When you look at a developed artist you can recognise their work straight away. Maybe it is in the way that they do their lineart, or it could be the facial expressions that characters have, (think the Dreamworks Smirk), or maybe it is the tropes that they use in their ...

STUDIES

Recently I began two training programs: one for writing and one for drawing. Both have teachers that are very impressive.

The art program in particular is cool, because I've done almost no study of art or drawing other than some lessons in elementary and high school classes.

I ...

Tropes aren’t bad. In fact, they are a useful and, at times, necessary shorthand that creators, particularly in the webcomic field, can wield to enhance their work. J Hillis Miller posited a trope as, “… the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect.”

Every ...

A story can be strengthened by coordinating the first and final images in some way.

It's not a hard and fast rule; it's not a rule at all. But it can be worth trying out in your writing!

The movie Halloween (there it is! I had to start ...

LISTEN!

kawaiidaigakusei makes a return to the Quackcast! Together with the crew we chat about some of our favourite comic making tutorials on DD. Yes, there IS a tutorials section on the site and people have created some amazing and clever tutes on how to both write and draw better ...

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 ...

Preserving continuity is difficult with any writing project of length - with the weeks, months or more it might take to write a single novel or screenplay, it can be easy to forget things. So the problem is compounded if writing an extended series comic, TV or web series, movies or ...

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 ...

I may have told this story in this spot before, but years ago I worked with this book called “The Artist's Way”, which included fun exercises meant to unlock the creativity most of us adults don't access regularly.

The main ongoing exercise done throughout the whole process of ...

For of all sad words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”



Whether it's a webcomic, graphic novel, book, TV Show or movie, there is generally a “promise” made to the audience on some level. Maybe it starts with a thumbnail image and a ...