One of the toughest tropes in any kind of narrative work, from novels to comics to movies is the Sacrificial Lion - but not for what might be an obvious reason: having to axe a top tier character. It's because the trope is something that will affect and carry through ...
The Sacrificial Lion
Tantz_Aerine at 6:09PM, Aug. 31, 2018When you hate your characters!
Emma_Clare at 12:00AM, Aug. 31, 2018
You’ve gone through the arduous process of fleshing out your world, the themes and the lore and you’re standing back looking at your shining new playground; but there is a blight standing right in the centre that you can no longer ignore. You hate your characters. Maybe it ...
Casting Characters in Comics - Larger casts, personality and temperament
Banes at 12:00AM, Aug. 9, 2018
Last week there was a post about smaller regular casts in a series - The Loner series, the Duo, and the Trio. Here's that post:
https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/aug/01/casting-characters-in-comics-123/
With a larger cast, things start to get more complicated - but with more possibilities for different ...
Quackcast 379 - Troptastic
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, June 19, 2018 LISTEN!
ALL the tropes!!!!
Based on Emma Clare's newspost, tropes are damn useful but they can also be your undoing if you handle them badly. Tropes are shortcuts to meanings, scenes, procedures or jokes that take too long to set up in their own right. You can use them ...
Finding your style
Emma_Clare at 12:00AM, June 15, 2018
When you look at a developed artist you can recognise their work straight away. Maybe it is in the way that they do their lineart, or it could be the facial expressions that characters have, (think the Dreamworks Smirk), or maybe it is the tropes that they use in their ...
The Sheet of Glass and Other Tropes
Emma_Clare at 12:00AM, June 8, 2018
Tropes aren’t bad. In fact, they are a useful and, at times, necessary shorthand that creators, particularly in the webcomic field, can wield to enhance their work. J Hillis Miller posited a trope as, “… the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect.”
Every ...
Your Javert's Options
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, June 2, 2018
So last time we had talked about the Javert trope, a category of character that is very compelling and makes for excellent drama, immense suspense and often gets their own following in fandom. (Just check out Saito Hajime's hero's journey as a prime example.)
The Javert character is ...
The Javert Effect
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, May 26, 2018
Javert is such a stellar and powerful character in Les Miserables that he has his very own trope.
He's the skilled, dogged, unwavering locomotive of a chaser that in the name of the law, the church, the state, the cause pursues and persecutes the hero of a story, and ...
The Sizzle and the Steak
Banes at 12:00AM, May 10, 2018
For of all sad words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”
Whether it's a webcomic, graphic novel, book, TV Show or movie, there is generally a “promise” made to the audience on some level. Maybe it starts with a thumbnail image and a ...
Black + White = Gray (part 3)
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, April 28, 2018
And so we're finally here. The magnificent, ever so popular and edgy Gray characters are the object of our observation today!
Gray characters are those that sit on the fence, being not quite white and not quite black, and this ever walking the tightrope of the narrative's morality ...