Episode 496 - titular titularity!
Sep 14, 2020
Titles are surprisingly important for your comic! We don't often realise that when we first start them, but a title is one of the very first ways people come across your work. You have to sell it to them and give them an idea of what to expect in only a very few words. You can take a lot of different approaches to that, like teasing and intriguing them with a title that suggests something interesting or mysterious, character names are great for that. You can be completely literal and obvious. You can use a pun… you can take an existing popular title and alter it in a slight way… There are so many things you can do!
Topics and Show Notes
Ema Clare made a newspost on Friday that had a lot of clever tricks to use to come up with a story title and that's why we picked this topic to discuss. There's also this clever game that was going around on Twitter where you give your comic two alternative titles: one that's a serious title that represents your comic and one that represents it in a humorous way. Like my comic for example, the title is Pinky TA, which is the name of the character, the TA is her initials and can mean many things (T&A), but also helps the name in internet searches because it makes “Pinky” less generic, an alternative “serious” name for it that better explains the comic would be “War in the 1920s with Dieselpunk Mecha and Sexy Girls”, a funny title could be “Mecha Strippers” :D
What approach did you use for a title and have you tried coming up with two alternative titles, one serious and one funny? It really helps you to come up with better ways to sell your work!
The musical feature this week that Gunwallace has given us is theme to the Lich Quing’s Tale. It's a slow march to the deep wooden voice of a cello, then we fall through the floor into something reminiscent of Quadrophenia and the break in Who Are You, classical strings and staccato electronica overlaying and weaving a colourful tapestry of light.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Em's newspost with tricks to make a good title - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/sep/10/insert-title-here-tips-for-titling-your-comic/
Featured comic:
Good Words with Sako The Beautiful Heart of a Steggo Girl - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/sep/08/featured-comic-good-words-with-sako-the-beautiful-heart-of-a-steggo-girl/
Featured Music:
Lich Quing’s Tale - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Lich_Quings_Tale/, by Wolva, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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Episode 479 - Big ideas in fiction
May 18, 2020
My original idea for this Quackcast was: “Genre fiction is the best place to explore ideas, straight fiction doesn't do it as well” What I meant was that diverting from straight reality in fiction makes it easier to conceptualise, simplify and explain complicated ideas to a general audience for a whole number of reasons. There was some disagreement between Tantz and I because I expressed myself poorly so she'd thought that I was saying it was much easier to write SciFi and fantasy (Genre fiction), and it was easier to write about big ideas, while straight fiction wasn't good for that- Which is fair enough! My initial statement is so badly worded that's a valid interpretation! Fortunately Banes and Pit were on hand to smooth things out and explain things properly. Pit mediated between us and Banes conceptualised my concept FAR, far better than I did! Unfortunately you don't get much of that disagreement on the Quackcast. You DO get a bit of it on the PATREON only video however ^_^
Episode 474 - What shows during Quarantine?
Apr 13, 2020
OMG we're all still stuck inside forever and ever. So what are the shows we're all watching? We all get together to have a bit of a chat about the great things that we're all into right now. Pitface Joins us once again! So cool to have her along :D Tantz and Banes are are the stalwart members as usual ^_^
Episode 467 - Adaptions and Transmogrification!
Feb 23, 2020
The process of adaptation is quite interesting. Stories go through all sorts of changes when they're transferred from one medium to another. A lot of the time we bemoan that as “not staying true to the original” or “the book was better”, but there are many times where the adaption is really interesting in its own right, even though it's quite different from what it started out as.
Episode 417 - Can we be better?
Mar 11, 2019
What is Social Marketing? Basically its word-of-mouth and viral marketing smashed together and weaponised: Marketing companies hijack hot-button social issues and hitch their client's brand to them in clever campaigns (“We can be better”, etc). The purpose isn't really to make a brand seem progressive, modern or new, rather it's another way of getting it trending on social media that's guaranteed to work, unlike the legion of hit or miss but mostly failed “Viral” campaigns. Whether people say negative or positive things about this issue is irrelevant to the marketer, as long as people are talking about the brand is all that matters. Free advertising is the goal, but it has a social cost.
Episode 262 - DUCK Radio 3
Mar 14, 2016
WELCOME to the final part of the Radio D.U.C.K. trilogy! This is where we put all the rest of Gunwallace's amazing songs AND a special treat for you as well listeners: Jimmy's Folly. Our radio DJs have gone just a little crazy this time… the brutish, hard rocking Jimmy Storm, demonic Anastasia Ravendale, and dried up old Rhet Blanket battle it out over the on air turf in the strangest way possible… BRINGING THE THUNDER! Gunwallace's amazing comic themes meanwhile are just as juicy as ever.
Episode 257 - Accents in Comics
Feb 8, 2016
Using accents and different languages in comics can be a challenge, or at least a challenge to represent. Some people will actually have their text IN a different language or even a made up language in the case of aliens, and they'll have translations in a footnote. Some will use pointed brackets to represent the different language, some will use different fonts, and some won't bother showing that there is a different language being spoken at all. We spoke to Tantz Aerine and Pitface about this because that's something they both have to tackle in Brave Resistance and Tantz's solo comic Without Moonlight because it's very central to the plot: Tantz uses different colours for the languages. Pitface phonetically represents different accents in her comic Putrid Meat quite expertly. However, there can be challenges to phonetic representation when you get it wrong, most frequently in the case of Irish and Scottish accents! This was inspired by a newspost by Hippievan! Listen ad enjoy Gunwallace's audio interpretation of Aidana. VERY Pink Floyd!
Episode 194 - Adapted Adaptations
Nov 24, 2014
This week the topic of our Quackcast was inspired buy my Friday newspost where I talked about how we relate to adaptions of created properties (fave comics or books turned into movies etc), and some of the challenges involved in creating adaptions. i.e. Hollywood will often try to create a sure fire hit by adapting an already successful property (like Lord Of The Rings) into a movie. That property has massive fame and name recognition plus a lot of fan love and popularity. The challenge is to try and create a vision that appeals to the fans while also translating the books into films in such a way that it will easily appeal to the wider population outside of those fans and it can be a tricky process. In this Drunk Duck community webcomic podcast Banes and I discuss some of the pitfalls, cases when it's been done right, wrong, and extra-special!
