HeroMachine Blog

[Kaldath]

With 2014 now here, I was wondering how many of you guys read our blog page and how many are strictly here for the forums? I’d also like to know what you all would like to see us add to the content we write about? I can’t promise what you suggest will be implimented and I can not speak for JR, dblade, FRM, or CKnap but I will certainly take your suggestions into consideration and if I think I can do them justice will give them a try, but bare in mind as I am sure some of you have noticed I am not the greatest writer in the world! lol. Also I have been thinking about doing a few of my blog posts in video form instead of typing out an article and will be experimenting with that and posting my first attempt in the next couple weeks with an Anime Talk review. So Machiners get those thinking caps on and give me those opinions as I want to keep our content as fresh as possible!

[JR19759]

I’m also open to suggestions for new content. Like Kaldath, I can’t promise that I’ll be able to do everything, but hopefully we should be able to do a few of the suggestions. Also, if you have any suggestions for topics for the Character Design Contests, I’m open to them. It does get a bit hard trying to think of new topics after a while, especially when there’s been over 150 CDCs since the blog started. The same goes for any of my old topics that have fallen by the way-side (PUP’s, What Were They Thinking, Sci-Fi Corner, Screen Spotlight).

[Linea24]

What about a contest topic about non-humanoid characters?

[Hammerknight]

@JR19759 said:

I’m also open to suggestions for new content. Like Kaldath, I can’t promise that I’ll be able to do everything, but hopefully we should be able to do a few of the suggestions. Also, if you have any suggestions for topics for the Character Design Contests, I’m open to them. It does get a bit hard trying to think of new topics after a while, especially when there’s been over 150 CDCs since the blog started. The same goes for any of my old topics that have fallen by the way-side (PUP’s, What Were They Thinking, Sci-Fi Corner, Screen Spotlight).

I know how you feel.

[Kaldath]

@JR19759 said:

.It does get a bit hard trying to think of new topics after a while, especially when there’s been over 150 CDCs since the blog started. The same goes for any of my old topics that have fallen by the way-side (PUP’s, What Were They Thinking, Sci-Fi Corner, Screen Spotlight).

I know exactly what you are saying, That is the reason why I stopped doing the Bad Costume posts as well as as why I am having trouble coming up with stuff for poll position. I really don’t want to go back to straight up this character vs this character polls again as I feel the more complex topic polls have far more engagment.

[Hammerknight]

Maybe we need to open the window to broaden our horizons. HM has become more than just “comic book art”, we see story writers, RPGers, book cover designers and people that just like to play around with it. Movie topics, gamer topics, writer topics, genre topics, comic book topics, basic design topics, advance design topics, Fantasy, Sci-fi, Mystery, Horror, etc. character discussions, who’s who in and around the comic world, Good Costume designs (instead of just Bad), Trivia games, crossword puzzles ( I did some a while back) and many more things that are out there. I’m sure I can come up with more, but I think I just had a brain drain.

[JR19759]

@HK- I’d be open to bringing the Geek Quiz that I used to host on the forums over to the blog, but again that falls under the “things I had to stop because I ran out of ideas”, so I don’t know how long it would last. I could bring it back every so often though if it’s something people would like to see (just throwing that out there for anyone reading this). I like the idea of crossword puzzles, that’s definitely something I’d do if it could be done. As for good costume design, well, lets just say we’ve lost the mod who was most qualified to talk about such stuff and I’d probably end up just repeating myself each week like I did with COTW.

A lot of people have been asking for the Recipes/ Tips & Tricks to come back. I’m open to this idea, but it’d be nice to have some community participation like there was with the old Recipes. So I’m just going to put this one out there in the hope that maybe a few people show interest, would anyone be interested in putting together any guides to certain techniques in Heromachine for the blog (posing, unusual effects, colour fading, backgrounds, that sort of thing). It doesn’t have to be hugely long or intricate. I know there are a few people out there who I’d like to see Recipes by. Also if you have any suggestions for techniques you’d like to see guides on, I’ll take a look at those and see what I can do (if it’s a very specific request, a reference image might help as well so I know exactly what you are talking about).

[Hammerknight]

I used a site(don’t remember which one) that let you put the words in and then it would create the crossword for you.

[Herr D]

As one of the resident amateur xenobiologists, I can tell you that contests for ‘newly designed’ only characters with physiological traits randomly picked by the contest judge could possibly keep the topics fresh and vary the challenge level. I’d be happy to cast a secondary vote based on anatomical logistics to assist in determining tiebreakers in any contest I don’t enter or don’t make finals for.

Example: XC#1, human-sized, meat-muscled, three legs, dancing–twirling should come easy if the legs are roughly equal, All the big toes on the same side of the three feet can make sense if there is only one big toe and not in the center.

For that matter, you might hold a contest for people to make in hm3 entire pictures of single items they’d like to see in the future. That would bring an element of pride–“I made the inspiration for that out of TWO HUNDRED LAYERS so you can have it in one!”

Another idea would be to reuse some of the more challenging pop quiz ideas and encourage using the week. I’m guessing Jeff wouldn’t mind?

[Herr D]

Oh, and a discussion of splitting pics into separate framed pics might be interesting. There are a surprising number of ways to do that.

[Author]

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