Tue, 25 November 2025
We chat about how your characters evolve over the years. Webcomics are typically projects that extend over many years or even decades, slowly evolving as they go. Your characters change over that time due to all sorts of factors: you forget how to draw them between pages (I've done that so many times), you want to try out new things or popular styles, you use the wrong references, you change how you feel about certain things, or you change how you write them for various reasons. For me I've been drawing my character Pinky since the late 90s, Pinky has been going for 27 years now in various forms and the characters in Bottomless Waitress have been around for over 10 years. In those comics I now take months between drawing new pages so it's easy to forget how I'm suppose to draw them, I have to look up the last 4 pages every time and research how they're supposed to look, I remember most of it but it's easy to get details wrong. Because of that the characters evolve over time when I make little mistakes that become embedded and then reiterated. Other changes happen when I just decide I don't like older styles and want to try new things: less cartoony, more cartoony, more realistic, more manga influenced, more painterly etc. Pinky and the rest of the characters in her comic have gone through so many changes over the years and I'm grateful that the webcomic format allows me to have that freedom. Bottomless Waitress is a collaboration with Banes so I don't change the writing of the characters, but I change the look of them just as much and experiment with new styles. I do not understand how ANY of their hairstyles work so those change slightly all the time because of that. Character bibles would help but who has time for that crap? haha! How have your characters changed and why?
Next week we'll be talking about Avatars and selfies self images.
Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to: VIDEO exclusive! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_767_-_Character_evolution.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PST
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Tue, 18 November 2025
This cast is about supporting the individual and interesting creator in the face of crappy, generic Ai produced slop. Because individuality, human mistakes, and human weirdness are so much more interesting than averaged out, smoothed down, generic pablum that's produced by “generative” Ai. I must apologise though because I slept through the usual Quackcast time (I was sick), and it took my brave, loyal and helpful cat almost 2 hours to finally wake me up and get me ready for the cast! So my brain wasn't fully awake and I was a dopey ditz for most of the cast. Gunwallace joined our crew for this cast. He's always a welcome member to the team. These big Ai models work by stealing text and images from all over the place and giving us averaged out versions of them. The text and images they churn out are typically bland and often wrong because they are an average of both bad and good information that are delivered in an entirely overconfident manner. AI is a great real-time example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action. The blandness is key though- this is why as a creator you shouldn't feel disheartened, the novelty and creativity of you work is still wake makes it interesting in the face of all this generic glurge. As Ai use increases, genuine creatives will adapt to it and make it their own as just another of their tools. The people who think they can replace creatives will be disabused of that fantasy just like they were with things like photography and synthesisers: Photography didn't replace the artist like people feared, good photos still take a lot of skill, experience, talent, and training to produce. Synthesisers didn't replace musicians, you still needed to know what you're doing to make music with them. Ai is much the same in that the generic images and text produced by inane “prompts” are generic garbage based on stolen content and the more they're produced the more generic people will see them to be, unless true creatives come along who know how to manipulate them to produce interesting things instead of simply simulacra of interesting things. It is already starting with people who forgo Ai trained with stolen IP and instead use their own work for the training models. And to a much lessor extent for people who use prompted Ai creations as the basis for further creative work of their own. In the mean time though fully creator produced work will always have value. This week we have a best-off Gunwallace - Awfully decent fellows - JAMES FREAKIN’ BOND. That's all I originally wrote. This is one of my faves that I often listen to.
Links
Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to: VIDEO exclusive! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_766_-_The_importance_of_drawing_earnest-ly.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PST
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Tue, 11 November 2025
In the immortal words of Banes: “I don't draw blood unless I have to!” Takoyama is the creator of the comic Thrudd Goddess of Thunder, which the Quackcast theme song by Gunwallace is based on. In my own main comic, Pinky TA, originally my thoughts were that there would be nothing that was off-limits. If I wanted to draw it I would, if the story called for it I would… No matter how bad, no matter how unfamiliar I was with the subject, no matter how hard it was to draw or how long it took or how much I didn't like doing it: fight scenes, complicated architecture, weird cameos, complex costumes, complex mecha, using a toilet, sex, eating, sitting around a meeting table, animals etc. I've since moderated my feelings about that after many years. Staying within ratings has benefits and taking extra time drawing hard or boring things isn't fun. One of the things I've always avoided in my comic work is Manga style and chibi figures because I have no confidence in my abilities for those, I have tried and the best I can do is an uncanny valley version that looks extra bad. What features in the current skyscraper ad was a version of Sailor Moon in my own style (which was part of a meme at the time) I'll make that the cover image- that's not really me doing manga, it's me doing my interpretation of it because I can't do it. What are some of the things you avoid drawing? Stuff about Trump, religion? Toilet use, bands singing on stage, people sitting around a meeting table, heavy gore scenes, people eating, cameos, chibi, manga, your OWN face?
Topics and shownotes Links Forum inspiration: Things Undrawn https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/180148/ Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to: VIDEO exclusive! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
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Tue, 4 November 2025
Imagine a spherical cow… That's an old physics joke about how perfect mathematical models often don't fit with reality. You have to simplify and abstract things. People wrongly imagine that the universe is built out of maths and think that natural phenomena follow the laws of physics in an elegant way… this is not quite true, mathematical models and physical laws are abstractions and simplified models that sort of match with reality but never completely because the macro scale reality we experience is ultimately the result of what happens on the quantum level and the relationship between those two is very hard to figure out. We HAVE to simplify concepts in order to communicate about them, the trouble is that this leads to errors and stupid ideas because people base their reasoning on those simplified versions of concepts. You get a lot of dumb ideas that are based on a kernel of truth but aren't really true and become more false the more you try and use them in the real world, like: you get tetanus from rust, heat rises, you can get a cold from going to bed with wet hair or standing in the rain, gender is simply male or female, comics and cartoons are just for kids etc. This has always interested me because we have a lot of idiotic ideas that are common in culture and I've always wondered where they come from and why they hang around- it's not because people are stupid, it's because communication requires us to shorten things down. The trouble comes when we don't allow for that and just take those simple versions as if that's all there is to it. Like people who get tetanus vaccinations whenever they get scratched with something rusty for example- Tetanus is horrible and can kill you but rust doesn't cause it; rather it's a bacteria that lives in soil, usually around animal dung, so places like farms. The reason people think rust is a source is because rusty nails that have been in the ground on a farm will cut you and will most likely give you tetanus, but so will a stick, a bit of bone, or even a cut caused by ANYTHING at all that you happen to get dirt in. You will probably never get tetanus from scratch from anything rusty in an old workshop, on the road, at the beach and so on. Most people's ideas about evolution are wrong: it's not about “survival of the fittest” or simple things to complex things or about progress towards a goal or perfection, there's no such thing a “the next strep in evolution” or something that is “more evolved” than something else. Evolution is the process of change over time driven by circumstance- that is a simplified explanation but more accurate than some others. Changes that work better in certain situations can hang around and influence further change. They're not part of a positive progression, in fact they can lead to extinction for many reasons. In the Quackcast we try and take this topic back to fiction, covering ideas like “cartoons are just for kids”. This idea probably stems from the success of Disney and how strongly that was tied to cartons, comics and children's entertainment with Micky Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White etc. Cartoons and comics were never just for kids in any period, there have always been comics addressing adult concepts like political commentary, eroticism, propaganda, military training and proper weapons usage, and just general adult humour. A survey or anything from Warner Bothers Loony Tunes from the 40s and 50s clearly shows that. The trouble comes when unthinking people let kids have access to any cartoon or comic without supervision or oversight. Or when they try and make rules about comics and cartoons based on the idea that they're “just for kids”. Have you been the victim of poor reasoning because someone based their ideas on simplified concepts? Or do you believe them yourself? This week we have a best-off Gunwallace and this time it's the theme to the music we use for our intro - Thrud Goddess Of Thunder - Big fat beats and an epic sound! This one really brings the thunder! It’d be great as the intro tune to a professional wrestling match. It builds anticipation perfectly and really slams home and delivers on its promises. Epic sounds!
Links Featured comic: Featured music: Special thanks to: VIDEO exclusive! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Direct download: Quackcast_764_-_The_problem_with_simplification.mp3
Category:Webcomics -- posted at: 12:00am PST
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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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