Hero Forge is an online 3D character design tool that was created for making role-playing game miniatures. I have had WAY too much fun playing around with it but to be honest I've never been an RPG guy so I just use it to make characters from my own comic books - like the Action Philosophers:
(seen above: Plato, Ayn Rand, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bodhidharma)
…but I spent even MORE time re-creating various pop culture characters from my childhood!
The first ones I did were the player characters from the DUNGEON! board game. As kids, my brother and I would play this game endlessly - usually as the Fighter or Wizard - and I grabbed the modern re-release when my kids were old enough. It had been given a makeover with modern illustrations and graphics but the game mechanics were the same. The only disappointment is they replaced the plastic character tokens with flimsy cardboard ones that constantly fell over and were hard to tell apart. So I made 3d versions in Hero Forge!
Wizard, Fighter, Cleric and Rogue.
Next I moved onto GI Joe. starting with recreations of the 1970's GI Joe Adventure Team dolls that I had as a kid, starting with Eagle Eye, who had a lever in the back of his head that could make him look from side to side:
Bulletman the Human Bullet - I even gave him the "silver cup" (thimble) from his television commercial:
Super Joe Commander - lousy name for a cool figure that came with a "laser" backpack and one-two punch action:
Mike Power the Atomic Man (an obvious Six Million Dollar Man rip-off) which I didn't own as a kid (or even knew existed) - but he fits right in with the others:
Jada toys recently put out a set of G.I. Joe metal minis based on the classic Real American Hero franchise that are really cool- but the set only had 18 figures which left out a lot of my personal favorite characters from the sprawling cast. So of course I made all of those in Hero Forge too! I, uh, may have gone a little overboard…
(From top to bottom: Stalker, Rock N Roll, Grand Slam, Clutch, Major Bludd, Cover Girl, Gung-Ho, Spirit, Shipwreck, Torch, Ripper, Buzzer, Xamot & Tomax, Quick Kick (I took the liberty of giving him a MUCH more dignified look than his standard one), Dr Mindbender, Zandar, Zarana, Thrasher, a gender-swapped Monkeywrench, Zanzibar, Beachead, Iceberg, Sci-Fi, Low Light, the female Dial Tone, Jinx, Chuckles, Falcon, Mercer, Tunnel Rat, Nemesis Enforcer, Muskrat, Metal Head and Shooter.)
I also made some of my favorite 80's era Marvel comics characters:
(Rogue, Spiral, Dr Doom, Ghost Rider, Storm, Wolverine, Box, Taskmaster, Troll, Sentinel)
They can even 3D print them for you too! At $20+ a piece for a unpainted figures and $60 for full color I probably won't be printing any of them anytime soon - but it's still a lot of fun!