Adaptations of one thing into another is an interesting process. What's lost, what's gained, what modifications do you have to do to make it happen? As webcomicers we do it all the time in many ways, we have to adapt our influences into ideas, adapt those to stories, and adapt those to images and comics, which isn't trivial! It's often quite difficult to transform the written word into narrative sequential art- what portion of the writing gets directly turned into images, what's cut, and what becomes dialogue? For me about 20% is cut, 78% becomes art and 2% becomes dialogue or captions.

We chat about film and story adaptations as well of course, War of the Worlds (HG Wells) in particular, since it's become several different movies, artwork, video games, a radio play, and a really excellent prog-rock concept album among other things. All those adaptations take different approaches, Orson Wells' radio play version updated it from the late 19th century Britain to his present day and location and framed it as a developing news story, making clever use of the medium it was playing on. Most cinematic versions have followed Orson's style, but the concept album by Jeff Wayne stuck with the original historical setting which made the story much more interesting, tragic and compelling.

Another more current and different take on adaptations is the “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” movie. This is a live action and CG animated hybrid film version of the 1990s Disney adventure cartoon series which featured a crime fighting rodent team. The usual approach to those adaptations is to simply update the origin story, stating from 0 and set it in the present day using current animation technology to make the characters look as real as possible, the original media is treated as lore and inspiration but is not cannon to toe movie. This movie however took the opposite approach: the original cartoon is treated as a real TV show that the characters (who are shown as actors), stared in, and this movie shows their lives 30 years later. The animation is a mixture of 3d CGI and pseudo 2D cell animation, plus pseudo stop motion claymation and the film is largely used to parody and spoof animated adaptations in general, so it’s perfect for this topic!

So what are you fave adaptations? Where dp they go wrong or right? And how do you go about the process with your own work?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Amie Armageddon. Hard to describe this one, it sounds like a great pop-song you’d hear on the radio or as the theme song to a big budget movie. Echoing tonal vocals, evocative, layered, sounds… It sets a scene and then expands upon it. Just a really lovely piece of electronica.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Amie Armageddon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/may/23/featured-comic-amie-armageddon/

Featured music:
Amie Armageddon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Amie_Armageddon/ - by Machineheadstudio, rated T.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

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We start off with the idea of talking about art techniques, tips and tricks we've mastered and could help people with but the cast turned into a discussion about drawing male and female characters- also trans, androgynous, etc. There's an art to representing gender in imagery! It's super important to remember that the way we see gender in art is mainly culture based rather than an innate biological reaction and the perception of gender in art is different according to your cultural background. It's basically a visual language that everyone learns, but as an artist you have to learn to actually “speak” it, and that's not as straight forward as you think.

A rough example of of how culture based our perception of gender in imagery is:

- In most Western art the “male” is the default. We take for granted that a figure is male in art unless it's augmented in some way, the most basic version is the stick figure. These are men. To make a female stick figure you add long hair, a dress or boobs. Some or all of that, it doesn't matter. And this scales up to other representations. A natural, more realistic depiction of a female person won't always read as a woman in art unless they are “feminised” in some way, i.e. a prominent bust, removing angles and lines and adding soft, rounded features, featured lips, larger eyes, thin waste, wide hips, long legs, large thighs, styled hair, thin neck, large head. And doing any of that to a male figure is a way to “feminise” them or blend their gender.

-In comic art from places like Japan and Korea it's the opposite somewhat, especially manga. The female form there is more of the default. Male characters involve a lot more augmentation to create a “masculine” effect, sometimes bordering on caricature, as can happen with female characters in Western art. A generic male manga character would typically read as more “feminine” if dumped straight into a western context.

In times past the focus was more on primary (genitals), or secondary (beards, boobs etc), sexual characteristics, i.e the Venus of Willendorf (a very female form) and male figures with disproportionately sized penises. While early Egyptian sculpture is pretty androgynous in his regard, male and female are not well differentiated, the main focus is on the build - eg. men having slightly broader chests. Early Greek sculpture even more so with simple abstract forms representing “humans”. Much later on this changed into a more separated, codified style: men being heavy, muscular, bearded, women being soft and slim, with youth of both sexes being more androgynous. Interestingly genitals were very diminished in this art, penises were small and flaccid, while vaginas were never depicted.
Though it was a different story with the art intended for more secular, “common” consumption, which could show pornographic scenes (mainly 2D). Art featuring Satyrs or Priapus massively exaggerated the genitals for deliberate comedic effect. For them focus on genitals didn't indicate masculinity or femininity so much as comedy, stupidity, shame, or porn.



Basically gender in art isn't about genitals or genetics, it's all culture based and you need to learn the visual language of your audience to make yourself understood by them, as well as to confuse them or subvert their expectations!
What trouble have you had when depicting gender? I always run into issues myself. I make my women too angular and my men are too slim.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Gyor - Charged up, magnetically accelerating into clean, sweeping, panoramic electronic tones, momentarily overrun by a furious chaotic electric discharge, only to return to serenity once more.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Gyor - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/may/17/featured-comic-gyor/

Featured music:
Gyor - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Gyor/ - by Tuxie, rated E.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
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Spoiler- we don't actually talk much about Yu-Gi-Oh! But I feel it's a good example of a pretty bad story- a so-bad-it's-good story, but bad nevertheless. The idea we're talking about here is that it's useful to look at bad stories and stick with them because they can really help you write better. They're a lot more useful than good stories because you'd rather just enjoy those and it's a bit harder to examine them for technical details, but with “bad” stories the faults stand out strongly. Instead of simply dismissing a bad story or making fun of it, it's more useful and valuable to try and “fix” it: try and work out why it seems bad and think about what would be needed to make it better, then think about how that applies to your own work. Maybe you're actually making many of the same mistakes?

Yu-Gi-Oh! is a little too much work to use as an example, but something like the Marvel movie Eternals is good because it only had a few flaws. Big ones, but also very good parts as well:

- Lots of telling rather than showing. A text dump at the beginning was just the start of that. It wasn't stylistic choice like in Star Wars, but rather something we need to understand what is happening. All through the film characters tell us about things rather than the story properly depicting them.

- Revealing the solution to mysteries too early and so it undercuts built up tension. Mysteries are really interesting and intriguing to the audience, even when they think they've solved them, it still feels very rewarding to have them revealed nearer to the end of the story. Revealing them far too early feels like you're being cheated and wastes a valuable resource. Eternals does this twice with very significant mysteries about halfway through.

- Having generic, cannon-fodder bad guys. This is true of many action stories especially from Marvel films, but it's particularly bad here. Saying any more would be a spoiler. But this is something that Yu-Gi-Oh! does far better.

- Leaving out information that would better make sense of story elements. We have the character Icarus refereed to frequently as “the Pilot” by another character who's never met him before, but we have no idea why. A deleted scene reveals why, but without that it makes no sense, you're just left to feel it's a pointless joke about the Icarus myth, which it's not.

- Not solving logic errors. The characters are supposed to be the basis for mythical figures in earth cultures but most are of different ethnicities to the cultures that worship them. This could have been easily solved in two ways: 1. the character “Sprite” could have been shown to have created illusions around them to make them seem like the characters of myth. 2. The character Druig could have been shown to manipulate people's minds to think they were seeing the mythical characters. The story does neither.

Despite all this and more there are many good points to this story and it would be possible to fix it through re-editing. I found it more rewarding and interesting to work out what exactly made this not such a good film and it helped to better highlight the good parts for me. It also helps me see what to avoid in my own writing and what I'm doing wrong. Try it yourself? Maybe you can tackle Yu-Gi-Oh! and let us know how that could be fixed?
I'm not brave enough.


This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to - Malefic Demonic Apocalypse - A creepy red garden filled with writhing demonic monstrosities and horror! This electronic piece grinds and roars, sounding like an acidic, burning harpsichord spewing fury and vitriol in a crimson torrent.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Our movie critique thread does this somewhat - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/177412/?page=36

Featured comic:
Oni Streamer Builds a Mech - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/may/10/featured-comic-oni-streamer-builds-a-mech/

Featured music:
Malefic Demonic Apocalypse - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Malefic_Demonic_Apocalypse/ - by Genejoke, rated M.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

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

Let's go forward in time to the past so we can get back to the future and kill our grandfather and be our own ancestor while we step on a bug and change the course of evolution 200 million years in the future and doom the Morlocks to a date with Doctor Who, while Bill and Ted drive a Delorean in the Old West and save Fry's dog as it waits out the front of the Pizza place… Time travel is fun to talk about, but it's easy to mess up because paradoxes in plots pop up all over the place as timelines intersect and cross over and over, getting tangled and logically prevent events that have already happened from happening!

Here we chat about some of that as well as our fave time travel stories, like Dr Who, Bill and Ted, The Tomorrow People, Playing Beati Bow, Back to the Future, The Time Machine, A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur, Army of Darkness, Outlander etc. Examples abound! Time travel stories can allow us as an audience to visit a distant time with ourselves looking at the future or past through the eyes of the time traveller, or their naive helper like Marty from Back to the Future or one of Dr Who's companions. They can give us outlandish adventures or bizarre and complex mysteries that make the most of the time paradoxes.

Time travel is fantasy fiction for us because we can only go forwards at the same rate… but it exists in physics as a logical theory and paradoxes can be overcome in specific ways, so it's a possibility, just one that no one can work out how to usefully achieve. Which is why we have stories! So what are YOUR fave time travel stories and why?

This week Gunwallace has given us something different! Rat Test Blues - Gunwallace doing his own thing here! The dangers and worries of CoVid-19 are universal, and New Zealand is no exception. Here Mr Gunwallace gives voice to his and all our apprehensions when faced with a malady when there’s a pandemic about… “Do I have Covid or just a cold?” Only the Rapid Antigen Test can say for sure. Awesome blues number, that guitar roars and sings and Gunwallace’s vocals are perfect.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Sad W - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/may/03/featured-comic-sad-w/

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

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

David's always right - Introducing Hpkomic! Hpkomic has been with DD since the earliest days, he's a comic artist, writer, English teacher, and podcaster. He even participated in the second comicbook challenge that Platinum held way back in the day when they controlled DD, and came second! He was part of many community events, like the Drunk Duck Civil War (the DD answer to the comic book Marvel Civil War) and DD VS Comic Genesis, which was the DC Vs Marvel of Webcomics! In fact he has the oldest post on this version of the DD forums! After the site was fully deleted at the end of 2005, he was the first person back who commented with an offer of help to get things back online again. Bonus points if you can find it.

He's spent some time away but he's resurfaced again to actively participate once more and lend his experience and help with a newspost every second Friday. I will continue to do the Fashion Spotlight, but Hpkomic will alternate newspost with me to lighten my workload and provide variety.
In his time away from DD, HP broadened his interests into podcasting, doing the Chucky based “Kid's Stuff”, the supernatural focused “Supernatural Selection”, and writing for “Haunted MTL”, a Canadian horror website. So have a listen to this amiable and intelligent fellow regale us with his brilliance!

This week Gunwallace gave us a musical theme to Ghost Network - Xylophone bones, tapping a happy tune on dried out ribs…grinding into a veil of deep red, steaming and chugging through into a cloud of mystery. This is a jaunty ditty crossed with a dark, heavy electronic piece for a very unusual mix.


Topics and shownotes

Links

HPKomic's links and links mentioned:
It came from the fridge - Hpkomic's start at drawing digitaly - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Warped_Archive/4889607/
Galactic Hub Serreven - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Galactic_Hub_Serreven/4958715/
Cosmic Dash -https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Cosmic_Dash/
RGBots - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/RGBots/
Supernatural selection - Supernaturalselectionpod.com
Dragoneers -hogan crossovers http://crossovers.dragoneers.com/

Featured comic:
Succubus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/apr/25/featured-comic-succubus/

Featured music:
Ghost Network - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Ghost_Network/ - by Ohnomelon, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Hpkomic - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/hpkomic/

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