Episode 688 - Artistic Evolution
May 20, 2024
How and why does your creativity change over time? It “evolves”. Evolution is often wrongly thought of as a process that leads to a goal, like the idea that humans are the pinnacle of evolution, or that we will “evolve” into something better and “more superior”, or that there is a “next level” of evolution… All of that is just silly comic-book nonsense and terrible sci-fi. Evolution has no goal or direction, it's simply how we describe change that occurs over time. Creatures don't get “better” due to evolution, rather environmental pressures influence changes that make creatures fit in and cope with those specific pressures better. And many factors influence evolution, not just environmental pressures.
Topics and Show Notes
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!
In this Quackcast we talk about how our own work has changed over time and why. How has your changed over time and why?
This week Gunwallace was influenced to create a theme for Craters Edge - creepy, ethereal, mysterious mist arises, deepening the enigmatic aurora of the presence… Then chaos is unleashed without warning! Rapidfire electronica overwhelms, before fading back into smoke and darkness.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Somewhere in the Universe - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/may/14/featured-comic-somewhere-in-the-universe
Featured music:
Craters Edge - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Craters_Edge/ - by Jason Moon, rated M.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 674 - Fashion
Feb 12, 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? This is complicated by the fact that most people's styles are often influenced by an earlier fashion they just stuck with, but certainly not always, and some fashions reach a point where they become fully developed and eternal (like Art Deco), so it's worth sticking with those rather than changing to reflect ephemeral trends that are never properly formed.
Episode 665 - Eyes
Dec 10, 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!
Episode 644 - Psychocast
Jul 17, 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.
Episode 643 - Cultcast
Jul 10, 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.
Episode 640 - Aliens
Jun 19, 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. But movie aliens have been generally based on humans because it's less expensive, easier to come up with a costume and makeup for an actor, and it's also easier to make those aliens relatable. “Aliens” even THINK the same as we do, have the same motivations, wants, needs, prejudices, opinions… Almost 100% of the time aliens in media are US, just a weird version of us: distorted reflection.
Episode 634 - Boomer-myth
May 8, 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”.
Episode 627 - Character consistency and speech bubbles!
Mar 20, 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.
