I'm a bit obsessed with “before” versions of characters. Where they start. The damaged dude or dudette who shows up at the beginning of a story REALLY needing a change in their lives, and usually not knowing it.

Even when the plot kicks off, these folks often don't ...

A young orphan. A mysterious man in a cloak. A gorilla that can sing Italian Opera. A cute little green dinosaur. Welcome to the planet Barter, a planet that is supposedly a Black Market planet. Chapter One starts off with a young girl talking to a ghost in a junkyard ...

Having decided that shock value is needed in your comic and you must scare, disgust or generally traumatize your audience in some way in order to get the emotional reaction to serve your theme and your subject matter, how do you decide when and where to draw the line? (note ...

Last Thursday I talked a little about writing a scene, in terms of the change that happens, what the character wants, and what obstacle is in the way of achieving that want.

But what about dialogue? Eh?

One way to help define what's going on in a scene is ...

LISTEN!

Let's get physical! let me hear your body technique!
As a follow up to my newspost on Friday about figure drawing, we all got together to do a Quackcast about it, along with contributions in the form of comments from DDers on my newspost. Figure drawing is hard ...

We’ve heard it and experienced it many times: For a creator to make an impact, to truly etch his/her message in the brains of his/her audience when it comes to art, from novels to films to comics, imagery with a high shock value is employed or simulations ...

Let's talk figure drawing again.
We've discussed this in the past but it's ALWAYS worth talking about. In fact one of the lost Quackcasts was on this very subject.

Figure drawing isn't easy, you need constant practise to maintain the skill. If you neglect it degrades ...

LISTEN!

No new Quackcast this week so we're going retro.

Sorry guys… 334 didn't record correctly. I only discovered that while editing. Two Quackcasts we'd recorded didn't work, TWO in a row: the spare AND the current one! I don't check them right after I ...

This week I was going to talk about a comic i had found by browsing the Featured lists and seeing what else did not take off after being featured, when it really should have. A little like Grunk from last time out. Then another subject came to me and i ...

Thursdays with Banes - The Murky Middle

A good way to put together a story is to figure out some essentials, first - Elements of Character, Plot and Theme, and Building some World and all that. We've talked about these things around here a lot, and we'll prolly continue to ...