Episode 513 - Mask of the Mandalorian
Jan 10, 2021
The Mandalorian is pretty unique in that he keeps his face hidden almost the whole time. This is very rare in TV and movies, the rule is that we HAVE to see the actor's face, so they rarely even keep on hats let alone remain fully masked! Yes, there are examples of it but they're few and far between. It's very cool that they've allowed the character to remain hidden for most of the show and he's much cooler for it because it allows the audience to fill in what he really looks like or just imagine him as a cool faceless avatar of awesome.
Topics and Show Notes
We chat about the coolness of masked characters. There are many in the Star Wars universe: Bobba Fet, Darth Vader, even the storm Troopers but not so many elsewhere. What makes them cool? How do we recognise them as human, robots, or aliens? We can somehow tell the difference. The Mandalorian's style of masked helmet has its roots in antiquity: it's inspired by the Greek Corinthian style Hoplite helmet, one of the Mandalorians even has a helmet that specifically references that style. The Corinthian war helmet lends the wearers that same type of cool anonymity, you can just imagine the effect they would have had on opponents 2700 years ago! The Roman gladiator Murmillo helmets even more so.
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Way Out There - Are you ready? This techno rave bounces and burns it’s way faster and faster with the brute force of a Saturn V rocket balancing on top of several megatons of force from exploding, fiery, glowing plasma, ripping through the outer atmosphere and deep into the blackness of the deeper solar system, where the stars are brighter and lives are shorter…
Topics and shownotes
Links
Banes on Masks - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jan/05/dat-mask-tho/
Featured comic:
The Dragon Chapel - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jan/05/featured-comic-the-dragon-chapel/
Featured music:
Way Out There - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Way_Out_There/, by McGrenivan, rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 402 - Audience expectations with characters
Nov 25, 2018
We're all back together this week and we're chatting about audience expectations for characters versus the intentions of the creator. Which is more important? Well it's a bit of a balancing act… You don't want to pander to your audience because that's not fun and they won't enjoy it anyway, but by the same token you shouldn't just do whatever you feel like regardless. As a creator you build up a contract between yourself and the audience; if you betray that by subverting their expectations with characters in ways that are very “OUT of character” just because you feel like it then you can start to lose their respect and attention. Killing off characters all of a sudden can be a big responsibility too, try not to take that lightly.
Episode 285 - Ride the wave of the Anti-heroes
Aug 22, 2016
Comedy anti-heroes are a great deal of fun. My faves are characters like Tankgirl and Flashman; they can be selfish, greedy, violent, lustful, out for their own needs first but they still manage to do the “right” thing and vanquish the bad guy along the way regardless, or a character like George Costanza from Seinfeld who's jealous, pathetic, cowardly and greedy but we still love him anyway because identify with him and root for him against the unloving forces of the universe. To be a GOOD comedy anti-hero you have to keep the audience on their side though and that can be a tricky balancing act, you have to surf a number of factors (especially in a long running project), since to actually BE an anti-hero they need to have things about them that an audience would normally despise, these need to be counteracted by things like sympathy and pathos, traits we strongly identify with, intelligence, luck, charm, humour, sexiness, coolness, allowing them to win sometimes, or even redeeming some of their anti-hero behaviours occasionally. Get that balance wrong and they can so easily completely lose audience favour and sour the rest of the story/show/film. Pitface, Tantz, and Banes weigh in on this with me. And there are more opinions in the forum thread from which this evolved. Gunwallace's musical theme this week was for Pestilent. It's thoughtful, haunting, reminds me a little of a classic horror film soundtrack. Pretty scary!
Episode 183 - Work Life balance
Aug 15, 2014
This Quackcast topic was inspired by a newspost by Kawaiidaigakusei who described a short autobiographical account of her own experiences managing the difficult work/life balance of doing webcomics online and at the same time having a normal life otherwise. How do you balance those? What do you sacrifice to keep a comic going? Is it worth it? In this Quackcast we discuss those aspects, as well as some saucy banter to begin with...
