Category Archives: HeroMachine 3

At the urging of a couple of comments in the previous post, here's an updated version of the propose shoulders-square female figure. The new one's on the left, with "more finishing details" like toenails, better hands, etc. and slimmer hips, along with arms more akimbo:

Let me know your thoughts on these, which you prefer, etc.

I'd like to get your feedback on two possible female templates. The image below has the two generic ones (with faces for reference) in the middle, then two sample characters with outfits on so you can see how they might look dressed.

The major change has been in the pose. We discovered that trying to put a female in the pose the male is in -- arms akimbo, held out from the body, weight evenly distributed, feet on the same level -- made her look very mannish, no matter what her body was like. At the end of the day, the point of this whole thing is to get a drawing that looks good, as if it were commissioned at a convention by a real comics artist, NOT to make my life easier. So I am probably going to have to abandon the concept that the poses would be exactly the same and that it would be up to the user to put it however they wanted. That's still possible, but I have to make the default image, I think, the best it can possibly be for those who don't want to go the extra mile.

I'm curious to get your input on that, as well.

Anyway, here goes:
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I'm working my way through a great usability study Mark Shute did (for which he got an outstanding A+ in a 700 level course -- woot Mark!). Before I actually hack up the code, I wanted to present the basic layout and concept here for your input and feedback.

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On one hand, I'm sad to report that the HM Mini I've been talking about has been canceled again. They didn't like the coloring book idea, so the whole thing is dead at this point.

On the other hand, that loss is your gain, as I have now translated over all of the mech stuff from it to the HeroMachine 3 Alpha! It's in two parts, "BodyMech" and "HeadMech", with the Body set having torsos, arms, and legs. All of this was drawn at a three quarter angle view as opposed to the regular HM straight-on model, so the pieces aren't going to work with most of the existing clothing and such. But you can build a pretty cool looking robot and some of the heads go well on existing creations, giving them a looking-off-into-space look.

Here are a couple of screen shots to show you some of the options:

Let me know what you think, and if you want me to edit the arms so they lack hands (allowing you to drop in your own from Left/Right Hand).

The next few days I'll be working on cleaning this stuff up, adding some more to Mark's great Polearms set, and then we'll see from there.

I've just added the Companion-Vehicles set to the HeroMachine 3 Alpha, including the following:

Most of these were drawn by using Flash's automatic "Trace" feature and then patching, so they're a little different stylistically than most of what is in the program. The very last car (not shown above), the 1920's style roadster, was hand-drawn, I'm curious what you think of the difference between the tracing and the drawing styles. Auto-tracing (no pun intended) is a LOT faster than hand-drawing, I did about six of these in the time it took to draw the one roadster. But, if the quality is different enough, I'll do what I have to do.

Let me know any other vehicles you'd like to see, and while we're at it, any Polearm bits Mark didn't include but that you want to see added in.

It looks like the Mini I was working on has been canceled after three weeks of hard work. Such is life. On the upside, most of these vehicles were drawn for it, so you'll get some spillover benefit. Most of the rest of it is probably not applicable to the main HM but we'll see.