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:
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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:
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Direct download: Quackcast_701_-_Faces_come_out_in_the_rain.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PST
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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:
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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?
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The QuackCast features Ozoneocean, Banes, Tantz Aerine, and Pitface, talking about writing, movies, webcomics, art, politics, philosophy, sexuality, and everything else! We're the hosts of the oldest webcomic host on the net, Drunkduck.com, aka theduckwebcomics. 20 years this year!
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