Welcome to Captain Emerald's Random Stuff Site!
This is basically just a random, private page of mine where I can show off whatever I feel like at the moment. Originally it was going to be a Red Dwarf gallery, since I love to take screenshots and hadn't at the time seen that many good galleries of the show out there.
Then I discovered that I was by FAR not first and most of my favourite pictures had already been snapped by other fans, so I decided to just turn this into a "random whatever" page. But Captain Emerald--a name gotten from a Red Dwarf in-joke--is still in charge of this page. Heh.
Anyway, at the moment I feel like using this place as a gallery for my Hero Maker silliness. It got to where I had too many to show them individually, so I'm just gonna put all my favourite ones here--that will also allow me to write up proper captions/snarky comments about each one, in a semi-permanent sense. (As opposed to being on a messageboard or something, constantly getting pushed down the page over time.)
Some of these were done using the normal version of Hero Machine 2, some were done using the full version, which I...erm..."obtained"...somewhere. Heh...
"Captain Bloodloss"
After introducing the Hero Maker to the MST3K board I frequent, somebody made a request to see
"Captain Bloodloss". Having no idea what pop culture reference he was actually getting it
from, two of us decided to make up our own interpretations of the name, based purely off of what it
sounded like to each of us.
Here's my rendition. I didn't intend to come out with a bishie demon/vampire/gothboy; I wanted
something a bit more beat up looking--but oh well. At least he's raggedy. The weaponry is to
make it look as if he's also capable of causing bloodloss to others. Heh.
"Captain Chaotica!!"
It's me! More or less the real me, not me as a superhero/villainess. Yes, I do have a
leather trenchcoat and a sword rather similar to those (the coat is almost spot on) and an
Ankh necklace, only not quite so big and silver instead of gold. (Gold looked better with the colour
scheme of the picture, though.) Features and colouring-wise, this isn't too far off, either. This is
about what I tend to wear in public during the winter, pretty much. Well, sans the sword. Usually.
:P
"Queen Cleolanta"
Or a generic slinky villianess from an old black-and-white sci-fi movie/serial in general, anyway.
This was named after Cleolanta, from the old "Rocky Jones" show but doesn't look that much like
her, specifically. Still, I had fun designing her outfit. It could be a touch cheesier/slinkier, but
hey.
"Demona"
Yes, it's everybody's favourite tragic/crazed sympathetic maniacal Gargoyle villainess, Demona!
This is as close as I could come to her appearance with the original Hero Maker Version 2, but it's
not terribly far off. I doubt I could get much closer using the full version.
"Dragon Wing"
Nothing terribly deep on this one; it's one of my earliest Hero Maker experiments and I was
basically just fooling around with all the Chinese-y looking options. And I wanted an excuse to use
that little baby dragon/fire-drake thing. Heh. He isn't anybody in particular, as far as I know.
Though I suppose his outfit and hairstyle aren't too far off from boy-type Ranma...
"Dr. Electra Ampere Farad"
My own Darkwing Duck universe characters (wait a minute...do I even HAVE any?! Not counting
alternate-universe counterparts of existing characters...) don't translate into the Hero Maker style
very well. But for the heck of it one day I decided to take one of my favourite fancharacters of
somebody else--the one who used to be known as "Zippy the Wonder-Pest"--and run her
(er, the character, not the author) through this thing to see how close I could come to the
character's appearance.
The answer was: Pretty dang close. Dr. Farad is technically a furry but looks very close
to a human, and the hair and clothing options available on the normal Hero Maker 2 came REALLY
close to what she actually wears. (And I'm going by the author's own illustrations here, too, not just
the text description in the stories.) The only thing missing is the grey borders/trim on the uniform,
including the collar, and the neckline shouldn't be quite so plunging. And she sould have a
somewhat more animal-y looking nose. Otherwise, this ain't a half-bad resemblance.
"Periwinkle"
Again, nothing terribly deep here--just a random faery. I wanted to play around with the wing
options and do somebody with non-conventional colouring. I guess I was kinda going for a
"Midsummer Night's Dream" thing here, what with the flower-like name and vaguely Greek style
clothing. (Is there a flower called a Periwinkle? I have a feeling there is, but I don't know...)
"Geekman!"
Look! On the ground! Is it a firefighter? Is it a rescue worker? No! It's BICYCLE REPAIR MA--er, I
mean GEEKMAN! Defender of Dorks! Protector of Pockets!
...okay, to be honest, I just made this guy in an attempt to see exactly how NON-"heroic"/dramatic I
could get, with what was available in the Hero Maker. And I still ended up with somebody in a
"disguise" about as subtle and tricky as Superman putting on glasses to be Clark Kent... :P
I also made up a female counterpart, "Nerd-Girl!" but she wasn't as funny-looking.
"Cat"
It's Cat, from "Red Dwarf", or as close as I could come. The outfit is based off of the one he was
wearing to sing "Tongue Tied" at the beginning of the Alternate Universe episode.
"The Gorgon"
A major character from the "Xanth" novels by Piers Anthony, The Gorgon never gets a proper
name...yet none is needed, and with Xanth names being the way they are, who's to say hers is any
more "inproper" than anyone else's, anyway. At any rate, she's supposed to be incredibly
beautiful, not ugly, and it's simply her inborn magic power that turns people to stone, when
they look at her whole, uncovered face. (So if she wears sunglasses, she's cool to go out in
public.) She can't control said talent, and it grew more powerful as she matured--first it only
worked on humanoid males, then eventually on EVERY living thing that is capable of seeing at
all.
Anyway, this is my rendition of what she might look like if you could look at her safely.
Only she should be a lot bustier if she's to fit her actual book description.
"Grimma"
My Shilla character, more or less. She's a Gnome, a tough little warrior-chick. I got the name from
the Bromeliad trilogy by Terry Pratchett--the main female Nome was named "Grimma". The
colouring comes from the Dragonlance style Tinker Gnomes, however--the brown skin, pure white
hair, and blue or lavendar eyes--and so in that sense the character seen here is also kind of
modeled after my old Dragonlance gnome character, Gnera. In fact I very easily could've just
named her that. But I didn't feel like it.
"Jessie Rimmer"
My Red Dwarf universe character..another one I had fun making but can never actualy put in a
story (I seem to do that a lot...) Her full name, once I finally worked it out, is "Arcadia
Jezebel Rimmer Crane", but while I was developing the character I nicknamingly referred to her as
"Jessie Rimmer" in my mind so often that the name kinda stuck, hence the labels on these
pictures.
The short version of Jessie's story is that she's the created-as-a-hologram "daughter" of Nirvanah
Crane from the Holoship "Echelon" and our own Arnold J. Rimmer--programmed in a computer
databank with traits from both "parents"--and through many different circumstances she ends up
having a hard and weird life...er, existence, for about 400 years, and eventually becomes the
"ship's counselor" on the abandoned ship she's stuck on, through taking correspondence
courses. So the rank of ensign she holds is legit...at least, as legit as you can get 3 million years
into the future when all the human government systems and so forth have long broken down.
She's a bit better of an officer than her "dad" but nowhere near as brilliant and perfect as her
"mom", and there's more to her story than that, but those are the basics.
Anyway, the first picture is her in an outfit as close as I could come to Rimmer's snazzy "hologram
uniform" from Series 3-6ish, the second is what she might've looked like if she HAD made into the
Echelon's crew; the third is her "High" version as inspired by the episode "Demons and Angels",
and the fourth is of course the Low one based off the same episode. I also drew a picture of her in
the three forms--normal, high and low--by freehand, which is way better than these, but this is
FAIRLY close to what I was picturing...
The H's were added by hand (in Paint) afterwards, of course--they don't exist in the Hero Maker
template.
"Kim Possible"
(sings, very quickly) "Call me, beep me, ifyouwannareach me, if youwannapage me, that'sokay..."
Yes, it's everybody's favourite buttkicking teenage redheaded superheroine--well, I like her,
anyway--Kim Possible! Or as close as I could get using the Hero Maker. Heh.
"Dave Lister"
Another Red Dwarf character, here's David Lister, or as close to him as I could come. Technically
he should be a good bit smellier and sloppier looking, but this is fairly messy, at
least...
"Simon the Sorcerer"
The main character of a semi-obscure cartoony adventure computer game that I discovered
recently. Naturally he's nowhere near this buff, being a scrawny little teenage wizard, but the outfit
isn't too far off. (He doesn't wear glasses, really, but I decided he'd look better with 'em.) And I
even included Calypso's loyal dog as his "companion".
"Llyrisstha"
My old "Hollow World" (D&D) character. I managed to get her to come out looking surprisingly
close to how I imagined her, actually. She's supposed to be this creepy, pale, sinister warrior sort
of looming delicately out of the shadow behind you when you least suspect it...she's a
Schattenalfen, a type of Shadow Elf from so far down that they never see sunlight at all,
and even moonlight will harm them slightly. (For every round my character might spend with her
skin exposed to sunlight, she'd actually lose hit points!)
But they still have the Elfin instinct to be among trees, nature, in the breezes of the forest, etc. so
the fact that they CAN'T go there anymore has made them twisted, angry and bitter, as you might
imagine. Hence, the Schattenalfen are a (to me) intriguing mix of sinister and sympathetic--just the
way I like my villians. And that's why I made up a character who was one.
"Loki, God of Fire and Chaos"
My favourite Norse god (and one of my favourite mythological characters ever, in fact), done up
Hero Maker style. Not perfect, but I still like it--there's a certain cunning in his eyes...
"Mr. B. Natural"
"I'm here to awaken the spirit of music in you! And you! And YOU! Knew your father I did!" A bit of
(in a way) MST3K-related silliness...it's the infamous "Mr." B. Natural (who was clearly a woman,
so I used the female body template for this character quite on purpose), possibly THE most
disturbing character created to advertise something, ever. Or in the top 10, anyway (I'd put those
horrible ugly puppet things that advertised for Quizno's Subs way up there, too, personally). I kept
seeing that musical-note aura every time I thought about giving an aura to a character, so it was
inevitable that I'd have to find an excuse to use the thing eventually...
"Reverend Beltaine Mulcahy"
When I told my family about the Hero Maker, they instantly all had to use it to make up their Star
Trek characters (at least, those who had Star Trek characters.) Here is my mom's character, or
as close to it as she could come. Reverend Mulcahy is the ship's chaplain, and she's a witch. Or
a Wiccan, to be precise. There's a running gag going around the ship--told to every quaking little
newbie ensign who has been told to report to her office and is nervous about it--that she hasn't
ACTUALLY turned anybody into a frog...yet. Hence the "and Ensign Smith" bit...the gag is,
she turned him into a frog. :P
The character should be a bit older looking and there's supposed to be some hair in front of the
face as well as the long braid in back, but this is as close as we could get with what was
available.
"Robin Chesterfield"
My Discworld character, Robin Chesterfield, a student wizard at Unseen University in
Ankh-Morpork. They don't normally allow females in, but she's kinda doing the "Yentl" thing and
disguising herself as a boy--which, what with the really covering robes that happen to be the
standard wizarding uniform and the way most people at this school, a HUGE place it's very easy to
get lost in, tend to avoid each others' company as much as possible--isn't as hard as you might
thing. Of course you can see her figure in these robes, but hey. It's the Hero Maker.
"Saruken-Sama"
Or Japanese for, roughly, "Lord Monkey Fist". One of my earliest usages of the Hero Maker, here
we see me trying to recreate my favourite villian from Kim Possible. I came fairly close,
anyway...
"Captain Swithenenangfashtali"
Or "Swift" for short. Here's my Star Trek character--a cheetah-lady from a race that appears in a
few of the novels. I've had this character since around 1986, I believe--maybe longer. (Wow, am I
old.) There should be spots on her tail, but eh, close enough. Notice the belt with like tricorders
and stuff in it instead of heavy weaponry--she's the science officer. Despite her ferocious
appearance, she's really more of a geek than a warrior.
"Tiger Claw"
Another one of my earliest usages of the engine, here we see "Tiger Claw" (not her real name), a
character I made up for the heck of it one day. And that's all you need to know about her. :P
"Urd"
My favourite character from the manga "Oh! My Goddess!" is Urd, whom I have sorta nicknamed
"The Trickster Goddess". It SUITS her, it really does, if you read the manga...anyway..this is fairly
close to how she looks. The outfit could be a fair bit more elaborate (and a bit skimpier/more
slinky), but hey.
"Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy"
Basically I was having too much fun with the new actual-skirt options (on the full version of Hero
Maker 2) and my discovery of how to make things transparent, here. I haven't actually seen the
movie "Barbarella" yet, by the way--even though, as a Duranie, I guess I should someday. But
anyway, I like the way this turned out. Heh.
A random barbarian chick. Do you have a name for her? 'Cos I don't. But I liked her too much not
to save her picture.
"Commando Cody"
Aka the original "Rocketeer" character, from the 1951 serial "Radar Men from the Moon". This is
another MST3K-ish-inspired one--we had a whole thread in which we were encouraged to do as
many MST3K/MSTed characters as we wanted, with the Hero Maker.
"Kary, Goddess of Hellfire"
I AM the Goddess of Hellfire, and I bring you....FIRE! Heh. Anyway, I felt like playing around with
the more supernatural-looking options...and came up with this. I was going for the Fiend of Fire
from the original Final Fantasy game on the NES, and this is as close as I could get. The way I
originally drew her, she wasn't wearing anything at all and her body just disappeared into a thing of
flames--with a wide jet of flame swirling around her torso at conveniently just the right
places to cover the areas of the body that modesty demands be covered...but no actual
clothing.
In this picture, well, a body-dissolves-into-flames-below-the-waist option wasn't there, and the swirl
of fire spiralling around the body wasn't either, so I did the next best thing and just made her
clothing flimsy and insubstantial, partially transparent. I mean, heh. She's a goddess. Who isn't
even made out of normal flesh anyway. She's not required to wear clothing at all. The tail
is supposed to represent...I don't know, a phoenix maybe?--the wings are those of a dragon, and
the staff is supposed to be made of crystal or something.
Okay, this is a tad disturbing looking I know, but basically I felt like seeing how many of the
Darkwing Duck characters I could make with this thing..in humanoid form. (It'd have to be.) But I
figure, hey, people draw the Sonic characters as humans fairly often, so what's the big...?
Anyway, Bushroot is actually kinda handsome here as a male dryad or whatever the phrack he
is--more buff than I'd like and his hair isn't nearly "petal"-ish enough, but eh. At least he looks like
he's at least part plant, and a Protector of the Forest. Good enough.
"Church"
From "Red Vs. Blue"...my friend Gos suggested I try using the South Park character generator to
"make the RVB guys"...unfortunately I (a) have not only NO freaking idea of what the characters
look like underneath their outfits, but I also haven't even imagined, wondered or speculated
about it that much, and (b) I'm not used enough to the extremely stylised, simple South Park style
of animation, either. Basically I would have to make TWO huge leaps of imagination and TWO
huge amounts of exception/"close-enough"-ish-ness at the same time, to make the Red Vs. Blue
characters in the South Park generator. I mean, I don't even have an opinion about how
they're supposed to look; let alone information--and if I drew them in South Park style, they'd look
even LESS like what I might vaguely kind of a little bit imagine, if you forced me to imagine them at
all. I dunno.
But to show willing, I made two of them in the Hero Maker anyway, instead, seeing as how that's
more detailed and closer to the actual drawing style of Red Vs. Blue. I don't have to make as
much of a mental leap with this character designer, plus, they have some futuristic armour type
stuff options available. Here we see Church, in his "ghost" form--hence the pale blueish-silver
colour on everything and the ghostly aura. I could've drawn him the way he looks later on, but
nah.
"Dr. Forrester"
An actual MST3K character this time, it's Dr. F! Sort of. Yes, yes, I know that's the exact same
fluffy/spiky hairdo I use on everybody, I know, I know. It's the only hairstyle even remotely
close to his, is the problem. :P The green labcoat is nice, though, as is the expression. The white
streak I had to draw in myself afterwards, of course--oh, and the moustache. They don't have one
of the right kind.
"Darkwing...Human?!"
"I am the terror that stalks in the night. I am the popcorn hull stuck between the teeth of crime.
I...am DARKWING....er...duck?"
Yeah, it's Darkwing as a human. Why? Because I saw that new double-breasted coat and had to
use it somewhere. I debated whether to make his pants (of course he has to wear pants
as a human...) white or orange; finally decided on orange as it didn't blare out from the picture as
badly as the white--the rest of it is in rather dark colours, after all.
"Fleur de la Coeur"
...or however the heck you spell that. Anyway, I got on a Harry Potterish kick with this thing the
other night and did a few characters from that universe in it. I was a bit unhappy with
how...mundane Fleur looked in the movie--the girl who was supposed to be so exotically,
ethereally lovely, floating and swirling elegantly through the castle in her pale, flowing blue robes,
her long, long platinum blonde hair streaming behind her, as if she was not quite real but a fairy
creature somehow brought to earth--the one who's supposed to be so startlingly,
different-way beautiful, in the books. She's supposed to be one-fourth magical being (Veela), but
the one in the movie did not LOOK it at all. She was pretty, but in such an...ordinary way.
A flavour-of-the-week trendily cute little generic blonde starlet kind of way. Well, not quite THAT
bad, but it wasn't what I was imagining.
THIS, however, is a bit closer. The hair needs to be longer and more free, more straight, the robes
should be swirling around her body instead of being more or less at rest, but this is closer, what
with the light, filmy cape and the very pale skin, etc. (And the haughty expression--that's her, too).
Someday I'll just go ahead and draw my own picture of her. I wanted to, when I first read Goblet of
Fire, but never got around to it. (It's not so much that I really love the character--but I got this VERY
striking, detailed, vivid mental image in my head when I first read her description, and I wanna get it
out of my brain and safely onto paper. Or pixels. :P)
"TV's Frank"
What's to say...it's Dr. F's hapless assistant from MST3K. This is as close as I could get, but it's
not too bad... Poor Frank. He's got to be one of THE most abused characters in fiction I can think
of, or at least from things that are meant to be comedies, anyway.
"Quiverwing Quack!"
...sort of. I'm really not that happy with this one, but decided to include it for the sake of
completeness...it's Gosalyn Mallard, as both an adult and a human. I always swore I would never
draw the fan-cliche Adult Quiverwing Quack, but I couldn't get clothes that looked even
close to her normal civillian outfit, so...
Well, at least I didn't actually DRAW this. :P
"Hermione Granger"
More Harry Potter goodness...I liked this new wavier, messier female hairstyle and had to use it
somewhere. And we have actual wands that characters can hold in their hands now, too! The
resemblance to the "real" Hermione here is not too shabby, actually.
"Inger the Dark"
Or Inga, or Enger, or whatever the hell her name is...anyway, my favourite character from the
movie "Viking Women and the Sea Serpent" (or the full name: "The Saga of the Viking Women and
their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent"). A cheesy movie but kinda fun, and Inger's
a cool character--she starts off all sinister and dark, yet ends up sacrificing herself to save the
others when she realises what's really going on. Also, she has wicked-cool
sorcoress/priestess type powers and can call upon Thor to smack somebody with a lightning
bolt--for real! Definitely not somebody I'd mess with. She kinda reminds me of both Kikyo from
"Inuyasha" and Sailor Mars/Rei from "Sailor Moon"...
"Turanga Leela"
It's everybody's favourite sarcastic butt-kicking cyclops heroine--Leela, from Futurama! Well, kind
of. I wish the eye wasn't quite so close to the nose, and the hairstyle needs to have bangs and the
ponytail significantly higher on the head. But otherwise, it's not terrible. The "wrist-thing" is about
right...
"Launchpad"
And here we have good ol' LP as a human. Despite the fact that I couldn't make the hair-bangs go
in front of the pilot's helmet (which is a new feature in the full version of the Hero Maker
thingie, whoo-hoo!) and the fact that he isn't quite THAT hugely broad-shouldered and whatnot, I'm
still fairly happy with how this turned out. Something about it is just...him, don'tcha think?
Something in the eyes...
"Megavolt!"
Or rather Megawatt. Er, sort of. I know this one is beyond wrong looking, but I saw the
new animal-head options and couldn't resist. He looks way more like an actual RATTY rat here
than he should, but hey. At least I managed to keep him from being human like all the other Hero
Maker Darkwing characters. He'd look better if I could somehow put TWO belts on him at
once--that one with the sort of electrical equipment attached to it, and the one that has the
criss-crossing straps across the chest--that'd be closer to his actual outfit--but since I could only
have one, I chose the criss-cross one 'cos at least it also has a waist-belt component. And the
electro-gun, jumpsuit, gloves, goggles and boots are all fairly close...
This is "Megawatt" (in other words, the teenage version) 'cos he's got that Afro hairstyle (which
conveniently covers up the ears on the rat head and makes him look a skosh more like our Megsy),
and notice--no battery on the back.
"Molly Gwendolyn Featherstone"
My Harry Potter universe character, that I made up a long time ago. Her hair should be curly
instead of just wavy/a bit messier, and she should look a little dorkier, but otherwise this is
pretty close to what I was picturing...
(Why the orange vest with blue tie? Well, being a witch doesn't give you any guarantee of
FASHION sense... :P)
"Morgana McCawber"
Well, I had to show her with her hair down instead of in its usual style (and put the silver streaks in
by hand, in Paint, afterwards) and I don't have the amulet thingie on the front of her dress or the
thingie that attaches to the one sleeve, but otherwise I'm fairly happy with this. I mean, if you know
Morgana, you take a look at this and are instantly reminded of that character, despite the
differences in both species and outfit. Something about it is just plain...HER. It works.
"Nega-Man"
Once I had Human Darkwing, it was the easiest thing in the world to leave the outfit/features
basically alone but just change the colours to get Negaduck...er, Human. So I did.
"Observer"
My favourite character from the Sci-Fi days of MST3K (and the only one even remotely render-able
with the plain version of Hero Maker 2), it's ol' Brain Guy himself. He's cool.
"Pearl Forrester"
Just an evil gal who wants to rule the world...I wanted to draw her to go along with my Dr. F. at the
MST3K board, but with the original version of Hero Maker 2 it's impossible. There aren't any
hairstyles even _close_ to right, for a start. But the full version has a bun hairstyle, a
more...Reubenesque female figure, and a coat that is DANG close to her snazzy Castle Forrester
uniform, among other things, so finally Mrs. Forrester could terrorise Mike and the 'bots across the
universe in style. And we even have a sinister castle in the background and everything! (The ape
down there would be sort of representing Bobo, of course. Heh.)
"Quackerjack"
Another case of seeing something new and building a character around it...in this case, I saw that
now I had a jester's cap, and just HAD to make Quackerjack (as a human). This isn't too far off
from his actual outfit, sans the fact that he has the same pattern on both sleeves instead of
polka-dots on one and stripes on the other...
The box is supposed to be like a toolbox, to help him make his toys. And the stick of dynamite is
because he likes to make DANGEROUS toys. Bwahahaha.
"Shego"
Now I can do a proper version of Shego--the hair is WAY closer to how it should be, the
energy-glows look right (including the little darker floaty bits inside them), and I can actually adjust
colours to get a very, very pale shade of green for her skin. And I like the expression. This isn't
perfect, but it sure gets the idea of who it's supposed to be across.
"Susan Death"
New fancy blouse/skirt options with layers and bodices + new hairstyle options + new actual
scythe to be held in the hands + new "cosmic" background + my Discworld fandom = my just
HAVING to do a Hero Maker rendition of Susan Sto Helit, one of my favourite characters from that
series. This isn't too bad, really. Okay, so she doesn't have the black streak in her hair. But it
really isn't that bad...
(The horse is supposed to be Binky, naturally.)
"Tex"
My one and only attempt to show a Red Vs. Blue character as they "really" look, i.e., outside of their
ubiquitous cyber-armour. I have no idea. I just have never THOUGHT about the characters all that
deeply. I gave her an angry expression, militaristic/futuristic armour yet it's more fitting to the
body--not quite as completely-identity-hiding as the normal stuff--BIG weaponry, of course, simple
hairstyle, and red hair since everybody knows redheads have hot tempers. I just don't know. I
couldn't think of anything, so I had to resort to cliches. I'm sorry.
It does kinda look like how I might imagine her IF I went around imagining what she looked like at
all, though...
"Lady Time"
My rendition of Time, frozen in her prison of ice, from "The Thief of Time" (Discworld). Everything
is pale and transparent to indicate...ice, and not-quite-realness, not quite being all there and solid at
one time. (And she's a goddess, in a way, so hey.) I used the futuristic "robot" wings 'cos I
figured, hey, it's Time. If she doesn't look sort of representative of the future, which
anthropomorphic personification will?
"Silver Morgan"
Mamie Van Doren's character from the movie "Girls' Town". Another MST3K-related one I made
for the messageboard. She should have bangs, and big buttons on her overall type thingie, but
otherwise this is fairly close to an outfit she wore during a good chunk of the movie.
"Old-Fashioned Lady"
I saw the long, flowing skirt, hat with feathers, and umbrella/parasol things, and made...this. I don't
have a name for her. I just liked the idea of being able to dress up somebody old-fashioned and
elegant in the Hero Maker, instead of the usual look. (A LOT of this was inspired by me seeing the
new options in the full version, once I finally got it, and being unable to restrain myself from going
nuts...)
"Joel Robinson"
Of COURSE this was actually the first of the MST3K-related characters I made in the Hero
Machine; don't be silly! ;) I had plans to also draw his KTMA and Season One versions, as well as
maybe give him his sometime-goatee, but none of the hairstyles or beards looked quite right. So
hey. This version's not too bad of a resemblance, though.
"Evil Queen"
Actually I don't know if she's evil or just kinda snooty. This isn't supposed to be anybody in
particular--I just wanted to use the new crown, scepter, and fancier dress/blouse options to see if I
could make a sorta Shakespeare-era queen. Or someone from a fairy tale. Whatever.
"Super Marge!"
This is what happens when you stay up too late watching Simpsons epsiodes on DVD, and then
decide to start up the ol' Hero Maker. Kids: Don't try this at home. ;)
To explain the character a bit...well, I had to draw her with her hair down instead of the normal
style, but since I think she looks way better this way, that's no big loss...she's got a
ladle/wooden spoon in one hand to show that she cooks/is a housewife, and a yield sign in the
other because she cares about safety and fixing up Springfield's streets, that kind of thing. The
tiara and the cape are Just Because, to make her look more superheroine...ish. (Don't ask what
the cape is attaching to--it would appear to be glued straight to her skin. :P)
Basically it's the human version of The Canardian...GUARDIAN! Maybe the Springfield Savior?
Eh, that sounds too religious. I'll work on it.
"Chevy Lumina"
Chevy Lumina is my semi-official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy character that I made up many years ago. I briefly RPed as her on a round-robin story at SciFiSites, back when it existed (sniff..I loved that place and AncientSites) aka my actual username then, "Betelgeuse Adams", and that's when I made up her character bio; but I had the name before, when I used it to sign up at Amazon.com with. To this day I occasionally write reviews under that name still.
And I posted on the official H2G2 site's messageboard, back when it existed. How official was it? I'm not kidding in this case--it was Douglas Adams' own site and the man himself showed up from time to time on the messageboard. He even answered a couple of my posts directly!
...they were criticizing posts, where I said how much I disliked the ending of "Mostly Harmless". But the fact remains, I did get to speak to Douglas, which places me alone among the Hitchhiker's Guide fans I know. Which is quite a few.
Anyway. Chevy, (proper Betelgeusian name: "Nuveena Janxel". And yes, I DID get the first name from MST3K...) is a fashion researcher/writer for the Guide. You may have noticed from the above picture, however, that she has TERRIBLE fashion sense! At first this was a liability and almost got her fired; but then the editors of the Guide realised that her cluelessness was entertaining to the point where she was actually bringing in readers--they wanted to know what ridiculous thing she'd say and/or wear next, so they could LAUGH at her. So she was kept on, with the reasons why left a complete mystery, and she even does occasional galactic-wide tri-vid appearances from time to time, which are quite popularly watched.
Chevy--who of course accidentally named herself after an automobile while looking for an "inconspicous" name for her stay on Earth (it was the car my family had at the time in real life, actually) is tall, skinny, has long, curly, reddish-brown hair (the hairstyle here isn't really accurate) that she normally wears in a high ponytail (now THAT part is right), is pale and sharp-featured with really vividly purple eyes, and is actually somewhat attractive in an offbeat way. Her outfits change a lot, but are always clashing and tend to wed patterns that should realistically speaking be divorced as soon as possible.
When she speaks Earth English it comes out with an Australian accent for some unexplained reason, she is strongly addicted to fancy coffee drinks--the sweeter, more elaborate, and more pretentiously named the better--and she lives--if you can call it that, for a building she spends so little time in--in a terminally trendy little flat near the Big Bang Burger Bar. Which she likes a lot better than Milliways. Despite her high-falutin' fashion critic status, she doesn't get along well with snooty formal-wear-only settings.
She's clueless about the way people actually view her fashion advice, but other than that isn't TOO stupid. And she has one famous relative: her neo-sister Captain Zordana Janxel.
"Space Hero"
Captain Zordana Janxel is a character I made up even longer ago than Chevy; in fact, we're talking something like around a decade earlier. She dates from the time period when I made up my own planet, Azura, first discovered Hitchhiker's Guide, wrote up my own wacky alien character "Winglun" who floats off the ground for no reason in much the same way as Fenchurch, created the long-running gag alien delicacy food "diced rhoulagash", made up random bizzarre science-fiction story ideas all the time, created the Beta Centaurians and several other alien races, wrote several short stories about Winglun as well, and had fallen madly in love--so to speak--with Ford Prefect, especially the TV version of him.
I was 14, my eyes had just been opened to a whole new WORLD of British humour, I couldn't stop quoting, and along the way I also discovered for the first time that I posessed voice acting talent (it was while imitating Arthur and Ford that I did my first realistic-sounding British accents.) Hitchhiker's Guide was one of those things that got deeply INTO me from the first time I knew about it and changed me forever. In a good way.
Anyway, during this time period, one day while walking to the bus stop I came up with a short story about this dashing female starship captain (bear in mind this is several years before Captain Janeway) and her many daring exploits, including one in which she met a ship that, it turned out, was full of water, because the aliens living in it were sort of evolved fish-like beings. They had to put on diving suits and swim through the ship in order to talk to the people and help them fix their broken engine. I thought it was terribly original at the time--I hadn't actually READ anything like it at the time. No, I didn't write the story down--it was purely in my head. But I remembered it.
Zordana then survived until the next time I needed an alienish sounding name, then she came back as the "neo-sister" to Chevy. "Janxel" sounds EXTREMELY Hitchhiker's-ish, as a last name, so my main HHG universe character had to have the same name. It was either that or make up a new one. :P
Zordana herself doesn't have much else of a bio, except that she's the daring kind of generic hero that you hear about and despite some exaggerations in her exploits as told by other people, really is pretty darned heroic. She's not an egotistical blowhard who went around stealing other peoples' stories and then memory-charming them or just an actress who got mistaken for being a real hero or anything like that. Although her exploits WERE made into a TV show...after the fact. They were a very popular and long-running Saturday morning kids' show. She would've preferred a dramatic live-action movie series, but eh...animation's cheaper. Whaddya gonna do?
"brave space adventurers" have passed through here since September 15, 2005, but unfortunately they were all wiped out of existence by a white hole. Oh well.
