Above: Final Fantasy IX (2000) by Squaresoft. Below: Final Fantasy XIII (2010) by SquareEnix.

One of the main influences of my art style comes from the Final Fantasy video games of the late 1990s and early 2000s. I remembered being mesmerized by the full orchestrated score by Nobuo Uematsu, I ...

This is mainly an issue with female characters…
But what IS objectification?
Objectification is when you rob a character of traits that make them human and turn them into something closer to an object.

One common view, that I feel is in error, is that characters are objectified by how ...

A pet is wonderful to have in your life- they will usually love you unconditionally and give you moments of solace with their antics. They become a member of the family, they have personalities that make them unique across all other pets you will ever have and across species. You ...

Reflection Characters

When I was doing a little reading on the “Mentor” character type, I learned about something called “Reflection Characters”. It was an eye opener; I'd never heard of this before, though I could instantly see how it made sense in storytelling, and dozens of examples came to ...

Typically I work on my comics and illustration at home in my studio. I know I'll have everything I need on hand, for one. Also I hate and mistrust almost everyone and everything, as working in the service industry for the majority of my adult life has left me ...

Aight y'all, go ahead and fasten yer proverbial seat belts, on account of we got a lot of ground to cover with this one! Actually come to think of it there ain't really too many proverbs about seat belts; more like I'm stretching out a turn of ...

In my newspost last week about the “No Hugging, No Learning” mantra, I mentioned that I was basing a throwaway character – a loveable misanthrope – on a real-life friend of mine. It’s something I’m tempted to do fairly frequently; I spend most of my time in an academic environment ...

I continue to be an occasional fan of true scary stories found online. The “realistic” ones are cautionary tales, and might even give an important reminder to be on guard and keep one's eyes open…and the more unusual/“unexplained” stories are pretty darned entertaining and addictive!

Anyway, I ...

Reflection Characters

When I was doing a little reading on the “Mentor” character type, I learned about something called “Reflection Characters”. It was an eye opener; I'd never heard of this before, though I could instantly see how it made sense in storytelling, and dozens of examples came to ...

image by Banes, influenced by lots of things

When I came up with the characters and stories that became my webcomic here on The Duck, I knew it didn't come from a vacuum. But for the most part, it was only after writing and posting stories for several years ...