Episode 271 - Pitface’s tales of ribaldry
May 15, 2016
What makes the “meat” of a story? What makes you fall in love with it, keep coming back for more watches or reads or whatever? I contend it has nothing to do with conflict or culminations or climaxes, those are merely generic structural plottings that are pretty much the same format no matter what story you read- you know they're coming and you know what form they'll take and once they're over it's not really that significant anymore; “re-playability” is low, they're just too tied in with the story structure to have much life away from it in your mind. What keeps me coming back to a story and fall in love with it are the Characters, exploring the world in which they exist, and the development that occurs during the story. Gunwallace provides us a theme to CTV Revamped, the new version of Charby the Vampirate! Good and creepy techno for Charbs!
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
The Magpie - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Magpie/
From THIS thread - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/177504/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Pitface - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Kawaiidaigakusei - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Featured music:
CTV ReVamped - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/CTV_ReVamped/, by Amy Of Darkness, rated T.
Try and join us for the big DD electronic meetup on the 21st of this month, over Skype! Details here - https://www.facebook.com/events/1088004541241456/
Episode 265 - Drunk Duck updates and the future
Apr 4, 2016
For Quackcast 265 I wanted to steer the direction toward the idea of future fixes and features for Drunk Duck! We talked a bit about the 2nd wave of fixes that will be happening now- HippieVan worked to gather people's suggestions for the most important bugs that needed fixing (with our limited funds), and features people want added, and then did a survey to find what people though were the highest priority. It was a lot of work and took a few weeks to come up with the results. Bellow is a summery of what she learned:
Episode 264 - How to improve your online presence
Mar 27, 2016
In this Quackcast we interview Marie Tary, AKA ShadowsMyst. We haven't talked to her since Quackcast 32 and 33 way back in 2011 when Skoolmunkee and I interviewed her about The art of analytics and how to market your webcomics properly. Now Banes and I talk to her about the changed landscape of website marketing, brand management, SEO and how it applies to comics and most particularly Drunk Duck itself. Brand management and marketing is Marie's job, as a senior graphic designer for a major university. She gives us some invaluable information about how we can put Drunk Duck back on top and return it to its former glory- very useful information that applies just the same to any online property, especially webcomics! So this will give you a clue what's in store for Drunk Ducks future and the sort of thing the future 3rd wave of fixes and features will entail. We also have the presentation of a lovely track by Gunwallace, the theme to Tangled river!
Episode 261 - D.U.C.K. Radio2
Mar 7, 2016
Radio D.U.C.K. has come again for part number TWO! Bringing you ALL of Gunwallace's lovely tunes, one after another. This time we get to meet Evangelist for DD Reverend Carlton Crackers, SciFi Hour with Kurt and Steve, Woman 1 and Woman 2, a return of DJ and Rhett Blanket, and introducing BILLY-BOB Banes and JETHRO Ozoneocean! All these fantastic personalities are the mind children of scriptwriter and musician Gunwallace, and played by Gunwallace, Banes, Ozoneocean, and Pitface. Enjoy the music and remember the name of Gunwallace!
Episode 253 - narrative order and the flashback
Jan 11, 2016
Doing stories that start with the climax, then flash back, tell what happened to get there: the old narrative style of switching the first few chapters around to make a more interesting story. Sometimes it works GREAT because it throws you right into the middle of things and you have to work your way back to that point… It works very nicely in The Hangover for example! Often it's used very badly- in anime particularly, where they use it for foreshadowing and a tease to try and get you interested in the rest of the story- but anime story structure is so formulaic that all it really does is give you a cheap spoiler. Other times it doesn't work well is when the writer isn't very good so the viewer loses their way in the plot… If the writer is GOOD though you end up with Pulp Fiction. You'll love Gunwallace's theme here- a super funky jazz track for the comic Nothing Important Happened Today. Enjoy!
Episode 247 - FONTS and LETTERING
Nov 30, 2015
This week we have VIDEO of the Quackcast again - a nice condensed 10 minute version. Quackcast 247 is all about what fonts to use for your webcomic, hand lettering, aligning fonts, likes and dislikes, where to find good fonts, what sorts of things to look out for and what to avoid. You can find a lot MORE in the font discussion thread linked bellow. The lovely Pitface and hilarious Banes were with me lending their clever insights. Gunwallace gave us a rocking FUNK theme to the comic Fred Peterson The Mighty Warlord!!!
Episode 246 - Characters: Fictional Love vs Real Life Hate
Nov 23, 2015
Characters you would love in media but hate in real life! In this Quackcast, once again we have an ensemble cast of Banes, Ozone, Pitface, and Tantz Aerine, but THIS time we were also joined by the talented and studious kawaiidaigakusei! We wanted to talk about fictional characters we love in fiction but would hate if they were real. It was sort of an extension of last week's Quackcast topic, with that fiction VS reality vibe. Gunwallace's gospel themed theme for Jesus 2016 is hilariously great!
Episode 245 - fiction influencing reality and the myth of the friendzone
Nov 16, 2015
In Quackcast 245 we TRY to talk about my idea that fictional characters, stereotypes, tropes and situations in media have influenced their counterparts in reality, and in a lot of ways helped to create them. Fictional stereotypes and tropes are made out of simplified models of things that happen in reality, usually by pulling together all the most dramatic, big, bold versions and then turning them up to 11 to make a new, more exciting fictional caricature, that NEW image is then spread far and wide and influences people to imitate it- a good example being the modern “cowboy”. This idea was kicked off by Pitface suggesting one of my characters looked like a douchey friendzoned character. I thought about it and realised that a real life version of this character (who's mooning over a girl in a relationship with another guy), WOULD be exactly as she described, also those characters are common to relationship comedies and so often friendzoned… SO that got me thinking: could the current crop of “nice guy” fedora friendzone exponents have based their crazy theories about relationships on images in the media? -since they don't have much relationship to reality yet they so closely match pre-existing tropes in movies and TV shows. Then we expanded the idea to other examples of media representations influencing reality. Pitface, Banes, and Tantz Aerine join me on the Quackcast. Gunwallace does a lovely theme for Entanglement.
