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 ...

White Swan, Black Swan
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Sept. 29, 2018The Benefit of Trauma
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Sept. 22, 2018
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 ...
Earning Your Twists
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Sept. 8, 2018
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 ...
Quackast 390 - Imprinting on your characters
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Sept. 4, 2018 LISTEN!
We nicked the idea for this Quackcast from a newspost by Emma Clare. What we chat about is the unintentional process of giving your characters you own traits or even traits of people you know without realising it: Every time you draw an expression for your character you're ...
Character Voices
kawaiidaigakusei at 12:00AM, Sept. 3, 2018Whenever I read comics, I always enjoy making character voices of each character in my head. My favorite print comic has been Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley and ever since I can remember, I gave a two-bit gangster voice to the cat, Bucky and a very slow, well-mannered voice to ...
The Sacrificial Lion
Tantz_Aerine at 6:09PM, Aug. 31, 2018
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 ...
Quackast 388 - Coding for Men and women
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Aug. 21, 2018 LISTEN!
In this Quackcast we discuss the artistic coding used to represent males and females in comic art in a simple, minimal way. Pitface joins us, along with Banes and Tantz Aerine!
Much like an expert physicist is able to simplify enormously complex equations into something seemingly simple like E ...
Quackast 387 - History and Pastiche
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Aug. 14, 2018 LISTEN!
In this Quackcast Tantz and I chat about the differences between working with historical settings and the different approaches we take. Tantz's comics (Without Moonlight and Brave Resistance), are both set in a real period of history: Nazi occupied Greece during WW2. Pinky TA is set in the ...
Announcing the 2018 Drunk Duck Award Finalists!!
kawaiidaigakusei at 12:00AM, Aug. 13, 2018
The nominees have been announced and current volunteers have been given assignments.
We still need more volunteers. There are 12 unclaimed presentations and 25 judging slots still left over.
2018 Finalists: Genre/Style Awards
My Life as An American Hero 2
Kitty Kitty Bang Bang
Mindfold
Steel & Manitou
Jay’s ...
Where DO you need Planning for your Plot?
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Aug. 11, 2018
So there's a lot of talk and discussion on how to approach the creation of your webcomic (or novel, or short story) regarding planning out your plot, the degrees of planning out, and the option of flying by the seat of your pants.
I have done both, both in ...