[Herr D]

*That facial hair makes good kite borders. @Keric: That fox thing is a song? Who is that by?

Clarissa was SURE she could work magic. So when she developed a crush on Matt, a local janitor, she took up concrete sculpture in her first attempt to make him fall madly in love with her.
http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/2014hm/FirstAttempt_zps247e34d2.png
Unfortunately, Matt was in a hurry to finish up that night, and moved a little too fast . . . Clarissa is now convinced her magic doesn’t work, and she has been unable to remove these mysterious plastic shards from her wardrobe no matter what she tries.

[Herr D]

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/2014hm/HerrD-BlipTellsALie_zps16421c21.png
*OSs(blog)

[Herr D]

Sitting woman turned out well.Touche’s good too–if you want to turn him, Paint does that. Do a screen capture into Paint and rotate him. I don’t like that back ankle, but the mask is great. See ya ’round.

[Herr D]

Hey, so you’re doing air next? Nice start. For air you’ll want to play with transparency, I’d bet. Alpha % on the Color menu. You’ll have to play with all three values.

[Herr D]

Hey, nice turnout! [guzzles drink, tosses into trashcan] Let’s do this!
O
..O
….O
Taking the last letter of screen names for convenience, consistency, and Krankheit. Sick of TYPING, in this case–too many resumes–
(5)
Story score: C4.4G3R4.5
Bkgd score: C3.5G2R3.5
Item chair: C3.2G3.2R5
Item hair: C3.2G4R4
Item handle: C4.5G3R5
Whistles: C1G5R1
(10)
Items-story: C8G5R6
Emotional: C9G9.5R9

For story, G gave us an iteration of the creation destroying the creator, and not without flavor. I give that an average score among artists like us. C gave us a great sulk, very concise and emotive. R only slightly beat him there with a plucky under-robot . . . Under-robo-dog? Whatever.
In backgrounds, G got rated down for an almost jarring lack of gore. Not even a bloody footprint or broken wall? As for R, good juxtaposition and placement. As for C, the testing center somehow looks right being spartan, and the elements chosen were story-oriented and appropriate.
The chair was a chair, a facility logo, and a robot head–G, if you had named the facility The Seat Of Power, or something, your score here would have been higher. As a robot head, built-in antennae and eyes are the most ingenious.
The hair was hair, C3P0 sides, and, uh-hmm. If I had been sure whether that was a broken or unfinished arm or a nanite-cord device, I would have scored that higher, too.
The handle was a handle, a lock-belt (and horns?), and limbs. An alien race probably DOES have a belt that you position and then lock in place by touching the button on the end. There’s only one reason I found the limbs idea more ingenious. That freaking elbow. It looks just right. The pose incorporated it perfectly.
As for the items contributing to the story, a score of 5 means they didn’t fail to belong. That elbow actually did rear it’s ugly — uh, elbow again because it CREAKED at me. C’s chair was part of the indignity suffered by poor G’Acknar. Almost a time-out for the alien Rastafarian samurai. Worth a few more points.
I tried to give a rough emotional value in numbers based on how the pic as a whole affected me. G won that category. I did, however, identify strongly with all three entries. C and R had much more dramatic and story-matching posing, so this score is a lot closer than the whistles category
The whistles category is an experiment. I’m not sure I like it yet. A one means no glaring errors in graphic logic. G did a lot of masking separate items, so much that it was practically highlighting and shading. He got back quite a few points here. Obviously lots of work.

By my rubric summation, that means the robotic Reepacheep by mattisagameR won. Pick 3 and prepare to judge next week!

@Mithrilfrog: I hope you saved that, b/c some blood spatter in the background and some editing on that backstory will give you a fantastic thread entry, contest or no. I hope to see it.

@Keric: As your consolation prize, b/c you deserve one, know that I taught my 4-year-old to have her ‘bad guys’ say “v’nask!” as their bad word so she won’t feel the need to say a REAL bad word she probably overheard from television. (I’m not always fast enough with the remote. As a public service announcement, all parents should consider turning the volume down before turning off the television.)

[Herr D]

@matt: Dinoporcupine?

@Keric: A few dogs, some cats, some dinosaurs, and a snake. And a story. (How could I not?)

“Dr. Francois LeBlanc?! They gave that nut a doctorate?”
“Well, it’s honorary. He IS an innovator . . . ”
“Yeah, yeah–so tell me what happened with Blanko and the demolished Oncology Wing.”
“He finished the laser targeting system–”
“That project for the military? Blow up the–”
“–bunker under the building but leave the building intact, that’s right.”
“He did this on the hospital grounds?”
“He had that trailer right outside the construction, remember? Anyway, he reasoned that he could reset the parameters and zap one cell or one cell’s nucleus instead of an entire room–”
“–okay?”
“So he spent the weekend making red sugar capsules, real easy to dissolve when wet, and then he rigged a miniature air-powered machine gun with a chain of them so he could fire them precisely and wired the whole arrangement into the targeting computer.”
“What did he put in the capsules?”
“A cocktail of various growth hormones, recombinant DNA, and mitochondria samples he stole from Oncology Research.”
“What?”
“He had this really old greyhound and thought he’d figured out a way to de-age it.”
“Oh, come on. Instant youth treatments? He actually thought he could repair all the old cells?”
“Apparently so. Anyhow, that’s not nearly what happened.”
“So he blew up the dog?”
“No, that’s the weird part.”
“THAT’S the weird part?”
“He replaced basically the entire dog’s body in seconds, thanks to that machinery. But he messed up the program. The turntable under the animal kept the right speed, the cells got worked on in about the right sequence, but he didn’t specifically program in just the dog’s anatomy. The computer’s fuzzy logic routines blended the anatomy of all the species of all the research samples. The red food coloring got adopted somehow, and now most of the clone is red.”
“C-clone?”
“Well, the cells were basically cloned around and into the dog as bits of it were torn away by the laser and projectile impacts. Then it got loose.”
“It could move after that?”
“It ate most of a security guard, killed one patient with a bite to the gut, burst into the samples room, and started sniffing. A quick-thinking orderly noticed it was only eating cancer samples. He dumped a bunch of them on the floor and locked it in. Then he wheeled every patient he could get to up to the door and back to their rooms until they tranked the clone.”
“Why on earth would he do that?”
“The creature only tried to get at the patients who had cancer. It’s being hailed as a new diagnostic tool.”
“What blew up the Oncology Wing?”
“Armed security shot a tank of oh-two trying for the creature.”
“Naturally Blanko isn’t being held responsible for any of this.”
“No. The guard and the patient the creature killed both had inoperable terminal cancer. The guard wasn’t supposed to be working. He’d lied about being fit for duty to try for his pension.”
“And that’s enough to keep Blanko out of trouble?”
“No. One of the patients the orderly wheeled up for sniffing was the mayor.”
“OH COME ON!”
“I know, Dave.”
“I make a mistake and I miss a promotion. You make a mistake and get no raise. HE steals and goes Frankenstein on us and gets an HONORARY DOCTORATE?!”
“Yeap.”
[Dave exits, slamming the door]
“I guess I’ll let someone ELSE tell him we’ve been elected to clean the creature’s cage. I hope it’s at least over the formaldehyde sickness . . . ”

[Herr D]

“Dr. Francois LeBlanc?! They gave that nut a doctorate?”
“Well, it’s honorary. He IS an innovator . . . ”
“Yeah, yeah–so tell me what happened with Blanko and the demolished Oncology Wing.”
“He finished the laser targeting system–”
“That project for the military? Blow up the–”
“–bunker under the building but leave the building intact, that’s right.”
“He did this on the hospital grounds?”
“He had that trailer right outside the construction, remember? Anyway, he reasoned that he could reset the parameters and zap one cell or one cell’s nucleus instead of an entire room–”
“–okay?”
“So he spent the weekend making red sugar capsules, real easy to dissolve when wet, and then he rigged a miniature air-powered machine gun with a chain of them so he could fire them precisely and wired the whole arrangement into the targeting computer.”
“What did he put in the capsules?”
“A cocktail of various growth hormones, recombinant DNA, and mitochondria samples he stole from Oncology Research.”
“What?”
“He had this really old greyhound and thought he’d figured out a way to de-age it.”
“Oh, come on. Instant youth treatments? He actually thought he could repair all the old cells?”
“Apparently so. Anyhow, that’s not nearly what happened.”
“So he blew up the dog?”
“No, that’s the weird part.”
“THAT’S the weird part?”
“He replaced basically the entire dog’s body in seconds, thanks to that machinery. But he messed up the program. The turntable under the animal kept the right speed, the cells got worked on in about the right sequence, but he didn’t specifically program in just the dog’s anatomy. The computer’s fuzzy logic routines blended the anatomy of all the species of all the research samples. The red food coloring got adopted somehow, and now most of the clone is red.”
“C-clone?”
“Well, the cells were basically cloned around and into the dog as bits of it were torn away by the laser and projectile impacts. Then it got loose.”
“It could move after that?”
“It ate most of a security guard, killed one patient with a bite to the gut, burst into the samples room, and started sniffing. A quick-thinking orderly noticed it was only eating cancer samples. He dumped a bunch of them on the floor and locked it in. Then he wheeled every patient he could get to up to the door and back to their rooms until they tranked the clone.”
“Why on earth would he do that?”
“The creature only tried to get at the patients who had cancer. It’s being hailed as a new diagnostic tool.”
“What blew up the Oncology Wing?”
“Armed security shot a tank of oh-two trying for the creature.”
“Naturally Blanko isn’t being held responsible for any of this.”
“No. The guard and the patient the creature killed both had inoperable terminal cancer. The guard wasn’t supposed to be working. He’d lied about being fit for duty to try for his pension.”
“And that’s enough to keep Blanko out of trouble?”
“No. One of the patients the orderly wheeled up for sniffing was the mayor.”
“OH COME ON!”
“I know, Dave.”
“I make a mistake and I miss a promotion. You make a mistake and get no raise. HE steals and goes Frankenstein on us and gets an HONORARY DOCTORATE?!”
“Yeap.”
[Dave exits, slamming the door]
“I guess I’ll let someone ELSE tell him we’ve been elected to clean the creature’s cage. I hope it’s at least over the formaldehyde sickness . . . ”

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/jamais5/2014hm/SuccessfulClone_zps8c342aa3.png

*KTc

[Herr D]

Regarding Whirlybird, the only spiral I like in hm3 is the ‘tornado’ effect. If you make it huge, very transparent, and ‘cut off’ the tail, you might have a nice wind effect.

[Herr D]

–Or you could move the bottle and forearm up just a bit, making it be his ‘shield arm’ position, where he is angrily fisting the bottle forward the onlooker. Add a shadow of the forearm and bottle on the torso?

[Herr D]

Yes, I’m up to date now. I always check out the blog last, so I posted needlessly. You can erase this whole thing if it won’t be instructive.

[Herr D]

Yah, not many custom cityscape options. Maybe people find them easy? Well, here’s one I made.

[Herr D]

I should mention your background for the Fai-mer looks very nice. Might be worth copying to custom backgrounds.

[Herr D]

@Anarchangel said:

Squid babies???

I love it.

Awwh, me too; I should get out some more baby pictures . . . and that’s quite a tasty-looking lizardess you’ve got there. As for your older stuff, I can see you’re moving from toonier to more realistic. Keep that up.

[Herr D]

Blue would look good too, but regardless, a couple of well-placed straps might make it logical.

[Herr D]

I would guess Wild went good and Tiger went bad.

[Author]

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