Episode 638 - Rookie Mistakes
Jun 5, 2023
Beginners at webcomics make mistakes, rookie mistakes. In fact people tend to make a lot of the same mistakes and we're going to chat about some of those in the Quackcast, but there are certainly a LOT more!
Topics and Show Notes
A few common mistakes of first timers:
- They have too many comic panels so it takes ages to draw and artwork and text become too small.
- They plan way too much, sometimes for month or even years before starting the actual comic. Planning is good but not when it prevents you from actually starting.
- Their art or designs are too complicated so that they can't sustain it for more than a few pages and they give up.
- Their story is too complicated so that it's too hard to translate into a comic or it would take too long to draw.
- The cover art doesn't match their artwork in the comic. Great way to turn off readers.
- Too much expository text.
- They make their comic too raunchy (when it's not a sexy comic) and limit their potential audience because it needs a higher rating and can't be displayed on most comic sites.
- They think they'll get popular and famous right away.
- They think people will just “find” their comic and rely too heavily on Google and the internal promotion system of their comic host.
- Filler pages, especially generic ones are a huge turn off. If you MUST do them show a BTS thing like a rough version of your comic page.
- Aggressive marketing. Don't be a one-eyed dick when promoting your work, it can have the opposite effect and make people avoid you.
- Giving up when you don't get feedback or if you miss a few updates. Keep working at it, people will come eventually, especially if you're a bit social. And people will still come back after missed updates. Stick with it!
Did you fall victim to any of those? Tell us some of your own rookie mistakes? :)
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Mirage - light dances around the sparkling surface of a smoothly curved, shiny object. Our view shifts and we dive through its hollow centre, observing the complex geometry of this unusual three dimensional object. Overlaying synthesised sounds.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Plusum - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/may/31/featured-comic-plusum/
Featured music:
Mirage - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Mirage/ - by InkyMoondrop, Rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
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Episode 637 - Rumours
May 28, 2023
Rumours can be damaging stories deliberately spread to harm people, they can grow organically of their own accord. Salacious rumours replace truth and stick around in history, like the silly stories of Catherine the Great and horses, Nero fiddling while Rome burned, Marie Antoinette saying “let them eat cake”, or the famously wealthy Roman general Crassus dying by having molten gold poured on his head. All rumours and silly stories but they become stronger than real history. Then there's the notorious story of poor Fatty Arbuckle and how he supposedly killed a woman during a sexual act due to his ‘enormous bulk“. A complete and utter fabrication but it destroyed his career and is still believed today.
Episode 636 - The Cusscast
May 22, 2023
We're talking about swearing! Swearing in comics, types of swearing, the use of swearing, causing offense, taking offense, swearing used as a term of endearment, and some history behind various types of swearing. We barely even scratch the surface! We don't swear in the Quackcast if we can help it so we're talking around and about the language without using it, though we DO swear in our Patreon vid, which is free to all patrons, even the $1 level.
Episode 635 - Warcast
May 14, 2023
We're talking about WAR here! Trying to leave out politics, though that's really hard with war because it's basically ALL politics but on fire. So we're talking mainly about depictions of it or at least aspects of it, in art and the media. Both Tantz Aerine and myself work on war comics, Without Moonlight and Pinky TA respectively (plus Tantz also does Brave Resistance with Pitface), so we have some knowledge of the subject from a creator perspective.
Episode 632 - Star Wars
Apr 24, 2023
We finally gave in to temptation and just started chatting about Star Wars. For our Patreon video we were talking about the idea of pivotal pop-cultural landmarks that changed the cultural landscape in various ways. Star Wars definitely qualifies… but instead of finding other examples we just decided to indulge in a Star Wars only cast. We didn't do more than scratch the surface unfortunately though. It's a cool cultural phenomena and it's something we always refer back to when we talk about story structure. SO please bear with us as we indulge!
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.
Episode 624 - Comic panel creation
Feb 27, 2023
HPKomic is a great guy, he's been on DD since almost the beginning. He alternates the Friday newsposts with me, he focusses on the intricacies of comic panels. This time he asked people to talk about their own processes though and I thought this would be a good topic for a Quackcast! So on this comic podcast we're finally talking directly about making comic pages, who would've thought?
Episode 616 - Happy New years!
Jan 2, 2023
Happy 2023! This was the last Quackcast of 2022 and the FIRST Quackcast of 2023! I was recording during 2023 while Tantz, Banes and Pit were still stuck in 2022 because of the time difference between us, so we straddled the years! We had the full crew here of myself, Banes, Tantz Aerine, and Pit Face! We chatted about what we did with comics in 2022, what movies we saw and the issue of “AI Art” and how it impacts actual artists. It was a really cool talk!
