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Jerky, jerk, jerks! Let's talk about this type of character…
This topic is based on Banes' newspost from Thursday, he based it on characters like Reggie from the Archie comics. Jerks can be pretty good characters in their own right. They can be villains, heroes, antagonists or protagonists ...

Art by Pit-Face and Tantz Aerine

Expressions are key when drawing characters in webcomics- it’s understandably the acting portion of the creative work, and it has to be done well to engage the reader.

In my opinion there are no easy or difficult expressions- only expressions you as a ...

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Patriotism, flags, nationalism, religion, politics, national symbols hijacked by racists! These are some of the unique aspects of our cultural identity and national differences we chat about on this quackcast. I was inspired by HippieVan's newspost on Friday (about Cultural identity and how it defines our writing), to ...

Just the name inspires awe, a level of attention and gravity. Because it was a name before it became a noun: she was the ancient Greek goddess of revenge and retribution against those who committed any kind of hubris.

In stories though, a character that takes the position of nemesis ...

I was hanging out with my family over the holidays, explaining that I wasn't sad or sick, but had been rubbing my eye because there was some dust or a hair or something stuck behind the eyeball. It was quite uncomfortable.

As I remembered how tears can flush out ...

Witness the birth of Salamander, a super-heroine granted powers by a fire salamander.

Erin is a fairly average 22 year old working in a pet store until the store is hit by an arson attack,
when her life is in danger things take a dramatic change.

Salamander is shaping up ...

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Chekhov's gun is the principal (as I understand it), that if you have some item, fact or piece of information introduced into your story that you draw specific attention to, then you'd better use it some how later on in your story. The simplest example is a ...

To me this is one of the most fascinating elements of storytelling. The idea behind Chekhov’s Gun is to employ parsimony in the information comprising a plot and content: If something isn’t essential to the story, just don’t include it. Little by little, it became more “if ...

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What defines evil in fiction?
I say the simplest one is bad guys are selfish, good guys are selfless.
That is massively over simplistic but it's a good easy template for basic hero's and villains. Basic ones
I was just doing a quick thought experiment to work ...

Happy New Year’s Eve!
Thinking about the new year that is just about to begin, I thought to talk about beginnings in stories, and especially in webcomics.

How a story begins, the very first pages of it, are key for catching the audience’s attention and keeping it. The ...