Category Archives: Tips & Tricks

Advice and hints on how to create the perfect character illustration.

Hammerknight Recipe 3: Sit on it

(Hammerknight has once again been kind enough with his time and talent to put together a stellar set of "recipes" or instructions for how to do some pretty neat tricks with the HeroMachine 3 Alpha. With no further ado, I'll turn it on over to him! -- Jeff)

Click any image to embiggen.

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Mechanics of Creation 4: “Females ONLY!” Poses Post

Sorry I'm so late today! As promised last week, here's is the follow-up to my Super-Sizer Poses Post. I have to say, I felt kinda dumb neglecting the larger and more detailed problem of creating females.

Oh, and just so there's no puzzlement from Thursday's post, Hammerknight is doing some work or something for his stuff and asked that I go this one solo instead. Just so you don't think that I'm neglecting him.

So without further ado, let's begin! Continue reading

Create a Character 4: Basic Humans

The one thing I wish I'd done at the beginning of this would be to give a basic art instruction course on the human form. I'm not terrific at drawing a human form, mind you, but I remember enough from those classes to teach it to you on here. And who knows, maybe some of you WILL use some of it to go draw, who knows? Continue reading

Hammerknight’s Recipes, Vol. 1

(Hi everyone! Damien here. Hammerknight is going to be doing a bit of this from now on, and this is his first post! These are some of the how-to's he's been posting on the forums, and he'll be joining me on my Saturday post this week also. After that, you'll be seeing brand-new stuff, and like me, he's always ready to do requests. So give HK a big warm welcome! Continue reading

Mechanics of Creation 3: Super-Sizer Poses Post!

Damien here with the super-giant post on how to make the head-on views of HeroMachine 3 work in your favor! (Or at least not hold you back too much.) So give a big hand to Violodion for suggesting this...almost a week and a half ago, I think? It's been awhile!

Anyway, when Jeff first unveiled HM3 with the new "full-frontal" view, many people including myself were somewhat disappointed.

"Why the change?" we asked and complained.

Well, to be honest, as I've helped Jeff out for the month-ish I've been working with him, there is one very noticeable flaw in creating HeroMachines:  Continue reading

Create A Character 3: It’s Not Stealing PER SE…

Sorry to make this one so much shorter, but I've had a busy week, done a whole other new Masking tutorial (see right, over...no, up now...there ya go, Quick Links! Check it out and let me know if I missed anything!) and a super-awesome Saturday post still in the works. So here we go with the unofficial Finding Inspiration sequel from last week! Continue reading

“The Official Masking Tutorial Work-In-Progress”

Damien here!

All right, apparently we still haven't gathered all the relevant information into one blog post. So I'll give you, right here, a comprehensive list of the abilities and faults concerning Masking. Mostly, it will be a reiteration of everything I've said on the subject in other posts and comments. Continue reading

Mechanics of Creation BONUS!!! A DamienBlog

That's right, today is a BONUS Mechanics of Creation, requested by Whit and seconded by RSC5 within literal seconds of each other. So any brain damage or seizures should be blamed on them. I don't know if they have a really good RSS feed or if they're stalking me. But either way, I am bound by the rather fuzzy terms of my contract with Jeff to write about whatever the dwiddle I care to, so here we go!

(Edited to add: Hey you two, I am so sorry that it turned out like this. I had no idea it would grow into this abomination. Forgive me?)

Today's subject is going to be MASKING. Apparently there's a whole lot more people having trouble with this  than I thought, and certainly others who must want some pointers. So I'm going to tell you a little story about a guy named Mr. Blank. Blankey here is a normal guy who wants to be a cool superhero like Ratman, The Green Batterin' or Sliderman (patents pending.) But he has no way of doing all this without a spiffy costume, so it's time for Queer Eye for the Superhuman Guy Damien's Masking Tutorial! Continue reading

Mechanics of Creation 2: “What You See”

Time for the latest DamienBlog! Today we're going to look at the idea of "What you see isn't what you get." Now, for many of you who've been with this site for awhile (especially you contest finalists!) there's a certain familiarity with the program that allows you to make stuff up from items that weren't intended. Now, I'll help pass this idea on to those who may be struggling with it. Continue reading

The Mechanics of Creation 1: A DamienBlog

Jeff said I could start ANOTHER weekly column if I wanted, and I think this one is closer to the idea of what he wanted me to do in the first place anyway. So I give you Mechanics of Creation, an in-depth look with pretty pictures of how to do some really amazing things with HM3. I'll start off again with my recent winning entry, Fierra the Feyrune, since she took so dadgum much of my time to make look that good.

More after the jump. Continue reading