Category Archives: Friday Night Fights

The hour has arrived, my friends, to see who will be participating in the round-robin head-to-head Friday Night Fights matchups. What you are about to witness is an all-against-all cage match pitting 21 versions of a "Space-Based Robin Hood" character based on the Sheriff of Nottingham. The top 16 vote-getters as of next Thursday at midnight will be slotted into a bracket in the traditional 16-vs-1, 15-vs-2 tournament fashion, with the creator who got the most votes being seeded first, the second-most votes seeded second, etc.

But first, we have to pick the best sixteen character images out of the twenty-one submitted, and that's where you -- yes, you there! -- come in.

I have put each character alongside his or her or its individual story (if the creator provided one) so you can find out a little more about what's behind the concept. I highly encourage you to read those as they are a) entertaining and b) key to understanding what the creator did in some cases.

After that you'll find a poll showing all twenty-one entries; vote for up to sixteen characters you like the most, and you can click on an image to see it at a larger size.

Because this version of Friday Night Fights required a cohesive vision unifying the characters in each set, I am providing the creator's online name with each entry. Last time it was all anonymous, but that just doesn't make sense in this format.

Good luck to everyone, and I hope the rest of you have fun seeing what they've come up with!

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This is your last chance to get your Friday Night Fights 2 entries in! This is your last chance to get your Friday Night Fights 2 entries in! This is your last chance to get your Friday Night Fights 2 entries in!

So ... yeah. Get 'em in! We've only got 15 so far, so if you're the only new person entering after this, you're guaranteed a spot.

Like a "dead" super-hero, Friday Night Fights is back from the land of the unliving and crashing into your computer! Wait, maybe that's zombies I'm thinking of.

Regardless, the time has come again for an all-out, knock-down, drag-out fight pitting your creativity directly against other HeroMachine faithful in a week-to-week slugfest.

Here's how it works.

You have two weeks to come up with five HeroMachine creations. Starting on Friday, November 5, I will post all of the "Play In" entries in one big cage-match poll. On Friday, November 12, the top 16 vote getters will face off in a series of head-to-head matchups in traditional tournament bracket fashion. On Friday, November 19, the eight winners of each bracket will face off in another round of head-to-head matchups, and so on until we have one overall winner.

This is a bit different from last time, in that instead of just doing a "first come, first in" qualification process, this time everyone has a shot at getting into the tournament. Who actually does will be decided by the community at large, removing me as the gatekeeper.

Which brings us to the subject of "Theme". Your challenge in this Friday Night Fights is simple:

Create Robin Hood in Space.

That's right, you will come up with five Robin Hood characters, designed to work as a cohesive team in the same space-based setting. You might choose to go with a space opera look like "Star Wars", or a gritty techno-grunge "Firefly", or mech-dominated "Robo-Tech", or a magic-infused "Spacejammer", or something entirely out of your own imagination.

Will you design their look as a cohesive team, like the Fantastic Four, the original X-Men, and the Doom Patrol? Or will you go with a team of highly stylized individuals like the latter-day X-Men, the Justice League, and the Avengers?

Whichever way you go, Robin Hood and his Band of Merry Men must all come from the same shared, space-based creative universe, and they must include Robin Hood himself; Maid Marian; Friar Tuck; Little John; and their nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Here are the rules:

• By the close of business on Thursday, November 4, you must provide to me via email (afdstudios@gmail.com) five character images created via HeroMachine 3, that meet the following criteria. Note that your entry must include all five characters; incomplete character sets will be disqualified and will not be eligible for entry later on.
  1. Characters must include Robin Hood himself; Maid Marian; Friar Tuck; Little John; and their nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham;
  2. Images must be in JPG or PNG format;
  3. No outside manipulation by any image editor other than HeroMachine 3 except for basic cropping;
  4. Each submission must also include a brief description of the space-based setting the characters appear in, and a brief bio of each character.
• On Friday, November 5, all qualified entries of the Sheriff of Nottingham will be posted on HeroMachine.com in a single poll.
• On Friday, November 12, the top 16 vote-getters in the Sheriff of Nottingham poll will face off in a series of head-to-head match-ups featuring the Friar Tuck entries, with the #1 vote getter being matched against the #16 vote getter, #2 going against #15, and so on.
• On Friday, November 19, the eight winners of each Friar Tuck contest will again face off in a series of head-to-head match-ups, this time featuring their Little John entries. Brackets will be re-seeded at this time, with the #1 vote getter from the previous week matching up against the #8 vote getter, #2 vs. #7, and so on.
  The eight entrants who did not advance in the tournament will also have their Little John entries featured in an all-in cage match, with the winner receiving their choice of any HeroMachine 3 item they like.
• On Friday, November 26, the four winners of each Little John match-up will face off again in a series of head-to-head contests, this time featuring their Maid Marian entries. Brackets will again be re-seeded according to overall vote totals from the previous week.
  The twelve entrants who did not advance in the tournament will also have their Maid Marian entries featured in an all-in cage match, with the winner receiving their choice of any HeroMachine 3 item they like.
• Finally, on Friday, December 3, the last two contestants standing will clash with their Robin Hood characters, with the top vote getting as of Friday, December 10 being the overall victor, joining the previous FNF winner Kaldath in the Ring of Honor, and receiving a custom color character sketch of whatever they like (within reason!) by Jeff Hebert. The runner-up will receive a custom black and white character sketch.
  The fourteen entrants who did not advance in the tournament will also have their Little John entries featured in an all-in cage match, with the winner receiving their choice of any HeroMachine 3 item they like.

Hopefully that makes sense. To clarify a bit, here is the bracket, along with each week's character (not including the "Sheriff of Nottingham" play-in round):

To ease the burden a bit, I'll do a Caption Contest on Monday, December 1 instead of another character contest for those of you who don't want the stress of trying to do five characters and enter the regular weekly one as well.

If you have questions, please speak up in the comments. And good luck!

Thanks to everyone who voiced their opinion in the Olympian Games' Tug of War Competition! On behalf of Game-master Hammerknight, I am happy to report the following characters are our winners:

Gold Medal: Team Marvel 1 (The Hulk, Thor, The Thing, She-Hulk, Colossus)
Silver Medal: Team DC 1 (Superman, Superboy Prime, Batman, Wonder Woman, & Captain Marvel)
Bronze Medal: Team Marvel 2 (Galactus, Annihilus, Thanos, Juggernaut, Sentry)

After this, the sixth and final event, the overall medal winner of the First Olympian Games is Marvel with 8, then DC with 6, and Dark Horse with 1.

This concludes this edition of the Games, I want to again thank Hammerknight for coming up with the idea, putting together the contests, and then helping chivvy it all along.

Great job HK, and many thanks to all of you for commenting and voting! If you have ideas for other Big Event contest polls like these, by all means let 'em rip.

This one is fun! The idea is that some group of extra-dimensional omnipotent beings has pulled characters from across all the various publishing universes to compete in team-on-team tug of war contests. Here are the teams (Marvel and DC get multiple teams because, come on, Marvel and DC):

I don't want to prejudice the vote, but you have to think the only thing Batman is contributing to DC Team One is some Bat Lubricant for the rope, because he's got no business hanging out with those heavy hitters. As for their Team Two, the biggest question is who disintegrates whom before the starting gun sounds for the first match.

Anyway, have fun, and by all means let 'er rip in the comments about which group you think has the edge, and which is going to get turned into paste by the opposition.

Thanks to everyone who voiced their opinion in the Olympian Games' Target Shooting Competition! On behalf of Game-master Hammerknight, I am happy to report the following characters are our winners:

Gold Medal: Bullseye (Marvel)
Silver Medal: Green Arrow (DC)
Bronze Medal: Deadpool (Marvel)

I have to say, I'm a bit surprised to see Green Arrow take the silver. I just never thought of him as supernaturally gifted, or as having paranormal abilities like some of the others on the list, but apparently there's a lot of love for normal humans out there. Go Team Homo Sapiens!

After four events, Marvel takes the lead with six medals, DC has five, and Dark Horse still gets the one token medal.

Thanks to everyone who voted! Now you know what to do if you see any of these guys in the middle of a fight -- duck. Not that it'll do you any good.

The ability to blow up stuff at a distance is key for most super-powered comics characters, and the mighty beings in charge of the multi-dimensional Olympian Games would surely not leave the testing of such a skill off the event roster. And so we now ask you to consider the following (vote for three):

I don't want to prejudice the voting, but you by all means should do so in the comments. Make the case for your choices and bend the will of other readers to your own! Feel the POWER of the dark side!

Hammerknight has put together the final slate of contestants for the Swimming competition in the Olympian Games! Vote for the three characters you think would win a 10 mile freestyle race:

Discuss in the comments!