What is a character? A miserable little pile of traits! Except no, there is more to a character than a collection of likes and dislikes. There are varying opinions on the importance of character versus plot, with some authors viewing all characters as a mere tool to drive plot forward ...

Let's be honest, we don't always appreciate someone pointing out our mistakes. Criticism may be important for artists growing into their craft to find the right areas to focus on improving through a little outside guidance, but not all critique is made equal. Frankly speaking, a lot of ...

How to Pick, Research and Implement Mental Disorder in a Character

So last time I talked in general about some basic concepts and principles about what constitutes mental illness, or, more accurately, mental disorder. The important thing to remember and keep from all of that is this set of truths ...

A few months ago, I was linked to a video about original thinkers by organisational psychologist, Adam Grant. and the habits of people he calls originals. It’s a very interesting video and I highly recommend watching it, but one of the points that he makes is about embracing the ...

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*The topic we discussed in this Quackcast was looking for symbolism, meaning and intention in comics: The English literature approach! Deeper meanings and all that. It's ...

Writing a character with mental illness can be a very tricky thing. Writers usually go for the extremely rare, exotic and spectacular: multiple personality disorders, extreme manifestations of psychopathy or sociopathy, high functioning autism with that ever alluring ‘savant’ magic going for the character, bombastically spectacular schizophrenia… in many ways ...

Seriously Funny

I didn't have a chance last week to talk about the passing of Bob Einstein, aka Super Dave Osborne, aka Marty Funkhauser.

Hilarious as Larry David's sometimes-nemesis and sometimes-friend, Marty Funkhauser, I remember him from many years ago on an old show called “Bizarre”.

The host ...

If you are like 92.4% of people at the beginning of the New Year (not a factual number mind you), you have sat down with a shine in your eye to set about making a list of goals to achieve in 2019. I know I have. So far there ...

The first thing you need to know before we get into this discussion is the following: You can't copyright a style. It's true! Copyright protects an artist's expression of an idea, but not the ideas themselves, the technique, or procedure in making that style. Keep that in ...

It's almost 2019!

Yes yes, I've already made an article about the year ending, but what about the one starting?

Among the singing and the partying, we also tend to make resolutions about how we'll do better in the coming year: we'll diet, we'll make ...