Heromachine progression
1.
Your super-original plant-themed superhero Flower-Girl needs a picture. Decide to use Heromachine! Look at all the options, forget what you were doing and create a war robot with bear arms instead.
Remember what you were doing and start again with Flower-Girl. Use basic pose, skintight outfit. Face looks weird, but you can’t quite figure out why. Realize you can’t find a flower for her to hold, anywhere.
Get frustrated, ask for help on the Heromachine forums. Get five different options for making the flower, including one made entirely out of forearms. Also, they point out you forgot to add ears. Cry a little bit.
Make the flower, as basic as you can get. No forearms. Sigh in relief.
Weeks later, you’ve made Flower-Girl’s archnemesis Beeboy, best friend Tower-Girl and like ten members of her extended family. Realize you might have a problem.
2.
You revisit your original Flower-Girl design and figure you could do better. You try out some different arm positions, make up a new hairstyle by combining existing ones. Finally figure out how to make a character hold an item in their hand properly. Redesign the costume a little bit, use those new shoes that were added in the latest patch, even though they don’t perfectly fit with the original idea. Feel very proud of yourself, post it on the forums again. Get a positive response, but they point out that you forgot the ears again. Cry a little bit.
Fix the ears, AGAIN, also add a simple background.
3.
You look at Smitty’s gallery and finally begin to understand how he did those poses. Experiment. The result looks like a mutilated Barbie doll. Cry a little bit, start from scratch.
While researching posing, you also realize how shading works in Heromachine. You decide to try everything at once. The resulting pose is… anatomically correct, but awkward, and your shading is garish. Still, you learned something.
A week later, you remake Flower-Girl again and you find you’re actually pleased with the result. You remember the ears this time.
4.
You get frustrated with some item category in Heromachine and just start making your own stuff from bits and pieces. Who needs armor, when you can make your own out of shoulderpads and necklaces? Who needs noses when you can make your own out of geometrical shapes? You finally realize why all of your faces so far looked a little bit off and get angry at yourself. You remake all your old designs, including Flower-Girl’s grandma.
Also, you finally pull off a design with a good pose, beautiful color scheme, cool costume design and a nice background, all in one. It only took you ten hours and four restarts, but you did it.
5.
Newbies are asking you for advice now. You sweat nervously and hope they don’t notice how you use the same shortcuts in every design because you’re so focused on other, tiny details that most viewers will never notice anyway.
6.
Start making flowers out of forearms.
