Last week we focused on character growth VS tropes to run characters but Tantz had the idea to look at alternative growth for characters who did NOT grow well (after the original trilogy). So in this Quackcast we apply that to various Star Wars characters. Tantz tackles an alternative path and form for Anikin and Darth Vader, re-imagining them as two separate people. I tackle Han Solo and Princess Leia, thinking of them both as a happy couple who adventure and travel together in the Millennium falcon. Banes imagines Boba Fet as the head of a crime family!
In our members only Patreon video Tantz imagined Phasma as an amazing character who works her way up to being the Darth Vader of the new trilogy, instead of the toothless joke she was in the real film. I talk about Fin as a disturbed, reserved veteran character who's slowly deprogramming, has a lot of PTSD and complicated feelings about the New Order. Banes talks about an alternative version of Rey and Luke, a Luke who became a distinguished and honoured Jedi teacher, like Professor X in the X-men, and a Rey with perhaps Luke as her dad, a Rey who's an adventurer and good fighter but still has to LEARN to use the force and have an interesting progression unlike the rapid magical progress of the film version.
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by The White Noise isn’t Working - sands pouring white noise fuzzzzz, layers upon layers of creepy, yet catchy electronica pop stack up over the white noise fog, creating a rich broth of audio delight.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Last week's Quackcast on Character growth VS tropes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/quackcast/episode-654-tropes-vs-character-growth/
Featured comic:
I Love You Lin Peckett - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/sep/25/featured-comic-i-love-you-lin-peckett/
Featured music:
The White Noise isn’t Working - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/the_white_noise_isnt_working_/ - by Rmcool, rated A.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Tue, 8 October 2024
Cyberpunk is a cool genre we have never covered exclusively on a Quackcast before. But what IS cyberpunk? It's a subset of SciFi, it's usually near future, involves body modifications, grittiness, street level computer use, techno body modification, and hacking. At least that's the way it started. Formative influences on the cyberpunk genre were the first Tron movie, Bladerunner, and Escape from New York. Tron showed us what cyberspace was, while Bladerunner and Escape from New York gave us gritty near future dystopias with cool tech, modified humans, and most importantly the punk aesthetic which was the gritty street youth fashion of the late 70s and early 80s. Punks plus computers signalled a more universal use of the new technology of computers in the near future world especially as imagined by Willian Gibson with his novel Neuromancer. There were other influential cyberpunk writers like Neal Stephenson with SnowCrash and many more. My fave was Manga creator Masamune Shirow with his books like Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed and more which tackle subjects like trans-humanisim as humans evolve with technology and then INTO technology itself. In the late 80s and early 90s cyberpunk was very influential in anime with the likes of the Ghost in the Shell movie, Bubblegum crisis, AD police, and the amazing milestone that is Akira! A very formative game in the world of cyberpunk was the RPG Shadowrun, which was near future urban fantasy plus cyberpunk in all its pure glory. These days we have the computer game Cyberpunk 2020, but it's an extremely derivative and pale shadow of what had gone before it, it functions as a sort of a retro “greatest hits” of the genre, but it's a good intro into it and that goes for the Netflix anime of the same name. There were various unrelated genres inspired by cyberpunk- Steampunk, Dieselpunk, and the later dubious genres raypunk and atompunk which are just rebranded early standard SciFi. What is your fave example of cyberpunk? Do you know what cyberpunk is? When did you first come to cyberpunk? This week Gunwallace gave us a theme inspired by The Return of Jake Sunrise - A desolate red dirt desert, a wind whistles through and carries with it a torrent of sound and energy, flooding in like a sudden rainstorm, bringing with it life, colour, and revitalisation! The desert blooms. Topics and shownotes Links
Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 1 October 2024
Fight choreography is tricky. We have it in comics, plays, movies and TV. When it's in full motion the trick is that you cant usually show things connecting so you have to work around the safety aspects in various ways. In comics you can show things connecting but how do you make the movement and the narrative believable and exciting just by using still images? It takes a lot of skill! Animation has to be the easiest way to depict fights because you can show the results of hits AND you can easily make moment believable but there are always challenges. There are 3 main types of fights: duels, brawls, and battles, though there are a million combos and variations between those. Duel: one against one. Brawl: everyone against everyone. Battle: a big group against another big group. Fights usually involve a character that wants something and another trying to prevent them from getting it so the narrative of your fight has to include that dynamic, not simply action for its own sake. I've worked at drawing a few fight scenes myself for my comics and I think I do a pretty decent job at it. I visualise the fight progress in my mind, work out the beginning, middle and end of it (treating it like a mini story), and then visualise cool images that depict parts of the progress and action in the most dynamic and sexily interesting way possible. That works well for duels. Battles are more chaotic and it helps just to focus on a few key parts while leaving the main fighting in the background. Trying to show the overall clash on a larger scale is very easy to mess up: look at the stupid battles in the later Lord of the Rings movies, the troop moments make no sense at all, they're just running from here to there to everywhere pretty pointlessly, but when things focus down on individuals at a smaller scale it works much better! What are your fave fight scenes? And how do you go about choreographing a fight in your comic? One of my faves is the duel between Inigo Montoya and the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride and the first fight in the movie the Duellists.
Topics and shownotes Links
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_707_-_Fight_Choreography.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 24 September 2024
Being right on the internet is Sooo important… Being right in relationships is a much older thing than the internet and a far harder and more destructive issue. There's an old meme that goes along the lines of “if you're a man you're always wrong”, so the idea is that you say something like “yes dear, you're right” every time there's a disagreement and that's the key to a happy relationship… which is of course harmful meaningless nonsense which infantilises both people. THAT is NOT admitting you're wrong, it's literally just pretending, it's insincere and doesn't help anyone. The approach you should take is to understand WHY something is wrong. Among my many favourite films is Scott Pilgrim Vs the world. In it he has many cartoonish, exciting, and exaggerated battles with the exes of his new girlfriend Ramona Flowers, but underneath and besides that, more powerfully and interestingly he resolves with his own exes and it's only when he does that, that he can truly move forward. Instead of a flashy, crazy battles like with Ramona's exes, Scott simply realises what he did wrong and owns up to it with each of them. That makes you respect the character far more and really helped tidy up the resolution of the story. Villains coming to a self realisation and admitting they're wrong can make for a very powerful ending. How do you go with this, do you remember a story where a character admits they're wrong or have you been able able to come to the realisation that you're wrong about something and accept the correction? This week Gunwallace gave us a theme inspired by Somewhere in the Universe - Driving beat taking us on a road trip to hot and heavy, fiery groovetown in a muscle car under the bright sun on burning vinyl seats, windows wound down and blasting us with oven air but we don’t care because we’re rocking all the way. Topics and shownotes Links
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 17 September 2024
Today we're talking about setting the scene and communication through the art on the panel. Movie directors are a good thing to follow because it's a related art form. We mention the compositions of Spielberg, Sergio Leone, Wes Anderson and more. I came from a fine art background so I used to often try to emulate the compositions of classical art. Banes recommends reading “Framed Ink” by Marcos Mateu-Mestre. What inspires you with your art direction? Do you think deeply about it or do you just depict the characters in the most efficient way possible to tell the story? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by It’s my turn to save the world - High energy, purposeful, cute and full of stars, twinkles, and lines as straight as glowing laser beams, burning through with fearsome power and heat!
Links The cover image is from a Banes choreographed panel from our sexy horror comic Key of Dreams that was part of the DD anthology! Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 10 September 2024
The topic we're talking about today was inspired by my ruminations on Bullshido martial arts promo demonstration videos. These are the videos where a martial arts master shows off their skill in a patently fake demonstration, usually starting with breaking concrete slabs or wood and then progressing to a performance where they show how easily they can defeat all of their students who try and attack them. The really bad ones will pretend to channel “chi” (a fake energy) and knock down their students without even trying! The thing is that often the teachers actually believe they can really DO this stuff because the reactions of their students make them believe that it's real. And the students believe it too because of motivated reasoning (they WANT to believe), and they are influenced by each other. It's all one self reinforcing bubble echo-chamber of belief. There are two reasons I'm talking about this in terms of webcomics: 1. Bullshido is the origin of the amazing and silly martial arts and superhero moves and techniques in comics and animation and it's interesting to know where it comes from. and 2. this sort of stuff is why we have preconceived ideas about why a lot of pop-culture is good or bad: We fall for a sort of tribal thinking that's created by our tendency to follow the beliefs of others without examining them for ourselves. It's the sort of thing that results in cults, conspiracy belief, and our opinions on political figures. It's even why we believe that valve amps, Les Paul guitars, Stradivarius violins, and vinyl records sound magically better than the alternatives. It's a fascinating and fun topic and we go deep into it! This week Gunwallace wasn't able to make a new theme so I re-issued the theme to Kirsha Brackets - A warm rush of frenetic activity! Modern, bright, shiny, new, fun, action, happening, moving, going, bouncing, bubbling, hopping, motivation! Topics and shownotes Links
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 3 September 2024
Cross cultural influence is a marvellous thing and very enriching to creativity! It's lovely when you can see multiple cultural influences in things, whether comics, movies, art, fashion, music or anything else. It's inspiring and leads to new and more interesting things. I picked promo images from some recent Pixar movies Turning Red, Encanto, Coco, and Moana, because they're good examples of the process and what it can result in. The flip-side of that is “cultural appropriation”. That's where you take something that's important, sacred or representative of another culture and you claim ownership of it or use it in an inappropriate way, not giving the true source any respect and not seeking permission. unfortunately this is often used as a false accusation by people who either try and white-knight or are just trying to weaponise the idea in order to gain status or make a point, which has a number of very negative effects: It drives people toward monoculuralisim in their expression, makes people afraid to experiment, it can make people less likely to see ACTUAL examples of cultural appropriation and more likely to discount or ignore real examples of it. In the Quackcast we mention Big Trouble in Little China, which was a wonderful blend of American action film and Hong Kong kung-fu movie. The Clint Eastwood Western A Fist Full Of Dollars is a version of the Japanese samurai film Yojimbo, made by Italians. And then of course the Samurai films of that era were inspired by America westerns anyway, so there was all sorts of deep cultural mixing.
Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_703_-_Cross_Cultural_Influence.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 27 August 2024
Following on from last week with our Quackcast on faces, this week we're chatting about expressions, which is a very natural progression! expressions are a great way to enhance communication in comics. they can be fun to play with but tricky to master. Though when you get them right they really help lift your game. Exaggerated expressions are seen more in cartoony work rather than realistic styles but drawing good expressive faces still works well regardless, even if they ARE more subtle. One of the funniest things about drawing facial expressions is how your own face tends to mirror what you're drawing at the time, so you can look like a freak! One of the big myths about non-verbal communication is that it comprises the vast majority of communication, which is pretty silly and easily debunk-able, but the fact that myth is still so popular shows how important expressions are to us, at least in our perception. Obviously the vast majority of communication is primarily through language alone, but body-language and expression do help. For our Patreon video we all tried drawing facial expressions real time, that's where the cover image comes from. Banes and Tantz were great! I wasn't. This week Gunwallace gave us a theme inspired by The Gimblians - Introspective, considered and thoughtful. A short little compact track that leads us down a silent snowy path through a dark forest in the moonlight… and into a bouncy castle filled with clowns! Topics and shownotes Links
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 20 August 2024
Drawing faces is one of the most natural things for us to do, and they're very easy for people to see that they're faces because animals are evolved especially to be able to see faces- people mistakenly think this is just a human thing but it's clearly something that happened much earlier. We're so good at seeing faces we see them where they don't exist (paradolia). So drawing them for comics should be super simple, should it? Well it is and it isn't. You can always get better at things and drawing faces is something that has a vast range of difficulties. They can be as simple as a circle with minimal features, or more advanced attempts with everything clearly laid out with shading and a perfect expression, and everything in between… How I do it is something in between: Sort of realistic but still pretty cartoony. The easiest way to do more realistic faces is to understand the rules: The eyes go roughly halfway on the face. The eyebrows go up above and create a shaded line, the mouth and bottom of the nose divide the bottom of the face into thirds. And that's you average face. Drawing different ethnic traits though is very tricky without being racist! So practise those a lot before coming out with anything publicly. An important thing to know is the myth of symmetry. The myth is that perfectly symmetrical faces are more beautiful, this idea was put forward a few years ago by a plastic surgeon of all people and many ate it up. The reality though that very symmetrical faces can actually give you an "uncanny valley" feel so that the face can start to look unnatural and alien. It's VERY easy to make perfectly symmetrical faces in art, now moreso than ever. You simply draw one side of a face, copy, paste, flip and join them. It's a good technique to use to quickly draw a portrait but a smart move is to rough up either side and remove some of that symmetry subtly. Beauty is about being average (not too far outside norms) and the cultural standards of that particular point in time, symmetry is a small and basic part of that, NOT the prime component: a good clue as to why this is the case is the fact that humans don't all look the same, people from different ethnicities have very different facial traits and beauty standards, and we can very easily see that beauty standards throughout time varied massively and constantly. Saying that beauty is based on symmetry is like saying cars are based on wheels- in one sense yes but in all other senses no. How are you with drawing faces? What's your secret? Can you draw people of different ethnicities without being racist? What style of faces do you draw? NEXT WEEK- The expression cast This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by The Hotel - Trapped in a never ending loop inside an elevator. Are you going up, down, or… sideways? Ring the bell for service. You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.
Links Please consider purchasing a copy of our latest DD anthology A Flock of Dreams to help DD https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/jul/20/quackcast-697-the-dd-anthology-comic/ Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_701_-_Faces_come_out_in_the_rain.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 13 August 2024
We chatted about Greek Myths last week and found the subject so interesting that we thought we'd do a part two! So even MORE Greek myth stuff for Quackcast 700. There are just so many great stories like the myth of the Hydra and how it was so hard to kill because when one of its many heads were cut off it would just grow another one. Or the Minotaur that was trapped in a labyrinth under the palace of Minos in Crete in order to imprison him because he was a monster. The labyrinth was of course built by Daedalus. I love all the stories about Daedalus who was a genius inventor and architect, basically an engineer and a scientist, and I love that he as an inventor is a celebrated character of myth. Not many cultures have myths about such characters. Odysseus is another favourite of mine, he was a genius strategist and just an all round clever man who could always come up with plans and amazing solutions to problems… a bit of a MacGyver if you will. And he's another interesting character to be celebrated in myth. My favourite gods are the siblings Artemis and Apollo. Apollo only because he's a sun god and he's an arrogant, pretty fellow so he's fun to draw. Artemis is a fave because she's so capable, competent, and driven, plus she has an awesome name. she's seen as a virgin, maiden hunter goddess and another aspect of Athena. The Roman version was Diana and our modern version is Wonder Woman. Who are your fave gods or humans in Greek myth? This week Gunwallace wasn't able to do a Quackcast so since this is Quackcast 700 I decided to reissue our theme to Quackcast 500! - This was an awesome rocky anthem for the DD Quackcast. It’s all hard guitars and loud stonkin’ sound! With the super-duper added contribution of us all shouting “500”! Topics and shownotes Links
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 6 August 2024
We're chatting about our fave Greek myths! Greek myths are foundational to a lot of Western culture, they're what superheroes are based on as well as all sorts of epic stories. Lots of scientific concepts and ideas are based on things from mythology. The stories resonate down through the millennia because they're so relatable and human- rather than being about stodgy perfect beings who live in a magical realm and guide their mortal charges like children, the Greek gods of myth have the same emotional drives, lusts, jealousies, and personal problems of any modern person living today. Many of us find our own way into the myths. For me it was the astronomy books I loved as a child because I adored the images of the planets, stars, and nebulae. They had names from Greek and Roman myth and there were stories explaining where the names came from. Aspects of Greek myth would pop up all through culture; the naiads, dryads, and fauns in CS Lewis's Narnia books, the plays and music based on the love story of Orpheus and Eurydice… Hercules was always everywhere, and one of my favourite cartoons as a child was Ulysses 31, a French Scifi show based on the Odyssey. Then there are all the classic sword and sandal movie epics like Clash of the Titans! The Greek gods even show up in the musical Xanadu, a childhood fave of mine. These days people have have many animes, video games like God of War and Assassins Creed, movie and book series like Percy Jackson, the 300 and even Wonder Woman. I'm sure the 90s Kevin Sorbo series Hercules the Legendary journeys and its sister series Xena Warrior Princess were big inspirations for many! Even the Disney cartoon about Hercules. Not to mention all the secondary and tertiary influences like He-man who has more than his share of Hercules in him, even carrying a sword inspired by Greek weapons (though he's also based on Conan, who has Hercules in him too). It's funny where Greek myth references pop up- a lot of them in the names for technology and technical computer things because the scientists and engineers who created them were a little pretentious and wanted to show their classical learning. One of my faves is the name for the days of the week- In English most of them are the names of Germanic gods- Tuesday = Tir, god of war: Wednesday = Odin, Wodan, Wotan, god of wisdom: Thursday = Thor, god of thunder: Friday = Frigg and or Freyja, one a mother god he other a goddess of fertility. They were named that as a translation of the original Latin names because of course those days were named for Roman Gods: Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus… which were of course translations of Greek gods: Aries, Hermes, Zeus, and Aphrodite. So what are your fave characters from Greek myth, fave Greek myths or fave pop-culture things with Greek mythic influence? How did you come to learn of the Greek myths?
Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 30 July 2024
Hair is a weird thing isn't it? It's just a bunch of thin filaments that stand out and hang from the body, most visibly from the head. Everyone is bald as an egg underneath this coating of head-fur, but the floof on top takes on a life, body, and shape of its own even though the truth is that it's just thin threads all buffed up with a lot of air. Hairstyles can indicate class, status, wealth, occupation, style, coolness, lack of cool, age, date, and any number of other factors about a person and where and when they fit in society. We also have strong reactions to hair: love, hate, revulsion, or disgust. It can indicate whether a person belongs to a community, a society, a religion or a sect. It's a gigantic subject, so lets limit it down to just a few things… In the years between wars fashion fought back and other styles prevailed, but World War 2 bought millions more men and women into military service and THIS time those fashions stuck. It wasn't till the late 1950s and early 1960s the the first reactions to post war ultra-conservatism started to show up with what eventually became the counter culture movement exemplified by hippies. Long hair on men was seen as an act of revolution. Their conservative parents somehow forgot that their own parents and grandparents before them had long shaggy hair and beards (if they wanted them), and treated the long haired youth like something new and weird, when in reality it was their own conservative war traumatised generation that were the weird ones. That aside, what hairstyles do you like? What do you gravitate towards? Do you like particular styles on characters that you draw or read about in comics? I love big hair and long hair on my characters because short hair is really hard to draw. But these days I experiment with my styles, even bald styles which are interesting, though not full bald because that's just easy mode. This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by The DD Anthology: A Flock of Dreams - A very dream-like cruise on a sea of somnambulance…drifting off into dreamland with piano and soft sounds. Floating on waters of heavy, dully shining mercury. Topics and shownotes Links
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 23 July 2024
We present to you our latest Drunk Duck anthology comic: A Flock Of Dreams! A Flock of Dreams features 166 pages and 13 different stories by our creators. They're sexy, comedic, mysterious, fascinating, dark, terrifying, and magical! We created this anthology in order to raise money for improvements to our site. Drunk Duck is an awesome free community run webcomic comic host, in fact we're oldest online! We've been around since 2002 and have a hell of a lot of history. People have grown up reading comics on our site, creators have married either other, had kids, and the kids have grown up to become creators on DD. Please help us preserve this legacy. A copy of A Flock of Dreams costs $25. Or you can cut out the middleman and buy it from me directly at by sending $25 USD to me through Paypal, but you will need a gmail address to download the anthology - https://www.paypal.me/Drunkduckwebcomics Over the years DD has produced several anthologies but this is the only second one we've put together especially for sale to raise money for the site. We really hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed creating it for you!
Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_697_-_The_DD_Anthology_comic.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 16 July 2024
We're talking about tropes that we like hate. Some we brought up were conspiracy theories, especially the ones that involve a whiteboard where all the info and photos stuck on there are connected by red string and the ones in anime where at the end of the episode a mysterious character looks at the action from a distance and says cryptically “ah, this is all going exactly to plan…” Others included Isekai, Life re-dos, power couples, Time loops, and 1930s style adventure. Oh, and one I hate is the courtroom episode trope. What are your fave story tropes and which ones you do dislike with a passion?
Topics and shownotes Links
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 9 July 2024
Pop-Culture, and the way it's always changing… We fall in love with pop culture but it's constantly changing and new pop culture is always being created, which means that as time goes on less and less people will care about the same pop culture as you. And what you were into will become niche and obscure, even though at the time you fell in love with it, it was massively mainstream and all over the place! The term “Pop-culture” started as a sort of critical description of what was thought of as a low quality, disposable alternative to “true” culture, but we've long since embraced it and no longer see it as something lessor. Pop-culture is simply the universal, current, contemporary culture that we all have access to. The two biggest factors in pop-culture are time and money: Time, because there's a constant turnover of content, people lose interest in things constantly so we always need new things; and Money, because the more money put into something the bigger it will get in pop-culture and also the more something can earn (because it's part of a popular concept) the more likely more of those things will be made (i.e superhero movies, Isekai anime etc). Older, previously created pop-culture still continues to exist but rapidly loses popularity and availability the older it gets. By its nature there is an extreme bias towards the new. Here we're talking about how massively popular and universal things become niche and unknown. It can revive because mining older pop-culture to make new pop-culture is very lucrative and easy, but it's never the same when it does. Even perennially popular things like Star Trek, Marvel and DC constantly change with each new iteration. Companies like Disney re-release their older IPs in their original forms but the purpose of that is to maintain the popularity of their brand (and now the streaming service) to help market their newer stuff. Pop-culture is a ravenous beast that must consonantly be fed with the new and money. What are some Pop-culture things you love but no one else does anymore?
Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 2 July 2024
Is your work consistent? It's hard to maintain consistency but it does pay off: consistency in art work, style, character, writing, humour, updates and every other factor. To aid consistency in commercial works they come up with a “bible” which has drawings of character from all angles, all their colour swatches, their outfits, accessories, weapons, vehicles, floor plans of buildings, etc, as well as descriptions of their characters and the story style. That sort of thing is a huge help and especially useful when you have teams of people working on the project and need to hand over to other people. For a webcomicers a “bible” is usually overkill and involves as much work as several chapters of the comic itself. Some creators find them very useful, but for most of us it's wasted work. It's a good idea just to just a rough page of profile images to refer to because if you base your references on previous pages that's a great way to compound errors that are made earlier in the comic- believe me I know because I do that all the time. The very most important aspect of consistency though is style. If you have a characteristic style and a specific style of doing characters it does not matter ONE JOT how “good” your art is, and perfection is irrelevant. As long you draw it the same way each time people will be able to understand it and see that it's a deliberate choice. It will make your work look honed and professional. How do you go with maintaining consistency? I definitely have my own style but I'm not good at consistency as the images of my main character in the cover image shows. Today we reissued Gunwallace's theme to - Charby the Vampiriate - A classic comic on DD and a very classic theme by Gunwallace featuring a very Vampiric organ (from Quackcast 173). Charby the Vampiriate is a real poster-child for consistency! Although the comic and style have evolved a LOT over the years, Amelius manages a frightening level of stylistic consistency with a massive ensemble cast of different characters. Topics and shownotes Links
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 25 June 2024
Betrayal is not a fave theme of mine in any media. I really dislike it, but it's so popular! We've talked about this one before but no one really remembers Quackcast 427 so we're having another crack at it! We talk about all the different aspects: political, love, country, loyalty etc and really have fun with it! What I dislike most about the betrayal theme is when a character lies to get into a relationship with another character, or betrays the trust of someone they're in a relationship with. It's like nails on a blackboard to me, and yet it's done all the time so it must be entertaining and popular to other people? Betrayal by an organisation, a country, or superiors is also pretty popular but I don't think that approach is so bad because it usually reflects how people feel rather than a personal attack. Take Rambo for example: in that his country betrays him, but we all understand that it's a parable about how Vietnam war veterans were abandoned by their country and not given the support they needed. In my comic Pinky TA I use the “betrayed by superiors” theme, mainly because I was influenced by Ghost in the Shell when I wrote it and that was a popular theme in more serious anime at the time. It's also a good parable for growing into adulthood. Have you used a betrayal theme? Do you like it, or do you hate it like me? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Oswald the Overman in the Lesser Planes of Hell - Starting off cutesy and friendly and pink this tune quickly spirals down into surreal, mind melting weirdness followed by a little bit of Louie Louie on the keyboards just to get us back to feeling in a party mood again! Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 18 June 2024
Benevolent racism, sexism, ableism, and whatever other “isim” is an interesting aspect of those otherwise negative things. It's not as obvious in its negativity, it's well-meaning and yet quite misguided. So what is it? The term “Benevolent” makes it seem nice and harmless and that IS how people mean it, but that's because they're a bit clueless and ignorant. Benevolent sexism, ableism, and racism is basically using a “positive” stereotype to characterise someone based on their ethnicity, gender etc, like “all black people have natural rhythm”, or “women are more sensitive and in touch with nature”, or “blind people have all their other senses massively heightened”. So why is that a problem, you might ask? Because a stereotype that characterises an individual based on an assumption about their gender, their ethnicity or any other group they belong to is STILL a stereotype, it's still false and has nothing to do with them as an INDIVIDUAL person. What people really do when they use these benevolent stereotypes is to keep that person “other” from themselves, preventing them from relating to that person as a fellow human. It also puts the person in an awkward position, having to fit into or live up to standards that have nothing to do with them, i.e. “I'm an Asian so that means I have to be amazing at maths, a doctor, expert at martial arts, and constantly doing spiritual Buddhist ceremonies…” Anything that prevents us properly relating to people as fellow humans is a problem whether it's openly negative or seemingly positive. The argument in favour of benevolent stereotypes is to combat the negative ones and in that it has a place, a limited one but a place nonetheless. Think about the old “noble Savage” idea, native people used to be universally looked down upon but then this idea developed that they had a “nobility” of their own, free from the constraints of civilisation, they were in touch with the natural world etc. For black people it was the “magical Negro”, an older black person who's only trait seemed to be that they were friendly and there to offer wise life advice to white people. For south Asian people it was unarmed martial arts expertise, spirituality, and ceremony. For gay people it was “the gay best friend” who would give sage love-life advice to a female main character, do her hair and pick our her shoes and look fabulous. These stereotypes served the purpose of combating negative images and making a place for these groups in the mainstream. They had a place, but their time has passed. Examples are legion and usually very silly. Can you recognise them when you see them? Have you experienced them yourself? Do you use them yourself? What are some you can think of? One I hate the most is when bad stand up comedians tell us the “differences” between men and women, and it's just a list of stupid stereotypes.
Topics and shownotes Links
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_692_-_Benevolent_racism_and_other_isms.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 11 June 2024
Thirst trap is the topic of today's Quackcast! What is a thirst trap? It's basically someone presenting themselves as very sexy in order to get attention for some sort of reason, rather than just happening to look attractive. So it's usually used for some sort of advertising purpose, to sell their OnlyFans, to get a date, or more conventional advertising. Today we're talking about it it terms of comics :) Years and years ago there ws an explosively popular comic on Drunk Duck called Craving Control. It was very well drawn and featured a sex, very busty women who would eat uncontrollably and get very fat and then slim down again quite suddenly. For some reason this was MASSIVELY interesting to people. The reason I mention it hear though is that their thumbnail pronominally featured a very boobular cleavage shot of the main character. Many of us creators on the site envied the popularity of this comic and chose to copy that thumbnail style. Suddenly there were all sorts of comics on the site being advertised with boob or butt thumbnails. Thirst traps everywhere! It started a fad on the site. People all suddenly re-learned the ancient lesson that “sex sells”. In our cast we expand this a bit to talk about some of the famous thirst trap comics that often don't deliver on the promise of their covers like Vampirella, along with Witchblade and Red Sonja. This was something that existed even before comics back with the old pulps. Artists like Margeret Brundage were famous for their scantily clad, busty women in compromising situations, which the stories within weren't nearly as racy. The of course we have “bodice-ripper” romance novels featuring women in tight corsets and men with bulging chests… Have you been guilty or at least tempted to use this tactic to promote your work? I know I have! Future topic: Benevolent sexism, also benevolent racism. This week Gunwallace was still unwell so I picked a sexy sounding past one to go along with the the topic today - Pep Squad - These girls are here to get you motivated! You can almost SEE the dance routine in your mind’s eye, and believe me, it’s pretty sexy… They’ve got some moves. The crowd roars as the pep squad performs, bumping, grinding and sliding on the stage. (from Quackcast 409) Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 4 June 2024
Mister V, aka Arborcides is our guest today, doing an interview with us about his huge project “Dozer Manifesto”, now finally completed! You can read the entire thing here on DD. It's about a fellow called Marv Heemeyer, resident of the Colorado town of Granby, and his decent into craziness, resulting in him creating an armour-plated, armed bulldozer, designed to be invulnerable, so he could crush the town and destroy his enemies with impunity. You might have heard of it being call the “killdozer”. The story was pretty sensationalised at the time and most people rooted for Marv as some sort of Robin Hood, or avenging angel, righteously taking revenge on enemies who had unfairly crossed him. There was very little consideration given to the other side, or the lives of the people he impacted. Mister V's comic really takes pains to tell the story the right way! In this age of mediated and sensationalised “reality” where fake conflict is inserted to tell better stories, people are characterised according to tropes, the truth is spun, and our very image of what is real is continually distorted, Mister V beautifully fights against that and delivers a fully balanced, nuanced view of the entire story from beginning to end and many years after. As a resident himself of Granby where the action happened, he had special access to the locations and the witnesses involved, which makes the Dozer Manifesto fascinating reading and elevates it from a comic to an actual historical document. This week Gunwallace was under the weather so we reissued an older track that fit this theme perfectly! Dozer Manifesto - Start your engine… The sound of the powerful diesel motor as it comes time life… you can smell the fumes. Dry, dusty, industrial, rocky, the guitar thrums with a mechanical rhythm, hot and fast. (from Quackcast 465) Topics and shownotes Links Our intview subject today: Mister V, aka Arborcides - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/arborcides/
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_690_-_Mister_V_Dozer_Maifesto.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 28 May 2024
What was one significant inspiring piece of pop-culture that a massive influence over your creative endeavours? All of us have had many, many different influences over the years but that's certainly NOT what we're interested in here, what we're talking about is that one thing you can remember that had a huge effect on you, why, how, and when. For me, I picked the time I saw the Tank Girl movie. It was all the way back in the mid 1990s. The movie didn't have much promotion so I didn't see it in the cinema because I didn't even know it was being screened, I only remember some radio ads. It came out on video very quickly and that's how I saw it. I rented it out and I actually own that very video cassette now because I bought it when the shop went out of business years later. An Ex stole my DVD and I can't buy a digital copy online here But I digress… When I saw that movie it was the perfect critical mass of creative influence for me. The story wasn't very good and it bore little relation to the comic but it was full of so much 1990s alt culture that it's a perfect time capsule and exemplar of the period; From the post-punk alt club fashions, to the alt rock and grunge soundtrack curated by Courtney Love, the aggressive alt-grrl femininity, the fantastic scenes depicted, the haircuts, and then there are the performances by Lori Petty, Tony Collette, Ice T, Malcom McDowell, Iggy Pop and more. It set off the creative bulbs in my head and I spent all evening creating a huge drawing on 3x A1 sheets of paper of a Tank covered in different incarnations of sexy Tank Girl inspired women. I was an art student at the time so I was very familiar with the alt culture depicted. At it's core the imagery of a funky dressed, sexy woman, with an aggressive DGAF attitude, paired with heavy, custom modified and decorated military hardware is what sticks with you and has been one of the core influences in my creative pursuits from then on. There have been many others of course, but this was A significant moment. The image in the art for this Quackcast is the drawing I made back then. I took it to class the next day and my lecturer just said that to her it just showed an “arrogance in drawing ability”, which I was a little shocked by, but this was the mid 1990s and drawing ability was NOT a priority among artists at the time. I am very serious- most 1990s fine artists lacked even rudimentary skill. It was a weird time. Can you tell us about any significant creative influence exposure events?
Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS The pic. Click to see a full size - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/media/users/Ozoneocean/assets/tank-girls.jpg
Direct download: Quackcast_687_-_one_big_passion_and_influence.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 21 May 2024
How and why does your creativity change over time? It “evolves”. With creativity the evolution influencers are things like age, experience, taste, style, family, friends, technology, culture… As you get older you have more experience but less time to spend on things because of the pressures of work, relationships, and increasing responsibilities. Your tastes change, you get smarter, you get more skilled, you change what you work with, your ideas and interests change. You begin with the influences of your parents and early childhood exposures to culture, then you break away from that and form your own ideas of popular culture in your early teens, then you try to desperately fit in with various subgroups till your mid 20s and then you mainly stick with the cultural influences you were exposed up till then as your main influences from then on -still picking up new things from time to time, but not having as big an effect. In the professional world creators get more power and less oversight so they often produce worse stuff because they have more control and don't listen to people as much, have less collaborators and less influence by producers and editors to fix their bad ideas… that's not always the case but it's proved true all too often with musicians, film makers, and writers. Wider environmental factors like technological change (the internet, digital photography, AI etc), culture change, and political change, all have major effects on people's creativity. Then there are internal factors like puberty, depression, happiness, grief, and more. All these things leave their mark and alter the course of our creativity over time. And THAT is why most bands aren't producing the same good stuff now as they did when they started out, hahaha!
Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_688_-_Artistic_Evolution.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 14 May 2024
This isn't really a special episode! It's a Quackcast about them. Not PSA episodes though. Our topic was inspired by those weird special non-sequitur episodes in anime and manga like the famous bikini episode where all the characters head off to the beach, water park, hot springs or something and get into their bathing suits. It doesn't usually forward the story too much, if at all, but it's a chance to have fun with the characters, outline and explore any underlying love themes, and show off skin. There are other kinds of special episodes like the festival ones, Christmas etc. In American stuff Christmas and thanksgiving are popular for that, also new years. And this is reflected in comics too! On Drunk Duck we have our Secret Santa tradition where we do special Christmas art for people but we also often incorporate that into our comics. Probably the most import special episode art we do though involves our annual comic awards! At the moment people are already submitting art for the red carpet intros. On this subject, one of our own DDers was a part of one of the most famous of these things ever: the Star Wars Holiday special. He actually helped introduce the world to Bobba Fet via the animation work he did on that project. That was the first the world ever saw of Bobba Fet, so specials are good for something afterall! Do you like non-sequitur episodes centred around special events and things? (they're not always non-sequiturs). How about the infamous beach bikini episodes? Love ‘em or loathe ’em? This week Gunwallace made up a theme inspired by The Magpie - Such weight! This electronic piece weighs down heavily with the super powered gravity of a neutron star, crushing down with the mass of its brilliance and beauty. Topics and shownotes Links Red Carpet news https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/may/10/roll-out-the-red-carpet/ John Celestri - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/JohnCelestri/ Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_687_-_a_very_special_episode.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 7 May 2024
We recorded the Quackcast on the 4th of May, which of course means that it was “May the fourth”, the Star Wars celebration date! So we decided to talk about Star Wars, but instead of our usual rants about what we think could be done better we kept it to mainly positive stuff, focussing on what we loved about the films, mainly original series, which are the best ones. My fave version of Luke is the first one with the shaggy hair and wild eyes. I Love the mecha, the costumes, the armour, and the ships, especially the awesome Star Destroyers. My fave characters are the original Boba-Fet (not the modern fat, bald version), Darth Vader, Lando Calrission, Han Solo, and C3PO, Gand Moff Tarkin. My fave Star Wars films in order are: The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars (it wasn't called :new hop or episode 4 till years later), ReTrun of the Jedi, Rogue One, Solo, Caravan of Courage, and Battle For Endor. And I love the Mandalorian series.
Direct download: Quackcast_686_-_May_the_fourth_be_with_you.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 30 April 2024
“Passing the mantle” is an interesting phrase. Many claim it comes from a biblical origin; the prophet Elijah was said to have passed his mantle to Elisha when he ascended to heaven, thereby symbolically transferring his authority… but honestly that seems a little silly and elaborate of an origin story, the sort of thing bad bible scholars in America loved to come up with in the 19th century. Mantles of office were commonly worn by kings, statesmen and even lord mayors today and the passing of those symbolises them gaining office and authority. It's a very ordinary, commonplace secular tradition. But why am I even talking about it at all? Well it's a way of transitioning to a new protagonist, often with the same role and traits as the previous one, but not always. It's a great way to retire an older character and reinvigorate things with a younger successor. The greatest example I can think of in comics is The Phantom. He's one of the oldest superheroes, predating batman and superman… The Phantom (in the story), comes from an unbroken lineage of heroes dating back to the golden age of piracy when his ancestor was betrayed and shipwrecked on an African coast. He was taken in by the local people, nursed back to health and taught their secret ways, becoming “the ghost who walks”. Ever since then the sons have taken that role from their farther. You can see a similar theme in a lot of older stories or stories set in the past, like Zorro, the pirate Doctor Syn, even The Dread Pirate Roberts from the Princess Bride. These people don the disguise of their forebear and BECOME the same character. Modern superheroes play a little with that too, though they usually revert back to the old characters again and just use the mantle passing as a sneaky way of introducing a new character. But it's been popularly done with characters like Antman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Captain Marvel, Spiderman, and many others. In the Quackcast we have a discussion about how this method would have been a better way of introducing Rey in the Star Wars sequels and maybe a good way to fix Indiana Jones (though I disagree). Do you have any fave examples of a passed mantle? The Phantom still wins for me. This week Gunwallace made up a theme inspired by Old Dogs - The burning of an old fire, glowing red hot amongst the black coals and charred, ashen, grey wood. This is a gritty ode to grizzled, aged, experience and time. It’s prickly, with a taste of rock and bourbon, like a good BBQ sauce. Topics and shownotes Links Banes' mantle newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/apr/25/the-mantle-theory/ Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 23 April 2024
What happens when the hero dies? Especially when it's early on in the story… do things fall apart or does someone else take over? Our topic is about a story style where you establish that a character is the hero or chief protagonist, only to do a bait and switch and swap them out with a less likely character like a sidekick. This makes the audience rethink the way things are going, instead of sticking to an expected formula you force the audience to wake up and wonder what will happen next. This can be very effective! Some notable examples of this trope are “the Other guys”, the anime “The legendary hero is dead” (cover pictured), and Mystery Men but there are many others. The seemingly main hero doesn't even have to die, they just need to be replaced by a character you wouldn't expect for the role, as in My Hero Accademia where Almight is replaced by Deku at the beginning, of Steve Rogers in the first Captain America film becomes the hero even though his friend Bucky Barnes better fits the hero architype. Have you ever used this trope? What are your fave examples? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Animal Society - Don’t cross at the red light… traffic signals flash. Make way for the zebra at the zebra crossing! This is a flashy cityscape sound with a touch of the jungle. Topics and shownotes Links Tantz Aerine's newspost on sidekick heroes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/apr/17/the-understudy-hero/
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 16 April 2024
This week it's a short cast because my computer broke and we wasted time trying to fix it! What are your faves? This week Gunwallace made up a theme inspired by Curse of the Office Werewoman - This is a cool cruise into the bright sunlit waters in the south Mediterranean where warmth and calm abide, sipping a cocktail on the lido deck while dressed all in white, soaking up the sun and drifting off into a pleasant dream… Topics and shownotes Links Banes' teacher newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/apr/10/top-five-tales-of-teaching/ Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 9 April 2024
Tantz came up with this week's topic: Exposition! It's because she's well on her way into starting her latest comic, Verdant, and working out ways to introduce the story, the world, characters, culture, magic systems, religion etc without doing a massive text dump, which people generally don't like too much. So how do you exposit in a good way? One popular way is through a dialogue; characters give overly verbose and entirely unnecessary explanations about how things work during ordinary conversations, telling people things that they would already know from childhood, just so the reader can be informed in a “natural” way, which isn't natural and it actually really terrible, eg: “Hello my friend David Prowse who I have known since high school but have had a big falling out with since you slept with my wife. Could you hand me the energy cell please? Of course you know that all machines now are powered by energy cells which are miniaturised nuclear fusion reactors, so that we have unlimited, cheap power always.” Another way is to have a character in a classroom, being taught particular concepts like history or politics so they and the reader “learn” together. This can be terrible but it can also be pretty good if you handle it right. Even text dumps can work ok if they're done correctly, but that's rare. The best way to do exposition is to introduce the audience to only the concepts they need to know for now, in a basic way, with plenty of context in ways that are fully and easily relatable. Like showing a small, slow stakes scene that introduces key concepts and shows the character's reaction to them. If most of the stuff is easily relatable then the audience will focus more on the few isolated weird new things you introduce and they can learn about them from seeing how the characters react to them and how they fit into the context of the world, that way you don't need to explain them. A great example of this is the new comic by Marcorossi, Bunyan Mk7, it's a perfect example of quick, minimal exposition through story. From here we started talking about how in anime often an entire first season of 13 episodes is devoted to this sort of expository introduction, which I find extremely pleasant because the focus of that kind of storytelling is not “conflict” but instead “progress”, which is something not well understood in modern storytelling anymore. The interest the audience gets from the story isn't that a character wants something or needs to fight to get it or resolve an issue, instead it's the linear consumption of knowledge that builds to the goal of finding out more about something. You specifically don't care about resolving anything, rather the learning is fun for its own sake. “Progress” can also be anything that builds towards a goal. I find people still like to rationalise this as “conflict” but you need to stretch the definition too much that it makes the concept useless and no longer logically understandable. How do you do exposition? With a text dump? Via dialogue? A classroom? An introductory prologue? Or do you just throw the audience in the deep end and expect them to sink or swim? That said, the more familiar and relatable the story offering is, the less work on the exposition you have to do. This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Cafe Strange - A melancholic jazz revere on times past and times yet to come. Off-time percussion, a gently plucked double bass, evocative piano and an electric violin play a tune of loneliness and possibility.
Links Exposition examples in comics:
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 2 April 2024
Today we're talking about swords and armour, the reality of those things and their use in fiction. I've always had a bit of an interest in swords since I was a little kid because I loved them in fairy-tales, comics and fantasy: The Three musketeers, puss in boots, Zorro, the Narnia books, Robin Hood, Errol Flynn movies, King Arthur, Conan, Asterix and more. I only started seriously collecting them as an adult though when I needed the correct costume sabre to go with the hussar uniform I put together. I started with replicas and very quickly moved to buying expensive antiques. So I have a collection of real military sabres now, some over 200 years old and I've learned a lot about swords in general in the mean time. A sword is a long piece of sharp metal with a handle at one end, it's ancient technology that's been constantly updated over the centuries. Most cultures developed their own versions, starting with bronze and then moving to steel. Swords are heavily symbolic of power, royalty, command, control, action, chivalry, and nobility. There are many sword myths: A popular modern internet myth is to say swords were always “secondary weapons” or “side arms” in history while pole-arms with the “primary” weapon. Which is a silly simplification, the use and importance of the sword was always context based, they were “primary” weapons in many instances and situations; on the battlefield by Roman legionaries, by Hungarian hussars, Landsknechts and their giant swords, sailors and their cutlasses, by any solder who fought in a confined space, and the sword was the main civilian weapon for centuries. Another silly myth is that Japanese katana swords were the best, lightest, sharpest, most sophisticated swords, of course none of that is true. Swords are much the same the world over with none being really better than any other, they're just better for their own particular geographical, cultural and historical contexts. “Folding” the steel in a katana is just a clever yet primitive solution to reducing the concentration of impurities in the metal, there are other, easier, better ways to do that but that method stuck because it became a tradition. And no, “European” swords were not heavier, clumsier or blunter. Then there's the modern myth of swords being worn on the back for use, which was never done in history because any sword the size of your arm or longer is impossible to draw from the back, unless you do weird things. Swords with worn on the hip, waist, or carried on a horse generally. it looks cool but it's useless. Another myth is that the straight swords that knights used were called “broadswords”. That term came about much later when skinny swords like rapiers, smallswords, and spadroons were popular It was a way of differentiating swords that were a bit wider than the more popular thin swords, and they usually had basket hilts. I could nerd out much deeper and talk about pattern welding, Ulfbert swords, crucible steel, Damascus swords, tempering, differential hardening, tangs, grips, guards, rapiers, sideswords, pala, Kilij, small swords etc, but I won't! What is your favourite sword or favourite swordsperson? My fave has to be Nothung, the sword of Beowulf, just because it has such a cool name. And my fave swordsperson has to be Inigo Montoya This week Gunwallace made up a theme inspired by Soulmates by SirMollington - A contemplative, dreamy, floaty, trip through clouds of muted colour, in a world of quiet stasis against a slow, jazzy background. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 26 March 2024
Today we're talking about the depiction of “intelligence” in fiction! There are a lot of ways this shows up: the genius detective who can understand any clue and uncover any lie, the amazing doctor who can understand any disease, the computer nerd who can do ANYTHING with computers, the genius savant with Asperger's, the crafty serial killer with plans within plans… Mostly though these depictions are absolutely fictitious, simply based on tropes, like the action-man James Bond/Jason Bourne type “spy” trope which doesn't exist in reality and yet that's how we always think of spies. They're generally exaggerated to the point of silliness. The depiction of an “intelligent” person in fiction often involves wearing glasses; dropping quotes (usually Shakespeare); an obvious odd quirk that makes them not fit in well with others- being nerdy, dressing badly, talking weirdly, shyness, meanness; and they're almost always a polymath, in that they know about EVERYTHING, not just the field they specialise in. Recently I've been binging the series Bones. It's about a group of scientists who perform special forensic tasks for the FBI. They're all super geniuses, especially the main character “Bones”, Temperance Brennan, who all the other charters frequently acknowledge as super brilliant. The dumbest person in their team is Angela, the artist, who's main role is to do sketches and reconstructions of the dead and provide an intuitive counterpoint to the cold scientists. Ironically she'd have to be by far the most intelligent person in their group and one of the most intelligent people in the world because while the others have very narrow specialties she's a genius at computer programming, mechanical engineering, code breaking, and and makes intuitive leaps that are impossible for normal people. It's a very silly show in its depiction of and understanding of intelligence, with the “smartest person” (Bones) actually being the dumbest in the group while the dumbest one (Angela) is the smartest. Two of the main bulwarks of intelligence in fiction are Sherlock Holmes and serial killers, which are actually related. Sherlock is from a late 19th century stereotype of an intellectual superman. He's aware of the smallest detail, has a clinical, analytical mind, he drops quotes, he's classically educated, he has “no time for fools”, doesn't relate well to others, and is prone to obsession. His relationship to the modern depiction of the fictional serial killer is his rivalry with the character Moriarty, on which serial killers tend to be based- not on the character but the battle of wits. In reality serial killers and psychopaths are never very intelligent, the trope seems to be based on Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dalmer having reasonably high IQs but neither ever came up with fiendish plans or devised clever clues or plots, their crimes are simply gross, evil. and absolutely selfish, but in no way clever. This has resulted in the fictional serial killers typically matching the intelligence of detectives in an evil, dark reflection. The trouble with depicting intelligence in fiction is usually that the writers don't know very much about it so they trick us by having other characters react to their genius character as if they're amazing, or showing the genius by having the character perform some massively exaggerated act like solving an incredibly hard puzzle, or creating one, dropping random quotes, or just telling us that the character is smart. Some of my favourite intelligent characters are Abby from NCIS, Egon from Ghostbusters, Nero Wolfe from the Nero Wolf Mysteries, Daria, Sherlock Holmes, the Villain behind glasses from Log Horizon, John Crichton from Farscape, Doctor Who, and Mr Spock from Star Trek. This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Gamma Blue Smoldering of Creel - Heavy rocking fire. This is a hammer forging red hot steel on an anvil, rhythmically pounding it into shape, slamming into it with thunderous blows, drawing out the metal into a brutal sword of pure rock! Topics and shownotes Links
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_680_-_Intelligence_in_Fiction.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 19 March 2024
The phrase “Correlation doesn't equal causation” is something associated with science and statistics but it really applies to EVERYTHING and that's important to understand. But was does it mean? If a bunch of things happened at the same time, those things aren't necessarily related or causal. An example Tantz gives is that statistics show in the summer there are more drownings and that people eat more ice cream. That means that those two things are correlated. We know they aren't causal though: ice ream doesn't drown people and people drowning don't cause people to eat more ice cream… the third hidden variable is that it's summer: it's the rise in temperature that causes people to want more ice cream and to swim more, which increases the chances of drowning. I was thinking of the correlation causation fallacy when I was musing on the topic of history. There's this idea that if you know a lot about history it will give you a lot of information on current events, but this is heavily flawed by our tendency to create artificial connections between events, we come up with stories that sound good and plausible and make us feel better for why things are connected. Think of all the pop-science and pop-history books that come out and easily explain world events and complicated things in history. They're all pretty much bullshit because they fall for the causation fallacy: this happened which caused this, that and this, rather than things all happening at the same time for other reasons. This is also related to the hindsight fallacy, where we look back at events and incorrectly think a conclusion should have been obvious because we can see how things ended. Because of this, while knowledge of history is very useful, that use is more limited than we think so it helps to know current events too, especially from an outside perspective so that we're not as fooled by false connections and mistaken causal relationships. It even affects things like self image: are we influenced by the images we see or are the images we see influenced by how we want to look or are there other factors? A key example we mention in the Quackcast was a pop-science story about how the use of lead in fuel made people dumber and lead to more violence. A truly moronic conclusion, very easily debunkable and yet people as esteemed as pop-sceince communicator Veritasium were fooled by it. I realise I fall afoul of it every time I come up with a story for what influenced me to do comics, photography, or cosplay- I have at least 5 different stories that explain anything I do, all of them make sense and seem perfectly true to me at the time, but in reality they're a product of the hindsight bias, the causation fallacy and being selective with data and variables. Can you think of a time you've fallen afoul of this? If you can't you're probably not thinking hard enough ;) This week Gunwallace did not have time for a new theme but he suggested that we put up the theme to PleaseRewind again because it's a great comic that is currently being reposted! PleaseRewind - Quiet threat, creepy, seeping, strumming, thrumming, coming CLOSER, inside, peering around, waiting to begin. This is a quiet track filled with an undertone of urgency suggested by the constant quick rhythm and lonely guitar. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS next Quackcast: Intelligence in fiction
Direct download: Quackcast_679_-_Correlation_doesnt_equal_causation.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 12 March 2024
Banes did a really interesting newspost about panel order and how we read comics- not just left to right or right to left but which panel flows to what and how you get the reader to go in the right direction when something isn't intuitive. We're all comic people and we host a comic site so this was perfect for us to tackle! And as we talked it out we realised that clever panel layout can be employed to assist in true nonlinear storytelling. Film and TV attempt to do non-linear but can never ever truly do it, despite extreme degrees of wankiness with some writers film is simply a liner medium and will always be that way because it plays at a specific pace and that can't be changed within the medium. (you have to introduce external conventions like forcing people to skip to other parts). So whenever someone tells you a film does non-linear storytelling because of time-jumps or flashbacks, it's not true, it's always linear. But I digress, comic layouts can be clever and confusing. They can enhance or hinder clear storytelling and communication in many ways. Do you experiment with layouts? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Explorer Chronicles - Prepare for a marvellous adventure! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, warm breezes tickle the air, wide green vistas spread out invitingly before you, the distance is lost in the morning haze. This is a light digital orchestra of joy, promise, and anticipation! Topics and shownotes Links This was inspired by Banes' newspost about panels here - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/mar/06/how-do-i-read-this-comic-panels-flow-and-blockage/ Our own examples of strange panel layouts…
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 5 March 2024
I remembered that a promised Quackcast was AI: slavery for artists and creators. It's slavery because it uses our creative products as fuel for it's database training for free and then uses our work to make money for their creators, essentially exploiting us for free. This isn't just about the image generators, it includes crap like chat GPT too: that system steals and repackages the creations of others without credit, payment or any acknowledgment. The use of all this sort of AI (except the ethical ones), is immoral, unethical and is a practice that basically endorses slavery. How does it make money? The idea that it will always be the way it is now or that “the genie is out of the bottle” and “there's n going back” is childishly naive and completely ignores the way previous examples of “disruptive” tech are integrated into the commercial world. Great previous examples are the spread of free music, programs, games, and videos on file sharing services in the late 90s. We STILL happily have for all those things now and they're all still multi-billion dollar industries because things adapted and laws were changed. The moral is: if you are an intelligent, moral, ethical person then do not use generative AI. And don't think that this is the Apocalypse and that it's all doom and gloom with no possible hope in sight. The industry will eventually correct itself and there will be a new balance, as there always is. This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Sandra’s Day - A spicy little latin number Chassé’s in with some fancy footwork, does a clever spin, grabs a willing partner and twirls them around the dance floor before finishing up with a hard stomping finale, a crash and a grand exit! Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_677_-_You_cant_spell_Fail_without_AI.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 27 February 2024
Oh baby it's cold outside… That's a tricky song, well it's not really but a few years ago the silly pop-culture warriors on Twitter started acting as if the song was all “rapey” with the male in the song trying to pressure the woman into sex. The problem was they were absolutely ignorant of the correct cultural context in quite a misogynist way. In the era the song came from women could not be seen as openly actively wanting sex so they had to play flirting games like the one displayed in the song. The reason the modern “rapey” interpretation is misogynist is because it strips the woman off her power and agency and casts her as an innocent, sexless child with low intelligence, instead of an adult woman with sexual needs actively participating in a game of flirtation with the man she's chosen. Understanding cultural context is vitally important if we don't want to come off at idiots. History, geography, and time all blur this context but usually all you need to do to get the right feel for is to take a moment to familiarise yourself with a few other examples of contemporary media and absorb those differences. Rarely do you need to do more than that, but sometimes wider cultural study is needed. The very worst mistake you can ever make though is to look at something only through modern eyes in complete isolation from examples of stuff from the same time and place. At best, you will NEVER properly understand it, at worst you will come out with all sorts of idiotic theories like the Baby Its Cold Outside morons on Twitter. This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Un Re Stop Comics - Quatermass and the Pit! This is some freaky Delia Derbyshire early Doctor Who stuff. Freaky fractured soundscapes of mind twisting terror and wonder. This track sucks you into another dimension where you see with your ears and hear with your skin. You brain will never be the same! Topics and shownotes Links Oh Baby It's Cold Outside lyrics - https://genius.com/Idina-menzel-baby-its-cold-outside-lyrics Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_676_-_Baby_its_cold_outside_cultural_context.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 20 February 2024
It was Valentine's Day last week so let's talk about lurv. Love makes the world go round, love solves all problems, love heals all, love is eternal, love is all you need, all you need is love… Well those are all the typical and utterly meaningless pop culture platitudes but they sound good. Why meaningless? Because “love” isn't defined, it's a very vague term that can mean a lot, far too vague to be used the way it is in those phrases. Love can involve lust, friendship, patriotism, affection, yearning, passion, honour, protectiveness, stuffiness, obsession, and so much more. And none of those things are the same, they can all be wildly different and yet still be “love”. So that's sort of what we chat about - different kinds of love and how people use it in pop culture, especially webcomics. Whether us part of our genetically coded instinctual imperative to breed and safely transfer our genetic template to another generation or something more complex and nebulous, we try and address quite a lot of it 😚 This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Opposites Attract - Frenetic and full of a buzzing diffuse energy that suffuses everything like a universal static charge. This music drank waaaay too many espressos and red bulls so now it’s bouncing off the walls, tasting colour, and seeing in 5 dimensions. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 13 February 2024
Do you change your style to go with current fashions or do you stick with your own thing and stay independent of changing trends?
Fashion in design concerns everything! We can talk comics: art style, panel style, lettering style, use of media, writing styles. We can talk clothes, product design, even the design of things that people mistakenly believe are driven by 100% practical concerns like firearms. Fashions in design are everywhere when you know what you're looking for.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 6 February 2024
Here we're fulfilling the promise of Quackcast 671 and examining what the art can tell us about the artist! Can certain themes, an art style, choice of imagery, jokes, humour, character opinions, colour choices or anything else tell us anything about the artist? This can be pretty subjective though a lot of stupid and dishonest critics pretend it isn't and tell us great long stories about how this director is “deeply misogynist” because of certain repeated themes - I once watched a youtuber focussing this criticism on Tim Burton with content that was 100% subjective motivated reasoning entirely dressed up as objective fact. It was very silly. It helps if you know a bit more about the artist, their opinions and life when using the art to examine them so you don't go too far off the rails like that youtuber. It still doesn't give you a reliable result but it's better and if you do it well it can at least be entertaining and make sense. In our Patreon vid we tackle our old fave Star Wars and see what that can tell us about George Lucas. A very cool way to begin! And I think we managed to come up with some interesting insights. For the Quackcast first we jokingly examine each other's work in a critical way… then we move on to our absent Quackcast Alumnus Pitface and examine her using her first main comic on DD, Putrid Meat. This was a fascinating examination! If you're still unsure about this sort of thing, take the example of pulp writer Robert E Howard. Reading his stories in the order they were written was well as knowing a little about that man's biography seems to give you a fascinating insight into his thinking and reasoning! THIS sort of thing is where examining the artist through their art shines, even though it is still largely subjective. This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Maynard and Grimm - Grim and hauntingly introspective. This theme takes you down some dark and mysterious paths, into gloom and hidden places. Be careful, it’s very, very dangerous! Topics and shownotes Links Putrid Meat - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/PUTRID_MEAT/ Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_673_-_By_their_deeds_you_shall_know_them.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 30 January 2024
A fun topic this time. We decided to chat about our fave fantasy creatures. Mine was elves, Banes' had the bigfoot and Tantz had dragons! We chat about where our love started, why we think we like the creatures and a bit about the creatures themselves. For me it was because I always identified with the elves I read about in Tolkien and Brian Froud's book on fareies because I was slim and slight, with long hair and sharp features. Banes loved bigfoots because he liked that it was a local monster to him and it was very much into Universal monster type creatures. Tantz loved dragons because they were awesome, beautiful, powerful and mysterious. So what are YOUR fave fantasy creatures and why? Do you agree with what we say about elves, bigfeet and dragons?
Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_672_-_Fave_Fantasy_Creatures.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 23 January 2024
Art VS the artist! Can you infer something about the creator from their creation? Do you think the art is an accurate reflection of the artist? For THIS Quackcast I wanted to tackle the idea of whether you could judge or infer the mind of the artist from their creation and how wrong some people have been about that, but instead we got all turned around and misdirected and talked mainly about separating the art from the artist when the artist is discovered to have done something horrible, or is at least accused of that. Can you still go back and watch the Cosby Show for example? The position I'd like to go with is one of default separation- we should always have some sort of distance between the art and the creator when we can because if we don't then it's going to be very tricky to be able to really appreciate anything… there's always someone nasty in the mix somewhere and we're doing a disservice to the other people who worked on the thing as well as culture as a whole if we close of access to stuff or shut off our appreciation for things because someone involved in them was later found to be awful. But then there are other aspects to this too: you don't want your consumption of the art to monetarily advantage an awful person, and it also depends on how closely the art is connected with the artist and whatever awful thing they did. We also talked a tiny bit about judging the the creator based on their creation and how unfair that can be. One example of mine is Masumuni Shirrow who created many amazing and influential cyberpunk works like Ghost in the Shell, Apple Seed, Dominion Tank Police, Intron Depot, Black Magic 66 etc. but I feel people unfairly dismiss him because he also loves to draw sexy women. He's a genius with incredible artwork, densely plotted, clever, intellectual, thoughtful, philosophical, yet exciting action cyberpunk stories that have been pretty foundational in our modern culture, and yet some morons dismiss him for also drawing sexy ladies. I hate those people. This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by The Focus - a creepy yet beautiful piece that brings points of colour to a cold grey landscape and eventually ramps up to a climax that sounds as if it was played in reverse with pieces of broken glass. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 16 January 2024
This Quackcast is about using influence wisely! I had a DD comic creator come to me, apparently a bit distressed at some of the things we'd said in our last Quackcast about drawing adult comics- they had decided to delete their entire webcomic. I checked on google and it turns out they deleted it everywhere, not just DD, even down to their twitter! I've since talked to them some more and got more of the story and made sure they were ok but it was pretty alarming at the time nevertheless. That got me on to the idea of being responsible with your influence: when you have any sort of platform people listen to you and think you have authority. Because of that you have to be mindful and try not to pretend you know more than you do, don't confuse objectivity with subjectivity or opinion with fact, always try to qualify things, add context, and give exceptions. On our Quackcast we talk very authoritatively about ways of doing art, drawing, writing stories, what comics should look like, dos and don'ts etc, and we always have very strong opinions. But the funny thing is that we're usually pretty hypocritical- because we'll do a Quackcast recommending specifically against something and explaining why it's bad and then we'll have another Quackcast parsing that very thing. Sometimes that change of attitude happens during the course of a single podcast! If you listen to us at all, take what we say as advice rather than instructions. We each have fields of expertise on specific things- Tantz on psychology and ancient Greek history, me on Graphic design and art, Banes on music and comedy, we all have expertise and decades of experience running a webcomics hosting site, producing webcomics and podcasting, but we don't know everything about everything! Outside of those fields our knowledge is a bit general and even within them we all know we still have way more to learn! So take what we say with a grain of salt.
Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_670_-_Wise_use_of_influence.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 9 January 2024
The number of the Quackcast is 669 so that means it's time for sexy stuff again! But despite the topic this isn't an adult cast and we keep things to a respectful tone. We chat about how drawing sexy characters can be a lot of fun but they don't have to be realistic or anatomically correct to be sexy; stylised, simplified, or abstract forms can be just as alluring and get the pulse racing, it just depends on the setting, story, and other themes in there. And conversely, a perfectly realistic form with realistic anatomical features can be very unsexy if things aren't done right! We talk about times when sex in a comic is not about sexiness (sex scenes can be very serious or nasty), and also when having sexy looking characters doesn't indicate that it's a sexy comic- just like in real life looking sexy doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex. We talk about how sex scenes in porn, comics, imagery, movies and TV shows normally never reflect reality because actual sex tends NOT to be very visually appealing- sweatiness, cramps, mess, gravity, bad breath, bad smells, bad hair, awkwardness, embarrassment, fatigue, disappointment, boredom, not to mention positions that hide all the interesting things from the viewer. Because what is so compelling about sex is NOT actually the bizarre reality, it's the procreation instinct of the viewer. That's tied up with our physiology, partly in our brains but also to do with various organs and glands that secrete hormones, pheromones and other chemicals which drive our behaviour. Sexiness is a symbolic shortcut to evoke that, which is why we don't ever how to show sex in its full gritty reality: the viewer does the majority of the work, they only focus on the thing that suggests to them the idea of sex and heir instincts take over. Which is also why when you normally think of sex you don't usually think about the the ‘mess’ so much. Then we briefly touch on some sex myths that media perpetuates mindlessly, like the idea that smoking is required after sex, or that losing one's virginity has to involve any pain or blood, or that hymens MUST be broken, and that the “pop your cherry” phrase is actually pretty disgusting and perpetuates a bad sex myth.. This week Gunwallace was still overwhelmed with holiday duties so I picked out a sexy them from the past. Is this a theme for a comic? No! It could be a theme for X Up, it does have some Wah Wah guitar (the sexiest guitar), but it isn’t, this is a theme for the number 6. The number that a certain DDer, Plymayer, gives to comics when he feels they deserve it: “A 6 out of 5”. This is a theme for a concept, the concept of a supportive DDer, To plymayer, and to every 6 he has ever handed out. (Okay, so it’s also a theme for X Up … but don’t tell anyone). Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 2 January 2024
Happy new year. Happy 2024! In 2023 Tantz finished her first volume of Without Moonlight and started on her new fantasy webcomic Verdant involving magic, witches and giant bugs. Banes tackled a number of things but the standout was his cheeky comedy romance comic Kaiju Valentine about a normal sized man and his gigantic girlfriend. For me it was finally finishing the 8th chapter of Pinky TA and starting on the second chapter of Bottomless Waitress with Banes. Now we're all looking forward to starting Key of Dreams this year. It's a dream story with ancient Greek gods based on a script written by Tantz, with artwork by all of us. What things did you mange to achieve in 2023? What will you be starting in 2024? This week Gunwallace was busy with Christmas and new year so instead I dipped into out stores and puled out a prize, Gunwallace's them to Kings Club - This is a modern mafia movie soundtrack, starting off eerie and atmospheric and then ramping up the cool and bombastic. There’s traditional theme bolstered by a hard gritty rock techno edge. Topics and shownotes Links Tantz: Banes: Banes & Ozoneocean: Ozoneocean:
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 26 December 2023
Merry Christmas! Today we interviewed John Celestri, a new member of DD and a very cool person. John has worked as an animator on some of the coolest shows in the 70s and 80s. He was the guy behind Boba Fet on the Star Wars Christmas special, he animated She-Ra, He-Man, Rock and Rule, the video game Dragon's Lair and more! He's a true legend. We're making our weekly DD Patreon vid free for everyone to see as a Christmas present, so go check it out: https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck John is a truly interesting guy. he's been working as an animator, writer, illustrator and creator all his life. It was so amazing to talk to someone who helped create the original She-Ra and He-man! And that maddening game Dragon's Lair that no one could ever get anywhere through, he actually animated that! Amazing stuff. On DD he's hosting his comic Bloodwing Fire Fist Angel. He chats to us about that and more, so tune in to hear what he has to say and have a look at our free vid on Patreon. Merry Christmas from Drunk Duck This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Delos - A haunting, nightmarish horn draws you into a vast creepy echoing world, lit by the sparse, lyrical plucked notes on a melodic electric guitar. This is regal, scary and terrifying at the same time. The sounds of a vast underground desert cave at night. Topics and shownotes Links Bloodwing Fire Fist Angel - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Bloodwing_Fire_Fist_Angel/ Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_667_-_Merry_Christmas_and_Interview_with_John_Celestri.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 11:34pm PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 19 December 2023
We're up to number 666 Quackcasts so our topic this time is evil! Evil is a complicated subject, we all think we know what it is but we really don't, there are just so many aspects to it so it's very hard to fully encompass. Broadly “evil” can be something very subjective: anything that runs counter to our own well-being as individuals- people, things and situations that do us harm. You can expand that to your property, your family, friends, acquaintances, pets etc. As that definition gets bigger though to encompass your neighbours, street, suburb, city, state, and country it becomes more objective bit by bit, till we come to the idea that “evil” is something that runs counter to human rights, or the existence of life in general, or the right to self determination etc. A more objective view of evil. But there's MORE! There's an embedded idea in our culture that “evil” is caused by external forces, smoothing that's quite popular in a few religions and myths. Characters like the devil, Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, or demons which encapsulate, perpetuate, influence, control and characterise “evil”. They embody it, they work to spread it, they influence people with it. The idea is that everything evil in the world is caused by them. It's often wrongly assumed that all religions are structured like the Abrahamic ones (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) with a good and evil duality and “evil” being associated with the underworld in some way, but that's really just caused by looking at them from a mainly Christian lens. Death and the underworld aren't evil in most religions and rather than having strictly good or evil characters, “evil” is usually a matter of context and any character can be a mixture of both good and evil. There's a good reason for this type of externalisation of evil though- by characterising it in such a symbolic way it helps us better understand different aspects of it and look at it from different angles. After-all characterising, symbolising and simplifying is how we better understand all reality, that's what's behind mathematics, physics, and all sciences really. The last big evil factor we chat about is something we could also call “malice”, that is the active act of deliberately committing evil as opposed to simply doing something that is defined as “evil” for, another reason, i.e. taking your parking spot because they need it, killing a person in the line of duty as a police officer, not holding the elevator doors open for you because they were in a hurry… Instead they do those things because they want to cause harm and they enjoy it. This is how we like to portray psychopaths and serial killers in fiction. But even with malice there is a spectrum: on one end the person does the thing because they want to cause pain and distress, on the other end they do it simply because their own needs and pleasure are all that matter, they know that they cause you to suffer but that's irrelevant to them. So the big take away from this is that there are a lot of different ways of thinking about “evil” and it's often a spectrum rather that just one solid thing. But how do you define evil? How do you use it in your creations? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by On The Edge - Star Trek Adventures - I wager 20 Quatloos on the Vulcan… This is an epic, awesome intro, it builds steam from a portentous beginning with digital French horns and strings, gathering urgency and energy as it rockets into something grander and more dangerous. Trumpets blast us to a new dimension. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 12 December 2023
This week our talk is an art one: eyes! We talk about how to draw them, adding meaning and expression, the way different cultures use them, different styles for doing eyes, reflection, shadow, focus and a million other things!
Eyes anchor a face, they're THE most important landmark because humans are instinctively drawn to them as are most other creatures because eyes are an ancient thing that connects most animals, not just mammals but birds, reptiles, fish, crustaceans, arthropods, arthropods, insects and more. And for this reason hiding eyes or blocking them or even removing them is a great indication of evil or that something is wrong. There are Soooo many ways of drawing them from simple dots, circles within circles, lines, or going full on with something more realistic.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 5 December 2023
We're talking about parody and its evil twin satire. There are good parodies and bad ones but we feel the better parodies are the indirect ones that make fun of and exaggerate the theme or the vibe of something rather that simply doing a direct copy but with jokes; For example, Austin Powers and Kingsmen are indirect parodies of spy films, Blazing saddles is an indirect parody of Westerns, The Princess Bride and Shrek are indirect parodies of fairy tales, Galaxy Quest and the Orville (first season) are indirect parodies of TV SciFi shows etc. Direct parodies can be great too, like Spaceballs, or McGruber, but they run more of a risk of by relying on the fact that you've seen the original. Another main type pf of parody are the grab-bag ones that include direct parody scenes from all sorts of different IPs, these are probably the weakest of the type. Things like Hotshots, Meet the Spartans, and Not another teen Movie are good examples. Finally there's satire, which is parody with a point, sometimes those points are very sharp! satire uses parody to make clever comments, it's not just making fun of the tropes it uses. Good examples are The Life of Brian, and The Onion website, Whachtmen (the comic and movie), The Boys (TV series and comic). Horrible examples are the fake news sites that use “satire” as a defense when in reality they only exist to spread misinformation, propaganda and sell advertising.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 28 November 2023
This Quackcast tackles the issue of AI comics on Drunk Duck. We're discussing either a ban or rules that would enable them to be posted under conditions. We also talk about AI generated imagery and the issues with it and well as its future and the relationship between it and artists. This is a very complicated and much misunderstood subject. First, there are two main types of generative AI: we'll call them ethical and non ethical. Ethical AI is trained using licensed and copyright free material. Non-ethical AI is trained using stolen material. The benefit of using ethically trained AI like the one Adobe created is that copyright isn't at issue and allows the creation of imagery that can actually be used commercially without problems. There are many myths about generative AI: 1. It allows a person with no skill to be able to create art: 2. The purpose of free unethically trained generative AI is to democratise the process of creation: 3. It's fair use, transformative art: 4. Just like any new process, photography or digital art etc: 5. The same things as sprite comics or fan art: 6: It's like an artist using references or taking inspiration: 7: It's Pandora's box. Once it's opened there's no going back: Conclusion:
Topics and shownotes Links Community discussion here: Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 21 November 2023
Well the culture of DD is strongly tied to our distant origins in 2002 back when we were formed, 21 years ago in the early days of the internet when things online were just getting good. Dylan Squires, aka Volte6, had some spare time and decided to invest it in creating a webcomic hosting site. Those weren't really a thing back then, there weren't even that many webcomics online back in 2002 and social media wasn't a thing yet either. Gen Xers and the older Millennials who started out on DD from the beginning didn't grow up with the internet or social media. They dived into the net and learned about it from it's early days in the 90s when they were in their 20s and 30s. This gave them a very different character to younger Millennials and Gen Z who're more embedded with the net because they grew up with a world bound by it. In particular social media has made people more extreme, partisan, tribal and more likely to be embedded in social bubbles because the algorithms used to encourage user participation and retention force people into social echo-chambers and push them towards extremest positions by only showing them things that elicit strong reactions. The original admin team on DD were all educated, professional young adults, with successful webcomics. All were North American. None were overly political or religious but they weren't anti-those things either. They were an accepting crowd with neutral views on most topics, back when the internet wasn't driven mainly by social media outrage and fake pop-culture wars. So they created a very welcoming and open community. The only other webcomic host at the time was the Keespace/Keenspot duopoly which ingrained a culture of “haves” and have-nots“: Keenspot were the picked few webcomicers who got to join the elite group with special privilege on the site while Keenspce consisted of everyone else. Many of the Keenspot creators actively looked down on the Keenspacers, so much so that they eventually changed the name of that part of their site to ”Comic Genesis" so they couldn't be confused with the Keenspot comicers. Drunk duck was a massive contrast to this! We vowed never to have a classist structure and to always stay egalitarian. Indeed the most skilled, professional, and established comicers on DD have always mixed freely with newbies and vice versa, everyone is always ready to help one another. Drunk Duck was always built around the idea of community. When Drunk Duck had its major collapse in about 2012 we lost a lot of users to other sites, mainly Comic Fury which had been created by one of our own disaffected people. They went there because it had a similar feel to us (since it was roughly based on us). It was founded by a younger Millennial so the social feel was quite different. At the stage a lot of the users who went there and stayed were younger Millennials because they had just been starting out and needed a stable host, they also hadn't been around on DD long enough to establish any sort of loyalty. So Comic Fury had a massive boost at that point and kept up the momentum eventually welcoming the young Gen Zers, while Drunk Duck had older Millennials and Gen Xers rejoining us. Hence DD always had a different, older, more neutral feel. Things move at a much slower place. We have to mention the massive corporate sites: Webtoon and Tapas. These places are what DD was set to be when Platinum comics brought us back in the mid 2000s. They had a bit of the Keenspace/Keenspot feel of haves and have-nots, they encourage a lot of users who's creative ideas are based on producing products. It's a very ambitious crowd and the work often veers towards a bit of a mainstream, unified blandness just by the nature of them being so large, successful and corporate driven. There's nothing wrong with that it's just the nature of those types of site and it's exactly what DD had started to become before them when we had the big money. So that's the reason we are how we are: a bunch of weirdos! When the other admins left and I was managing the site on my own I wanted to keep us how we were because I felt that's what our loyal people appreciated about us. So I engaged other admins who matched that vibe. I feel we've stayed pretty much the same since we were founded in 2002. What do you think? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Magic Power Ball - Intense, driving, action oriented electronica that makes you want to dance. You’ll want to bop and move to this track. It’s a slow start but it picks up the pace quickly and takes you along for the ride! Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 14 November 2023
Stakes are a part of a story. What does a character want? What means the most to the character? What are they after, what do they care about? Stakes can be really subjective like that and they can also be objective and more universal like death, debt, a threat to a home, nation, planet or even the universe. The most important thing though is that you can communicate the value of those stakes to the audience! It doesn't actually matter WHAT the stakes are as long as the audience understands that they're important. Sooooo so many writers seem to have zero idea about that. One idea is that you need to “raise the stakes” in order to get the audience to be more invested, which certainly works but what a bad writer will always do is just crudely add onto the objective stakes: “Ten people were in danger but NOW it's 500! But wait… now it's 6000. OMG, now it's a million! Oh wow, the fate of the known universe hangs in the balance!”. The truth is that at a certain point it loses value, we just can't relate very well to bigger and bigger numbers and the “known universe” is an empty concept to most people. To really raise the stakes you have to pick things that the audience CAN care about and/or show that it's really affecting the characters in a way the audience can symbathise with.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 7 November 2023
Multiverses are really popular in fiction right now, eg. Dr Strange into the mouth of Madness, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Flash, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Rick and Morty, and The Loki TV series (which I love). So what is a multiverse and why is it used? Basically when multiple universes coexist at the same time, either there are a few and they're widely different or they are infinite and every possibility exists. In the real world the idea of multiple universes is purely theoretical and a relatively minor part of various quantum physics theories, while in fiction it's an important tool for mashing together separate IPs that wouldn't normally fit together and also telling interesting stories with parallel elements and “what-if” scenarios. There are some obvious logical issues with the way a lot of multiverse ideas are presented in fiction, though the concept is clearly magical rather that scientific in the way it's used it should STILL have logical consistency in order to be plausibly believable. One of the biggest issues is that the multiverse is too anthropomorphic and deterministic: humans are far too important, different worlds are “created” when people do different things, and in most of the different world the same people, places, and events exist and even when they don't the same characters exist, ie. no matter which world or who it is there will always be a Spiderman. This idea wouldn't be supported be any multiverse theory. The easiest multiverse idea to use in fiction is the one where any random change produces a split and a new world. These random changes would NOT be whether you decide to go down a a different path because that is a very complex change an not in any way random, it'd be about simple particles in the quantum realm doing different things because those are the only truly random events. The trouble is this would happen incalculable times every femtosecond in every part of every new universe, but it WOULD produce infinite world worlds where many different possibilities exist. There would be many, many, many almost identical versions of the same world with no visible change at all, there would be many worlds with all sorts of small changes and big changes but still having the same events and people in them and there would be just as many worlds where everything is different and no people in them at all. The trouble is that the kind of changes would be more limited than we think despite the infinite nature of the world because “initial conditions” play a huge part. The thing about initial conditions is that if they're different the end result will never be the same no matter how many times the scenario runs, and you also can't accurately predict what the result will be at any point unless you know the initial conditions that generated it. What this means that time will play a huge part: the point a which the universes diverge is significant to the amount of change and the kind of changes that will happen. But these changes could only involve things that are possible- there couldn't be a universe where there is a version of you that was born a different sex or ethnicity for example because those changes would have to have happened too far back for the conditions to have resulted in YOU. Every time they would result in someone else quite different from you living in a scenario that was also very different. Eg. the initial conditions were different so the result can't be the same and the further back the changes happen the more divergent the result, regardless of the infinite nature of the variations. This also mean you can't have a version of New York where magic exists, or a version of earth where we have two suns or something huge like that. But a world where you have a beard, where you became an accountant instead, where you died in childbirth, where you won a Nobel prize at 21, or where you're evil and have a goatee etc are all possible. Anyway, what are you fave depictions of a multiverse and do you use multiverses in your work? This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to The New Butler - Portentous, epic, intriguing, glorious and really quite regal.The one proudly proclaims wealth and taste (a very rare combination in these crass days). It speaks of wide open rolling green grassed grounds and forests surrounding the lordly manor house, packed with partridge and pheasant for hunting…
Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to: VIDEO exclusive! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 31 October 2023
Happy Halloween! The time of spookiness and ghosts. Spooks messed up the cast so the sound quality is really bad I'm afraid, I tried to do what I could to fix it though.
How do you go with horror and did you dress up for Halloween? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by History, An Intimate little epic fantasy - A royal fanfare trumpets the arrival of this epic beginning, hinting at gig things to come and adventure in mist shrouded lands of high mountains, deep valleys, and shaded forests.
Topics and shownotes Links This week we made our Patreon vids available free to all because we liked our costumes so much! First Halloween vid - https://www.patreon.com/posts/dd-patreon-vid-91934504
Second Halloween vid - https://www.patreon.com/posts/dd-patreon-vid-91932022
Featured music: Special thanks to:
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_659_-_Happy_Halloween_2023.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 3:00pm PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 24 October 2023
We're chatting about the subject of musicals for this particular Quackcast. You might think this has nothing to do with webcomics but webcomic musicals popup from time to time, like The Black Parade on DD by Ashlee S.
Direct download: Quackcast_658_-_Marvelous_musicals.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 17 October 2023
Direct download: Quackcast_657_-_The_art_of_the_tease.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 10 October 2023
This Quackcast is a sequel to our Quackcast last week on alternative character growth, but instead of Star Wars this time we decided on Indiana Jones. It's a really interesting creative writing exercise, we think up a better, more interesting way of of growing and continuing an established character and their adventures.
Direct download: Quackcast_656_-_Character_Growth_2_Indiana_Jones.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 3 October 2023
Direct download: Quackcast_655_-_Alternative_Character_growth.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 26 September 2023
Today we're chatting about characters who're mainly based on tropes VS those that grow. You see this difference quite clearly in a lot of British comedy VS American comedy where characters are set up in certain ways, e.g. the nerd, the sassy one, the mature one etc- in British stuff they tend to revert to type, which is their most important trait, while in American stuff they tend to change and grow based on interactions and experiences. There are MANY exceptions though and one way isn't inherently better than the other.
Direct download: Quackcast_654_-_tropes_vs_character_growth.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 19 September 2023
Today we're talking about STAR TREK! Star Trek is a pretty influential piece of pop-culture. Most interesting to me is that it's a future that is NOT a dystopia. It's a large scale vision of a future world where everything is NOT terrible and collapsing in on itself. You can count those on one hand. It's worth talking about just because of that. Instead of taking the boring, tried and true dystopia route the creators of this world decided to explore a premise of “what happens when a world actually works?”.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 12 September 2023
Our topic this week is making your characters individual, distinct and setting them apart through physical traits. In many mainstream superhero comics or manga the only difference between most characters is their outfit, hair, and skin tone. There are a few reasons for that but a big one is that it saves time if the artist doesn't have to change to much when they're drawing different characters. Professional arts work hard and have to work fast so things that make work faster and easier are needed. In our Patreon video we mainly talked about giving them different shaped boobs... A really great example of this sort of thinking is Steven Universe where characters are very physically distinct and certainly don't all follow the same old usual patterns.
Direct download: Quackcast_652_-_Physical_traits_that_set_characters_apart.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 5 September 2023
We're chatting about a couple of things today: the DD 2023 Awards which are in their completion faze now, and "strong" characters of any gender. Some people mistakenly think that so called "male" traits make a character strong: physical strength, anger, power, leadership, height, muscles, meanness etc not realising that none of these are male traits, they're JUST traits. The masculinity or femininity we assign them is all cultural. By combining a lot of these traits you often just end up making an unlikable dickhead. Character strength has more to do with how well realised the character is, how well they fit into their world, the effect they have on other characters, weather they're "active" or "passive" in a story. It's a complex subject and we go much deeper into it during the cast! How do you write "strong" characters? This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Boxdog - A contemplative, reflective, serious piano driven intro leads into a happy, pleasant pop-song, first as drums and a bass take over, then the process completes as lead duties are handed off to an electric guitar and the tune fully opens up!
Direct download: Quackcast_651_-_Strong_characters_of_any_gender_and_DD_awards_stuff.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 29 August 2023
There are a lot of things that only exist in fiction and really don't have any basis in reality and yet we THINK they do! It's just that fiction has done such a great job of making us believe this stuff and setting it up that it pretty much replaces reality. We focused on spies for our Patreon only video, and how the version we know from popculture in Kingsmen, Mission Impossible, James Bond, Chuck, and many other things is complete fiction.
Direct download: Quackcast_650_-_Fake_things_that_only_exist_in_pop-culture.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 22 August 2023
When you're drawing people in a webcomic one of the common ways to indicate gender is by outfits, but why are clothes gendered at all and is that a constant?
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 15 August 2023
This week's cast was an experiment and if it works out we'll do more! We came up with the idea for discussing a comic live on air, the hard part was choosing it, for that we settled on our trusty Kawaiidaigakusei to help us. She chose “Up the Pyramid” by BUDLO. And this was her rationale:
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 8 August 2023
We're having a chat about characters that differ from the source material and turn out crap because of it. Characters where the people adapting them didn't care, understand, or even take time to read the original stuff because they thought they knew better.
Direct download: Quackcast_647_-_characters_screwed_over_by_adapters.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 1 August 2023
Drawing fight scenes is damn hard! One of the best ways to deal with this is to use references, but that's hard too because it's a pain to find the ones you need! So today we're talking about making your own reference pics for fighting because that's what I just finished for Tantz- I stripped shirtless and wielded some of my many antique swords in fight poses for Tantz to use in her new fantasy webcomic.
Direct download: Quackcast_646_-_FIGHT_Drawing_and_references.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 25 July 2023
We're chatting about the current state of AI, it's use, abuse, and the moronic way it's typically being utalised by mid-level businesses to screw over creative people and save money in the short term.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 18 July 2023
We're talking about the pop-culture myth of psychopaths and sociopaths and other stuff like serial killers. Yes those conditions do exist, well sort of (not exactly with those names), but the pop-culture versions we know from the media are mostly myths. The real things aren't as exciting or flashy as the versions we know and love/hate from movies, comic, books, TV shows and podcasts.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 11 July 2023
With the release of the new Indiana Jones film comes some questions… We haven't seen it yet but we hear a lot of people don't like it and it's already being called a flop. But is that because it's actually bad, because people want it to be bad, or because it doesn't match people's expectations? What's the real story? It's hard to know at this point.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 4 July 2023
Gatekeeping can be a pretty dickish practice… but not in every case.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 27 June 2023
Injuries, especially to the head can be extremely bad but people are hit over the bonce and knocked out in popculture all the time. In violent sports like boxing or MMA it's often a goal, it's a common thing in games too, the “KO” is a staple. In TV shows, movies and comics it's seen as a kind way to deal with an enemy, people will even do it to their very best friends to protect them from going through with some scary activity, often knocking them out and tying them up and then taking their place or something. Knocking people out has become so memed that the fantasy version has replaced the real version and it's even influenced how we think about it.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 20 June 2023
We base our images of aliens in comics on aliens in TV shows and movies mostly, because those are the ones we all know.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 13 June 2023
Today's topic is Nudity: Nudity in comics, censorship, self censoring, what you can get away with on DD, ratings, nudity on other platforms and how it affects the reach of your work, and more!
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 6 June 2023
Beginners at webcomics make mistakes, rookie mistakes. In fact people tend to make a lot of the same mistakes and we're going to chat about some of those in the Quackcast, but there are certainly a LOT more!
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 30 May 2023
Rumours can be damaging stories deliberately spread to harm people, they can grow organically of their own accord. Salacious rumours replace truth and stick around in history, like the silly stories of Catherine the Great and horses, Nero fiddling while Rome burned, Marie Antoinette saying “let them eat cake”, or the famously wealthy Roman general Crassus dying by having molten gold poured on his head. All rumours and silly stories but they become stronger than real history.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 23 May 2023
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 16 May 2023
We're talking about WAR here! Trying to leave out politics, though that's really hard with war because it's basically ALL politics but on fire. So we're talking mainly about depictions of it or at least aspects of it, in art and the media. Both Tantz Aerine and myself work on war comics, Without Moonlight and Pinky TA respectively (plus Tantz also does Brave Resistance with Pitface), so we have some knowledge of the subject from a creator perspective.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 9 May 2023
Generational tensions are a cultural constant. It's popular to pick on the young and say they're lazy, irresponsible, stupid, changing things in silly ways etc, but it's also just as popular too defend them and debunk myths associated with younger people, we don't have that with older people and I find that a bit sad and disturbing. This cast tackles the myths associated with “boomers”.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 2 May 2023
Asterix and Cleopatra VS Netflix… We were initially inspired by the furious reaction over Netflix's new series on Queen Cleopatra, a purported “documentary” and it's seeming focus on fantasy rather than history, but then we started thinking about the brilliant comic Asterix and how it handled history… It didn't pretend to be accurate, it's a comedy afterall, and yet it managed to retain a great level of veracity without taking too many liberties.
Direct download: Quackcast_633_-_Asterix_is_GOOD_history.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 25 April 2023
We finally gave in to temptation and just started chatting about Star Wars. For our Patreon video we were talking about the idea of pivotal pop-cultural landmarks that changed the cultural landscape in various ways. Star Wars definitely qualifies… but instead of finding other examples we just decided to indulge in a Star Wars only cast. We didn't do more than scratch the surface unfortunately though. It's a cool cultural phenomena and it's something we always refer back to when we talk about story structure. SO please bear with us as we indulge!
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 18 April 2023
What rights are people actually entitled to? That question is a lot bigger than you think!
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 11 April 2023
The Quackcast this week is about entitled bossy Karens. In fact it was originally going to BE “the Karencast” but the whole “Karen” thing is a bit sexist and pejorative. So why a Quackcast on overly entitled people then? Well aside from we stealing it from Tantz's newspost on Friday, those kinds of people make great minor villain characters. They can be comic relief baddies but they can also be deceptively dangerous when they really DO have connections to back up their arrogance!
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 4 April 2023
Have you ever watched a series devotedly then lost touch with it for some reason for a while and then gone back to it a couple of years later and tried to get into again but this time you look at it with a very different perspective? Or maybe you loved a movie when you were young and decided to watch it again as an adult to see if it holds up?
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 28 March 2023
We're talking about the importance of a good cover in this cast. Another technical comicscast! I love making coves, they're one of my fave things because I get to stretch my artistic muscles and get a little more flashy and creative with my art and graphic design. They can also be pretty dread things to work on when you've used up all your creative powers on your actual comic and have nothing left over…
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 21 March 2023
Today its another technical comics making focused cast, suggested by Tantz Aerine! We cover our notions about how to maintain character consistency and consistency in general, plus a bit on speech bubbles and the text in them. I was SOOPER tired towards the end though so I wasn't all there mentally but the guys carried it through admirably.
Direct download: Quackcast_627_-_Character_consistency_and_speech_bubble.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 14 March 2023
Today we talk about an unusual type of villain, a secret type of bad guy and a particularly nasty one: the person who maliciously does nothing. This is a person who COULD intervene to resolve a dire situation or save someone, they could do it easily; they know how, they have the means, they're not scared or unsure, and it doesn't mean much risk to themselves, they just choose to sit back and watch the person die or the situation collapse… either because they know the result will benefit themselves or they're just curious to watch the person die or the everything turn to crap for the victim or whatever. Either way they COULD easily intervene but they choose not to.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 7 March 2023
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 28 February 2023
HPKomic is a great guy, he's been on DD since almost the beginning. He alternates the Friday newsposts with me, he focusses on the intricacies of comic panels. This time he asked people to talk about their own processes though and I thought this would be a good topic for a Quackcast!
Direct download: Quackcast_624_-_Comic_panel_creation.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 21 February 2023
Arrogance is a fun subject. Related to cockiness, hubris, assertiveness, self confidence and pride.
Direct download: Quackcast_623_-__Arrogance_vs_humility.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 14 February 2023
This is when the writer leads you to think something big has happened in the story, like a character dying or falling in love or winning a big prize or something, only to have the character alive in the next part, or the prize or love never mentioned or addressed- this is “schmuck bait”.
Direct download: Quackcast_622_-_Whaddaya_take_me_for.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 7 February 2023
Toxic positivity can take all sorts of forms, but I think it's most easily recognised by someone telling you to be happy about something when you just don't feel it. It's a really odd, nasty, weird feeling when a person tells you you're basically not allowed to be grumpy or even neutral, you MUST be happy. How many times have we all been told to “smile” by someone?
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 31 January 2023
My idea was to talk about social pariah characters, people who it's socially acceptable to laugh at, despise, or even hate. They can be the uncool people, the dorks, the dags, the idiots, the overweight, the ugly, the old, the out of touch, the over the hill… On the extreme end they could be monsters and criminals. Generally they're written pretty two dimensionally as a collection of cliches, but when the writing goes beyond that to lend them humanity is when it goes to the next level.
Direct download: Quackcast_620_-_losers_are_human_too.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 24 January 2023
Talking about AI again but this time our subject is different: Does it have a negative influence on culture?
Direct download: Quackcast_619_-_Artificial_culture.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 17 January 2023
The Saying goes that The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Fence. Envy and jealously are destructive, negative feelings that either lead to bad outcomes or just make you feel pretty crappy. It especially affects creators! We get down about our artwork, our writing, the popularity of someone else's comic etc and we wish WE were as good as them and wonder why we aren't… maybe we're just not as good? If we could only just have their talent, their luck, their skill then WE'D be awesome too. it's just not fair…
Direct download: Quackcast_618_-_The_grass_is_always_Greener.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 10 January 2023
Adventure is a fun genre! Not as many things get made for it these days but it used to be hugely popular in the past. It's one of my favourite genres and this is what we're chatting about for the Quackcast. What IS adventure? I think it usually involves a whole lot of different things like exploration, action, discovery, heroic protagonists, rivals, travel, exotic places, fights etc. It can be set in the past or in the modern day. Good examples are The Mummy, Indiana Jones, the original Tomb Raider, the two new Jumanji films, Strange World, Pirates of the Caribbean, Ducktales, Tailspin, Jungle Cruise, Uncharted and so much more. I'd love to know your faves!
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 3 January 2023
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 27 December 2022
Happy Life Day! Hahaha!
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 20 December 2022
Inspired by Banes we did a Quackcast on SUPER TEAMS! You know those groups like the Justice League, the Avengers, the Suicide Squad, or even Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy from The Journey to the West (Monkey Magic is my fave version). These are super powerful characters on their own but together they're even more awesome because their strengths and weakness complement each other in interesting ways. DD had its very own super team in the form of the Heroes Alliance, where a lot of DD creators got together to work on a shared universe. And back in the 2000s DD had a “Civil War” even with Keen Space (AKA Comic Genesis), where a huge number of our creators and theirs participated in something like a DC Vs Marvel crossover battle.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 13 December 2022
The 1930s were quite a uniquely influential time for a number of reasons. The 1930s were the very last days of the old world before the new one was born in the apocalypse of the 1940s. Old empires, kings, colonialism- forces that had shaped the planet for decades were about to be shattered for the good, thankfully. New technologies were on a rapid rise as things were spiraling closer and closer to global war, Air travel was becoming a reality even as the old ocean liners were still the main means of transportation connecting the continents, people were building cites around the realities of car travel. Cinema had changed drastically with the advent of the talkies. and so much more!
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 6 December 2022
There are times when you need to give your brain a bit of a break, that's when comfort shows come in handy! Movies and TV shows you can watch again and again- you can appreciate them every time and they don't get old. The tension never gets too much for you because you already know what's going to happen. You can just relax and enjoy the familiar story, revelling in the company of characters you know and visiting their world once more. They're great for creating to as well because you don't have to worry about missing anything important.
Direct download: Quackcast_612_-__Comfort_food_for_the_brain.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PDT
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 29 November 2022
Doppelgängers was the subject of our Quackcast today. What are they? Generally they're evil duplicates of people. Originally if you saw one it was supposed to be a portent of impending doom, but they've since evolved through pop-culture to be mirror people who envy the originals and want to kill them and replace them. There are MANY other kinds of Doppelgängers too now: Future versions of people, clones, robots, virtual copies, alternate universe versions, spirits, demons, helpful lookalikes, and more.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 22 November 2022
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, so the saying goes but it's absolutely true. There is a layered subjectivity to it based on personal preference, the cultural standards of your community, the ethnic traits of you and your peers, prevailing global fashions in appearance, the dominant archetypes in the media and so on. All these things combine to form our personal subjective ideas of beauty. You can see this yourself if you look at paintings, statues, masks, frescoes and other artifacts that have been produced by all the diverse cultures on earth over thousands of years: there IS no standard, eternal, objective of beauty.
Comments[0]
|
Tue, 15 November 2022
So how do you like comedy that makes you cringe? You know that really awkward humour where you feel embarrassed for those involved and almost in physical pain for them? You feel really bad for them… It could be cruel pranks, or jokes based on lies or misunderstandings that are just carried way too far. Personally I find them hard to take. It CAN be great like in the original version of The Office, but even that was REALLY hard to watch at times.
Comments[0]
|
