In Swan Lake, the black swan Odile is transformed by her warlock father into the white swan, Odette, and posing as Odette she tricks the prince into breaking his oath to the white swan- because clearly making life-binding oaths to a woman you know so little you can mistake her ...

Once the honeymoon sheen of releasing your new project wears you can easily find yourself burnt out by the concept of having to muster the energy to continue working on it. Sometimes you might have written yourself into a corner or maybe you feel like you are not liking the ...

One of the great things about the original Star Wars movies was the strong sense of a grand, adventurous, and terrible history before the movie started. So much is hinted at through Obi Wan Kenobi about the Jedi Knights, Anakin Skywalker, great friendships, laser swords, and terrible war and loss ...

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In THIS Quackcast we chat about shots! The kind you get from a camera… Long short, bird's eye view, worm's eye view, high angle, low angle, wide angle, fish eye, close up, ultra close up… You can use them to set the pace of the narrative, increase ...

Trauma is such a delicious thing in writing- it gives characters their backstories, their motivation, their special slant in a narrative wrok, from novels to webcomics.

However, it's usually considered in the context of how it has made a character ‘damaged goods’. Why they are grim, why they're ...

When Superman returned to the big screen ten years ago or so in “Superman Returns”, the movie was intended to be a direct sequel to the two original movies with Christopher Reeve. I was surprised at how mopey and depressing the movie felt.

Which is to say, the movie felt ...

The other day while I was crocheting, I noticed that a lot of the yarn colors I had picked out over the years had a lot of grays, warm neutrals, and toned-down, muted shades of color. They were all lovely colors, but my eyes needed something more vibrant and stimulating ...

Move over Cathy and Luann and even that Jeremy kid from Zits. Here is a comic about a modern day teenager after she gets a new set of braces and gets through the day to day with way more than angst. This comic hits the mark on how the younger ...

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This Quackcast was based on an idea from Banes. We chat about designing a group of characters with complementary temperaments. In Banes' own words:
“I like the idea of the line between a logical, left brained person and a creative, right brained person, crossed with a spectrum of a ...

There's nothing more intense than subverting the audience's expectations: The righteous character that always says the truth says a lie. The character that values all life ends up murdering someone. The bad sort, the punk that's always terrible ends up saving the day or doing something decent ...