HelmAverse Supers - Reinforcements Arrive

[A3n]

I like Trickster.

Nitpick for Lil'Helm, the "leading" for the lines between powers should be reduced to a max of 5pt. Otherwise you are doing a great job. If you want to add a little more to the image, I would mask the smoke/fog that is covering his front hand. Also to bring up the colour detail in the figure you could adjust it's "curve". Go to Image > Adjustments > Curves...
Then on the curve that appears add a new handle near the bottom left & drag it in a little & do the same for the top right. Like this:

With the Preview option selected just play with the placement until you are happy with it.

Now, the Bomb Drop power; would it be better served starting "After moving when taking a turn with Trickster,..."?

[Sherman Davies]

Whoa, Lil'Helm is like my other Brother From Another Mother! I use a power similar to Bomb Drop on a couple of my cards, but mine is named Trickster. You've raised him well, Mr. Helm.

[japes]

From an art perspective I wanted to both echo A3n's comment about the Curves and also praise your son for the exceptional job of trimming out the mini. Very well done on something that I usually see a little iffy on a lot of customs.

[A3n]

Originally Posted by A3n

Nitpick for Lil'Helm, the "leading" for the lines between powers should be reduced to a max of 5pt.

I just realised that I remember you saying you are using photopea.com. The text measurements it appears to use is in px (pixels) so you will have to adjust yourself I think I remember using something around 30-32px but it is related to the resolution of the overall image and I can't remember if it was that template I used when I remember adjusting the leading.

[Matt Helm]

Originally Posted by Sherman Davies

Whoa, Lil'Helm is like my other Brother From Another Mother! I use a power similar to Bomb Drop on a couple of my cards, but mine is named Trickster. You've raised him well, Mr. Helm.

Thanks, buddy, he totally gets my (our ) philosophy on card design. In fact he understands the nuances of the HelmAverse and the reasons why we do what we do in choosing how to create a custom. If you haven't noticed we do not simply add a character because they exist in comics. That's why we have major characters still not represented. We have several factors that all need to be considered such as:
- aesthetics of a piece - is it appropriately scaled and does it fit in with the others?
- can we come up with powers that represent a fun version of the generic character?
- are the powers unique enough to make the new card different from existing cards? and more importantly does the new design make any other card feel redundant or obsolete?... that would be real bad.
- During testing, does the design encourage the player to play like the character would? (i.e. You don't want a puncher like Superman sitting back and choosing to use his laser eyes on a regular basis).

Originally Posted by japes

From an art perspective I wanted to both echo A3n's comment about the Curves and also praise your son for the exceptional job of trimming out the mini. Very well done on something that I usually see a little iffy on a lot of customs.

Thanks for checking in on us, Japes. The A3n advice has been paramount to Lil'Helm's development so thanks for reinforcing the message. As for trimming the mini, he actually uses his iPhone to capture a cutout of the figure and then cleans it up pretty quickly in photopea. The iPhone is an incredible machine nowadays.

Originally Posted by A3n

I just realised that I remember you saying you are using photopea.com. The text measurements it appears to use is in px (pixels) so you will have to adjust yourself I think I remember using something around 30-32px but it is related to the resolution of the overall image and I can't remember if it was that template I used when I remember adjusting the leading.

Thanks, we noticed that. I have a new design coming for our 150th card (yes there are 4 others we want to finish off before we share a special card) that I really needed to shorten the gap between powers. I was able to come up with something and realized it was based on pixels and not font size.

[Matt Helm]

We are currently 9 days away from my 15 year anniversary on this site... Holy Time Travel, Batman!

It's absolutely crazy that this game and this community has been such a major part of my life for FIFTEEN TEARS. That means Helm Jr. was 5 years old and Lil'Helm was only 2. That means they do not know a world before Heroscapers.com.

So to celebrate my 15th anniversary, I'm going to have some fun. In my Terrain thread, I'm going to share pics of our recent tournament maps which used quite a bit of our custom terrain pieces. I'll also try and scrape some of our past tourney maps just to document how the HelmAverse has evolved.

In this thread, Lil'Helm and I are hoping to get the historic 150th HelmAverse card released. That means we need 4 more completed cards pumped out in the next few days. We've been playtesting both newer designs and tweaked versions of designs that have been back and forth our trial table for years. In fact, we had enough of those that we may even be able to get a 151st card soon after the BIG anniversary reveal.

So, maybe not in this exact order, sometime this month we hope to release:

- Lil'Helm's most out of bounds (or should I say off the board) idea for a card that has zero in common with every other card we've produced.

- Matt will finally share a design that is year's overdue and will finally get SNL's Colin Jost off my back.

- Lil'Helm hopes you've been to the optomologist because he has something he wants you to see.

- Matt has a card that wants to stand on the highest rock and announce, "he is coming"

- And for the 150th, Matt's groundbreaking card IS coming

So, unlike the past when we dropped hints of cards we were working on, these are really about to drop.

Thanks to all who check out this thread for making the last 15 years an amazing time.

~ Special thanks to my partner A3n who was always there for me.

[A3n]

[IAmBatman]

Very cool, Helmsy. It'll be 17 years for me on Valentine's Day. My Heroscapers membership is almost ready to go off to college.

[Tornado]

Happy Anniversary

[Sherman Davies]

Looking forward to all of it. Here's to 15 more years!

[Matt Helm]

The HelmAverse has always been pretty conservative when it comes to working in the Marvelscape arena. We've had a few cards that pushed the boundary ever so slightly in our 15 years but nothing as outside the box as Lil'Helm's latest design.

We had...
- Green Lantern use the Special Attack of other cards.
- Doctor Strange swapped figure positions.
- Professor Zoom changed Order Marker reveal order.
- Ant Man and Punisher used markers (not really outside the norm but definitely rare in the HelmAverse)
- Mirror Master starts the game with three destructible objects
- Captain Cold starts the game with two personal glyphs

... but I think we changed our world with this one. When I said it has ZERO in common with other cards I lied. The zeroes are very "uncommon" as they don't show up on any other card but this one.



I know what you're thinking, and you are reading it correctly in that Deadman moves from card to card and never really enters the board. The points were really hard to figure on this guy. Hope you enjoy.

[A3n]

Interesting. I like it.

For the card design aspect though, the font can be made a little bigger by reducing the leading. Just keep adjusting until it looks/feels right.