by ccpuff

Video Blogs

The superhero you never knew you always wanted

Looking for a fun way to kill some time (besides reading this site)? This new create-your-own-superhero tool on ugo.com is truly inspired, if a little overwhelming. There's a dizzying array of choices to make, from the type and color of your character's leggings, boots, insignia, weapon, and even facial expressions, to what kind of sidekick you want.

To test it out (all in the name of "research"), I created a lesbian superhero called the "AfterEllen Avenger," whose mission in life is to destroy bad lesbian movies (it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it!) Naturally, her companion is a cat.

I also got a kick out of this "She Hulk" created by a ugo user:

Now try it yourself here. Warning: don't click if you don't want to get sucked in and emerge 3 hours later wondering what happened to all those things you were going to do today!

sarahwarn's blog

Submitted by

Sarah Warn

on April 25, 2007 - 4:47pm.

TAGS ::

superhero

if I make one....

Submitted by

Reign (185 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 4:59pm.

If I make one, will you post it on AE?

you can post it yourself

Submitted by

Sarah Warn, Editor in Chief (3242 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 5:10pm.

right here, in this thread. Just click on the little camera icon when you add a coment, and upload the photo. Would love to see what you create!

:o)

Submitted by

Reign (185 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 5:21pm.

COOL BEANS!!!!!! I'll go make one right now. :o)

LMAO

Submitted by

Chantal (272 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 5:13pm.

That is absolutely hilarious

We needed a SUperHero like the AfterEllen Avenger... now tell me can she also 'pursuade' people to make MORE good lesbian movies?

hahah

fantastic

Because Visibility Matters - The AfterEllen.com Fanlisting - http://aefan.alrightstill.net

Mesmerizing - The Lauren Blitzer Fanlisting - http://lbfan.alrightstill.net

Awesome!

Submitted by

notl33t (117 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 6:06pm.

Ugo.com rocks. Or at least, the Hero making program is fun.

My character is Deja Vu, she who burns all memories of bad, bad movies from your mind. :)

wow

Submitted by

Reign (185 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 6:09pm.

This is ALOT harder than I thought....but I'm still working on it.

Well...

Submitted by

Rain (181 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 6:19pm.

Here is my effort... such as it is, I could not decide on a name, so I removed that part...

Liberty Dyke

Submitted by

Becky C. (85 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 6:27pm.

This is Liberty Dyke, whose tongue is feared by the forces of stupidity and meanness, and beloved of grrls everywhere:

Future

Submitted by

Jacko (6 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 6:40pm.

Future Jacko

This is my future. Being a high school English teacher doesn't quite work out for me, so I begin to fight crime. What kind of lesbian would I be without a vest, combat boots, or a bird of prey?

:)

Submitted by

Harpy, Moderator (8649 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 6:43pm.

And mohawk! Can't forget the mohawk. Oh, and very earth-tony. Yep, very gay.

down with the bad lesbian movies

Submitted by

whos2say (12 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 6:45pm.

it seems like we're making an army of avengers...here is my contribution.

i didn't even realize how much time went by when i was making it

:o(

Submitted by

Reign (185 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 6:46pm.

I can't get it to save on my pc. I tried what the help section said aand everthing :o( I'll try again later.

screen capture

Submitted by

Rain (181 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 7:00pm.

you need to make a screen capture of the finished product, and then trimm off the excess...

in case you do not know how to make a screen capture just with windows, press the Prt Sc button in your F keys menu, and then open up Paint... (usually automatically put into accessories in your start menu, but you may need to look around for it)

Going to the edit menu, and choosing 'Paste' should cause your screen capture to appear in the Paint program, and then you can select the area you want to keep, and choose Cut, from the file menu...then, open a new paint document, and choose Paste once more, from the file menu, and now you should have the trimmed version of your superhero, which you can then save with the file menu... save it as a gif or jpg, and off you go...

Sorry if I am being redundant by giving instructions. Also, there are softwares that simplify all of this... If you are on a Macintosh, well, um... I did use Mac for ten years, but only up to OS9, and I went over to the dark side, so I can't remember how it is done anymore, I had software for it though, as I think it is a bit awkward just with the OS itself.

The only way to save your creation...

Submitted by

Sarah Warn, Editor in Chief (3242 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 6:56pm.

...is to do a screencapture of the page (alt + print scr), paste it into photo editing software (paint, photoshop, etc.), then crop out everything but your superhero, and save as a .jpg to your desktop. Then you can upload it here.

Love all the ones you guys have uploaded so far!

whoops

Submitted by

Rain (181 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 7:01pm.

your more succint instructions are way ahead of my blather

Got the jpg, can't upload

Submitted by

spotticus (483 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 7:43pm.

Got my cropped jpg, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to upload. Can you give up a clue? And what are the albums all about? I noticed I have one in my account, but haven't a clue as to what it is or how it functions. Please pardon my technical ignorance. Thanks in advance.

click on the camera

Submitted by

Rain (181 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 7:53pm.

It should cause a pop up window to appear, that allows you to browse your hardrive for the image you want to use... also the little tree works with images as well

(under the comments box when you are posting)

doesn't work for me, but thanks for the suggestion

Submitted by

spotticus (483 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:12pm.

All I get is a pop up saying:

No images were found. Please upload a new image or browse images by a different category. I click on the drop down menu next to the browse non-button, and it just shows "My Images (0)". I can't browse anything. The tree brings up a pop up that asks for the image URL only. I guess my knowledge of all things internets is far surpassed by that of senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. Oh well, I tried.

Oh bloody hell, now the image has magically appeared as my avatar. What the hell?

you have to click on the

Submitted by

Sarah Warn, Editor in Chief (3242 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:14pm.

you have to click on the "upload" button to the right of the "My Images (0)" drop-down box, then you'll see a "browse" button and you can upload your photo.

maybe I'm super slow

Submitted by

Lanna J. (407 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:19pm.

But I don't see an upload button to the right.. it have the my images drop box and then the only other thing is cancel.. that's all I can click on...

~I got that remedy~

if only the pop up had an upload button

Submitted by

spotticus (483 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:20pm.

to the right of the "My Images (0)". All that appears to the right of the drop down menu is a "cancel" button (which does work). Oh well. But thanks for your quick reply.

so

Submitted by

Rain (181 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:28pm.

when you click the browse button, in the upload-popup-thing... can you select an image from your hardrive somewhere? afterellen only accepts gif and jpg, as far as I can tell... once you find the image, select it, and choose Open, (or whatever language your OS is in, Open) after that, after you have selected the image, and Opened it, does an upload option show up? pull down all the menus, to check all of them to see if it is somehow hidden from you due to some weird setting...

My contribution

Submitted by

Chantal (272 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 7:03pm.

Teehee, this is so much fun!!

Because Visibility Matters - The AfterEllen.com Fanlisting - http://aefan.alrightstill.net

Mesmerizing - The Lauren Blitzer Fanlisting - http://lbfan.alrightstill.net

well...

Submitted by

Lanna J. (407 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 7:16pm.

Well, I'm having troubles gettin it to upload on here.. i'll figure it out, but while I'm doing that, I think I'll make mine a girlfriend.. even heroes need love ya kno...

~I got that remedy~

I use image hosts

Submitted by

Rain (181 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 7:55pm.

solves the problems of image upload specific to websites, but takes more time... and yeah, superheros need girlfriends as well

My Cowgirl Superhero...

Submitted by

Mel (2 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 7:52pm.

40s gumshoe

Submitted by

jess-nutt (24 posts)

on April 26, 2007 - 12:17pm.

I think she's less a cowgirl and more of a 1940s detective...which I love! She would totally be played by Kate Hepburn in the movie version...

try to copy your superhero

Submitted by

whos2say (12 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 7:53pm.

i had trouble at first too...

if you use paint i suggest copying your cropped image to an email or some kind of text doc then you can copy it from the email onto here

that only works locally

Submitted by

Rain (181 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:07pm.

in your submission, I do not see an image, but when I look at image properties on the grey placeholder that I can see, the location of the image is this:

file:///C:/DOCUME~1/COMPAQ~1/LOCALS~1/Temp/18E9.bmp

This location is specific to your computer, and the rest of us cannot see it...however, as you are accessing here with your machine own machine it shows up ok on your screen, so you have no real way of knowing this is not working, unless it is pointed out to you, or you are a bit of a geek or have plenty of practise.

Also, the next time your temp files, or clipboard are cleared, chances are you will no longer see the image on your machine either... maybe after a reboot or something, it all depends on various things, but before too long anyway.

I find image upload things on websites to be quite temperamental, also, they tend to restrict animations, and will work only with some formats.

I use image hosts, such as photobucket, flickr, tinypic, filecloud and so on, and then just link the images to wherever I am posting. For example here... but you do have to disable rich text formatting while you insert the html, if you use html to do it, so as I said further up, it can be a little more time consuming...(in Firefox anyway)

humm..

Submitted by

Lanna J. (407 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:10pm.

well obviously I'm very computer illiterate.. so I don't think I did this right, but oh well, and I thought i was on to something, a lesbian super couple...

superheroes.JPG (87.8 KB)

nah, not computer illiterate

Submitted by

Rain (181 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:19pm.

software is limited by its design, mostly and it takes practise to make things work nicelly... the image you are referencing, is located in your email account, so by default, we cannot see it... however there is hope...

if you can't get the image upload thing attached to the comments box, (at the bottom) to work properly, (it is by no means a universal system, but it does work with most computers, so it is used quite a bit) you can make an account, for example with Photobucket.com... and upload your images into the account, which is public by default...it provides relatively clear instructions on how to share your images for example in places like this, or with friends, or via email, or other methods. Once you have an account set up, it is simple enough to do as a whole as it is designed to do just that one thing, but as I said, if you can't get the afterellen.com system to work, then it is an option, and unlike email, we can all see it, as we have permission to access it. :)

more trouble then it's worth..

Submitted by

Lanna J. (407 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:28pm.

I swear, this is doing way too much, but since I have nothing to do in life, I'm gonna keep trying till I get it, ok, well this is the last time, but still.. and thanks for the help..

~I got that remedy~

disable rich text - Lanna J's image

Submitted by

Rain (181 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:35pm.

before you do any writing, including the title of the comment...then the html works

this is very nice btw,I love the colours, I hope I am not taking liberties, but I wanted to get your image up to show you how it is suposed to work and mention the disable rich-text thing, which is a key component of it working...

the rich text thing, is under the formatting icons under the comment box on the right hand corner

thanks

Submitted by

Lanna J. (407 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:36pm.

Oh no, you're fine.. I was gettin annoyed more technical questions than superheroes.. maybe we need a super lesbian computer manual knower hero, lol, idk.. but thanks again, you're my hero for the night

~I got that remedy~

heeee

Submitted by

Rain (181 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:43pm.

Well, personally from my own geek from hell POV you did great, I mean you got it all correct, just the little rich text nonsense, (which is unclear anyway)... but yeah, technical questions are a drag, which is why I try to answer them when I can. I hate not knowing how to do things, and when I do know, I believe in trying to help...anyway, I admire stubbornness, so the fact that you stuck it out, was more than enough motivation for me to keep trying to explain, and as I said, you did it all correctly, the reason it did not work was trivial, and next time you will know how, so all is good.

I fixed the html in your

Submitted by

Sarah Warn, Editor in Chief (3242 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:41pm.

I fixed the html in your post, Lanna J, and limited the width of the photo to 500 pixels, so it doesn't break the page. Thanks for helping her out, Rain! I went ahead and deleted her superhero from your comment, just for ease of reading.

good idea, oh mighty modmin

Submitted by

Rain (181 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:51pm.

;-)

my pleasure btw

oh yeah

Submitted by

Lanna J. (407 posts)

on April 26, 2007 - 12:05pm.

Silly me, I forgot to tell about my two super lesbians.. The first one is me, yes my alter ego, Flame.. since I'm highly skilled in martial arts (it's the truth) I figured my weapon of choice would be two katanas.. and since I have a very bad temper sometimes, I thought the name flame would be good, ok well that's what my teacher used to call me. I can shoot flames from my swords and I can fly.. My mission, to defend the world from bigoted men and women and do it with my girlfriend superhero..

Siren.. yes superheroes need love to, and they don't let their romance get in the way of work, after all what's sexier than 2 superhero dykes.. ok maybe 3 or 4.. but u get my point.. Well siren is named that cuz In greek mythology they led men to their dooms muhahahaha.. so her arrows create music when fired and temporarially(sp?) render the men helpless..

Together, they make one sexy team

~I got that remedy~

i went through the hassle...

Submitted by

tissarah (21 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 8:44pm.

of logging on just to say that all of your superheros suck.

heh. kidding. i'm procastinating writing a brit lit paper.

you all are aiding.

your writing a paper on Britney Spears' literature?

Submitted by

Rain (181 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 9:03pm.

you poor tortured thing, you

hahahahahah!

Submitted by

Lindsey (66 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 9:33pm.

I laughed.

Britney Spears Guide to Semiconductor Physics

Submitted by

spotticus (483 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 9:53pm.

http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm

huh

Submitted by

Rain (181 posts)

on April 26, 2007 - 7:19am.

well, I'll be dipped, I get online for the first time since I was last online, and I discover this, who knew

in tears

Submitted by

Reign (185 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 9:36pm.

This is so sad, I was the first one to respond to this post and I STILL can't get my hero up here. :o( What was that 5 hours ago? WHen I hit my prt sc button, nothing happens. I mean nothing at all, no changes no pop ups, nothing. What do I do from there if my print screen button is not working?

Try this

Submitted by

hirai (8 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 9:54pm.

After you hit prt sc, go into paint and press paste. The button just puts the images on your clipboard, but you choose where to put them. Hope that helps.

Fn key?

Submitted by

woops (86 posts)

on April 25, 2007 - 10:12pm.

Do you have an "Fn" key? In order for me to get a screen shot I have to hold down the "Fn" key while I press the "Prnt Scrn" key -- that key also says Insert on it ::shrugs:: don't know why lol I've never inserted anything with it. After you do the "print screen" thing you're not going to see anything different -- you need to go into some other program like paint or whatever you edit your photos with and PASTE it -- if you don't paste it than all the print screen crap was for nothing.

Okay, clearly multi-tasking is not a good thing when I'm trying to post something, someone else beat me to it -- but she didn't say the Fn thing . . .

I hope you figure out how to post your Super Hero! I've got mine just about done and then I need to figure out how to post it on here. Do I need to upload it to my profile first? Cuz when I click the camera thing it says I have no pictures . . . . oh well, I'll figure it out.

Everyone's heroes are awesome!