When most people take a picture or draw a picture, the natural thing to do is to photograph or draw the subject in the center of the frame.

But one of the big tenets of visual composition is the RULE of THIRDS.

So pretty much, the frame is divided into ...

Time for a change of pace! I don’t usually like to do a lot of these types of articles but this topic might benefit from a touch of experience. So bear with me and my small trip into self-indulgence.

Some of you might know that I am actually part ...

There was recently a Provincial Election in the part of Canada where I live, and there's a Federal Election coming up in about a year.

With the brouhaha going on in the world these days about politics and the divisions between many people that are resulting from it, I ...

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This week we talk about maintaining suspension of disbelief: the way you have to convince people of the world your story is set in and keep them there. Everything you do is done for that, to convince them your characters make sense and the world works. There's a ...

A couple of days ago Banes gave us a wonderful article on the issue of who to please- yourself or the audience, and how that can go very right or very wrong.

So that got me thinking that we should also talk about the dreaded silence. You update a page ...

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 ...

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 ...

So I came across this new announcement of a reboot (?) due in 2019 of the nostalgic cartoon Thundercats that most of us grew up with (fine, ok, I'm only dating myself with this).

I have always been partial to Thundercats, but not overly possessive. I didn't mind the ...

Iron Man and the multi film arc - revisited


There are spoilers below for the Iron Man and Avengers movies, Civil War, and Spiderman Homecoming


The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been breaking new ground in movies with their various interconnected films for about ten years.


The MCU began with Iron Man ...

This title of course is thanks to Ozoneocean who came up with it in our quackcast (whcih you should totally listen to) last week, and I loved it, so here it is :D

Last week I talked about how a hero or a villain don't need to have “gray ...