives: Character of the Week

Do I need to explain this? At all? It's AMS! (Gestures to one side). And Nug! (Gestures to the other side). Collaborating! (Gestures at the screen). That is enough reason to put this as COTW.

Gallery: errr….. hang on, that's not right.

Galleries (that's better): Nugarius on Deviantart & smitty309 on Deviantart

This has only been posted on Deviantart so far, so might as well put the links to those galleries. And anyway, everyone knows where to find both of these guys galleries on the forums.

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This weeks COTW was very hard to choose. There have been at least 4 or 5 creations that could easily have got the nod, from such awesome creators as AMS, Headlessgeneral, Vectorman316 and Suleman, but in the end I felt compelled for some unknown reason to go for this pic by Mr. Nobody. It's a very good example of less being more when it comes to art, the entire atmosphere and impact of the picture coming from a two colour background and a blacked out figure. It may not sound like much, but I'm sure you'll agree, the effect is striking to say the least.

Gallery- Mr. Nobody's Character Gallery

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Very condensed COTW this week, due to the fact that there hasn't been much uploaded in the past week. So no Also Awesome, but hopefully it'll be back next week. I blame summer personally.

But anyways, we still have a COTW and this week it's Suleman. I love the use of the energy effects for the arms and the colour blending on the chest and gloves is pretty damn nice. Nice use of items, helmets for the shoulders and shoulder pads on the head, though I'm not too sure about the "eyes", but they aren't that bad that it puts me off the rest of the picture.

Gallery- Suleman's Creations

I don't think that we've ever featured a w.i.p on Character Of The Week before But then, this is one of Zyp's works in progress, so you already know the level of quality we're talking about here. Just look at the shading. That's gone beyond Zyping (his own technique), it's even gone beyond Jeimuzu's cell-shading technique. It's quite honestly one of the most incredible things I've seen on heromachine and is a testament to what you can do by thinking outside the box with this program.

Gallery: Heros ex Machina

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These last few weeks have really reminded me why I used to hero worship AMS when I first started heromachine. We spent so much time on COTW recently focusing on relatively new community members like Jeimuzu, Candruth and Ubiquitous Pixel and all the while AMS has been sitting there in the background and then, when the new guys let their guard down he's there with stuff like this. It's like listening to any of your favourite modern bands and then going back and listening to the stuff you grew up listening to, you quickly remember why you loved them so much  (if we're talking bands, I'd say AMS is the Led Zeppelin of Heromachine). I suppose I should actually talk about the picture at some point in this post, so I shall quickly point out that AMS still puts over 3/4 of us to shame when it comes to shading and the metallic sections of the costume are sublime.

Gallery- Planet AMS

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Well, it's been a while since we've had an AMS picture as COTW hasn't it. Strange really, because he is still the most consistent member of the community when it comes to his characters and designs. And of course this is no exception (despite the fact it is neither his character nor his design, but an Art Trade with someone on deviantart but anyways). Best bits for me, apart obviously from the shading which is always a highlight when talking about AMS, is the energy effect on the right hand (especially with the white outline that borders the hand, which is a great touch) and the background. Having the background allows the character to stand out more, but the fact that that background is dissected by a number of white lines just makes it that bit more visually interesting.

Gallery- Planet AMS]

And that was originally going to be that. Round of applause for AMS and we jump to the also awesome for the week. However, I woke up this morning and found this in amongst all of the stuff that had been posted while I was asleep.

Now anyone familiar with Mav's work knows that he does a lot of recreations of military vehicles, but this is something else. Not only is the tank superbly constructed (and when I say superb I mean it. He's used zips for treads and a pole-arm as the gun barrel for gods sake). And then you have the background. I love the colours in the sky, it's not your normal blue sky with a bit of yellow to show that it's sunrise, and it really sells the fact that it's set in a desert. Brilliant.

Gallery- Mav's Armory

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You know, sometimes it's so blindingly obvious what COTW is going to be for a certain week that I end up convincing myself that, actually, there has to be something that I'm missing, something that is better. So I look around everyone's galleries from the week and find a ton of great art. And then I end up back at the obvious contender and I'm just like "Ooooooh, so that's why it was so blindly obvious." Not slighting any of the guys who make it into the Also Awesome section, you wouldn't be there if you weren't awesome (it says as much in the title), but sometimes your gut instinct is what you should go with. And of course, the whole point of that missive is because that's what happened this week. "I can't feature Candruth again, that's way too obvious, there's got to be something I've missed." 10 minutes later- "Wait, that's superb, what was I thinking."

Gallery- Candruth's Characters :3

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ba-dum-tish.

So, if you'd have told me at the start of the week that I'd be featuring RobM as the COTW this week I'd have said "cool, haven't had him on there for a while." If you then told me that the picture of his that would be featured would be two prize vegetables, I'd have laughed. "Rob's way to sensible to do that" I'd have thought "and anyway, how would that work? How do you make realistic fruit and veg in Heromachine?" And yet, here we are. And the veg is Rad (-ish). He certainly dropped some sick beets here. I love the shading work here and shadows really make the picture seem more really. Oh, and I have to mention the use of insect wings as leaves. Brilliant.

Gallery: RobM's Machine Works

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Now sometimes there's a picture that comes along that is just frogking brilliant, I mean like toadally awesome. Something just so ribbiting that I feel I may well croak. And this is one of those times (plus, in case anyone hadn't noticed, it gives me an opportunity to pun so hard I just couldn't let it pass). It's just so off the wall. I will include an earlier version as well in this post, because I feel the face is better, but the costume is certainly not something I would change. If I had to say on how to improve this though, I would say the legs could be a tad bulkier, but not by much and that's only a very minor niggle. Anyway, nice one Nug, have a COTW. (Anyone notice the point when I ran out of frog puns?)

And best face of the year award goes to-

He looks so pleased with himself, like he just farted and nobody noticed.

...

Anyway.

Gallery- Nug's Creations

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STOP PRESS!!! We have a COTW that doesn't feature either Jeimuzu or Ubiquitous Pixel for once! Shock Horror!

Anyway, being sensible (which is unusual in of its self), the decision as to whom to feature this week came down to a choice between three different pictures from three classic creators. However, I'm not doing a three way COTW because I did eventually decide to go with DiCicatriz and his Worldbreaker. I'm not really sure why, but this one just stood out to me the most when I was trying to decide, so I went with it.

Gallery- Mi Propia Realidad

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