As I'm writing this I'm counting down the hours to the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games 2024 which are taking place in Paris. The Olympics are the king of all sports competition, and even being able to participate requires for athletes to have been rigorously through very ...

The Competition Plot
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, July 27, 2024More than just an NPC
Emma_Clare at 12:00AM, July 13, 2024
I recently got married and for our honeymoon, my newly anointed husband convinced me that it would be more than well spent playing Baldur's Gate 3. For a whole week, we sequestered ourselves in the study, turned off our phones, rigged out our monitors and couch co-oped our way ...
Meet the Found Family
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Jan. 14, 2023
Last year (har har har obligatory New Year's Joke done) I'd started talking about Found Family, one of my favorite tropes in pretty much any narrative work, from movies to novels to comics and webcomics. Found family is when a bunch of characters, usually unrelated and mismatched, end ...
What Would You Like in the DD Quackcast?
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Oct. 15, 2022
So, the DD site is very close to getting that much-needed face lift and overhaul! Oz's post from yesterday is the right stuff, announcing what we've all been working, rooting, hoping for!
He mentioned in his comments that the Quackcast perhaps is …a little too esoteric… as we ...
The Truth Is Out There... in Fiction
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Aug. 13, 2022
We like to say that sometimes (especially these times) reality is stranger (or more ridiculous or outrageous) than anything one can find in fiction. And while I do think that this holds true on so many occasions, I also think we're being unfair to how much of the human ...
I want to talk about boobs
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, April 2, 2022
There is generally a debate about how women's chests should be drawn. On and off I'll come across whole essays about how drawing women with large boobs is shorthand for sexualization and objectification. There's a lot of talk about how flat chested ladies or those of the ...
On Using 'Shortcuts'
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, June 26, 2021
One of the latest twitter dramas seem to be around artistic shortcuts, and how consumers of comics and webcomics (often non-artists) tend to scoff at any artist that dares admit they use them.
Comic shortcuts could include pre-rendered backgrounds, using 3D programs to arrange spaces or make sure perspective is ...
Translating Your Webcomic
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, March 16, 2019
There's a reason why any literature professor worth their salt will urge you to reach a novel or enjoy any piece of literature in the language it was originally written, if you are lucky enough to speak that language: because the author intended every word that you read to ...
The Future Generation of Webcomic Creators
kawaiidaigakusei at 12:00AM, Feb. 4, 2019
With fewer art programs in schools these days on average, the next generation of budding artists looks bright.
In elementary school, students take a piece of paper, place it on top of a personal tablet and trace an image using a technique that is similar to using an animation light ...
The Double Edged Sword of Stereotyping
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Nov. 24, 2018
Stereotypes permeate our every day lives. Whether we like it or not, our brains are wired for making quick estimations and judgments based on patterns and pattern recognition.
This very pattern we're looking for to identify at a glance is what a stereotype is. And it's very useful ...