Episode 394 - Nostalgia, creative fuel?
Oct 1, 2018
Nostalgia! - Where does it fit in the creative process? People are the product of their influences. For a lot of us the strongest influences happen when we're growing up and learning about the world and all the things IN it for the first time. As you get older the things you experience don't make as much impact, simply because your brain has already had most of its “first times” and it's already learned enough about the world to be fully functional and independent.
Topics and Show Notes
“Nostalgia” is strongest when you harken back to those formative experiences, many little “origin stories” so to speak. Art that references nostalgia can make you feel more connected to it, it can give you a mental rush when you recall how much you loved something and looked forward to it, it can transport you back to when you had a particular frame of mind and dwell on that.
Also, things are always cooler looking BACK than when you're actually experiencing them because your mind romanticises and embellishes memories, creating impressionist paintings of them…
The recent film Ready Player on (directed by Spielberg and adapted from a book) plays on pop-culture nostalgia heavily, as well as the nostalgia of formative experiences and contrasts it with the need to live in the present.
Of course nostalgia helped sell that film and made the book a hit. Films, books and comics can use nostalgia in many ways to draw an audience in. Creators can use it to make themselves get enthused for their work.
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Metal Ice Cream, this sound is a spaceship full of mysterious, robotic, metallic, clunky and compelling dance beats. Grind your gears! Shake that chunky metal body till it rattles!
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Drunk Duck Awards 2018 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/sep/25/featured-comic-drunk-duck-awards-2018/
Links:
Listen to us on Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=224306&refid=stpr
Or TuneinRadio
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Featured music:
Metal Ice Cream - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Metal_Ice_Cream/, by DanielLeister, rated T.
Episode 389 - Intimidating Baddies
Aug 14, 2018
What makes bad guy intimidating? Tantz Aerine made a great newspost about the question, carefully outlining various key bad-guy properties like confidence, composure, efficiency, and amorality. Banes, Pitface, Tantz and I stomp ALL over that, traipsing about like drunken, muddy rugby players, as we blather on about our opinions of the idea and finish up with no idea what we're talking about...
Episode 387 - History and Pastiche
Aug 7, 2018
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 1920s in an alternative version of history, with Pinky coming from the fictional “Crimean Empire”. Tantz has to keep times, places, and details close to real history while with Pinky TA I can pick and choose the things from history I like the best and create my own idealised pastiche. The advantage of Tantz's approach is that everything is there, nothing has to be invented, just researched and reproduced, whereas my approach involves a lot of creation which slows things down and makes it harder. On the upside Pinky TA is much more flexible, I can easily fit whatever I want into the story, whereas Tantz's comics are bound by the rules of the history she's presenting.
Episode 359 - The Covershow
Jan 29, 2018
Covers are a very important part of books and comics! They entice us to pick them up and read them, they encourage us to BUY them. But how much are they really needed for webcomics? You hardly ever look at the front cover and what you really want in a webcomic is the meat of it, not the packaging, they're not waiting on racks outside a shop… and yet we still make them anyway, not just for the front cover but also chapter covers as well! This was the idea behind a thread Pitface came up with in the DD forums and we thought it was an interesting topic. Personally I love drawing covers, they give me a chance to break out of the comic format and be all arty and play with title text. How about you? What's your position on webcomic covers? This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to Kawaiidolia: A dreamy journey into a world of green shade, damp, fresh air, and dapple golden sunlight. This is a pretty track , full of beauty.
Episode 354 - Christmascast
Dec 25, 2017
Merry Christmas! It's that time of year again… well, the end of the year. Banes was ill with the dreaded lurgi so Pit, Tantz and I were left to our own devices to chat about Christmas and our fave Christmas movies. What's yours? This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to The Portland Express: Come with us on an adventure on the high seas! This music is redolent with the exotic, action, and intrigue. Flavoured with the sounds of the east, this tune is clearly on a mission!
Episode 352 - Help make DD better! Comment notifications! More play
Dec 11, 2017
n this Quackcast we cover a few different things! FIRST up is our latest campaign to give YOU comment and reply notifications so that you can see who has commented on your comic pages easily, you can respond to them right away, then they'll KNOW you replied and they can respond back and so on. But before we can do that we need to raise money via Indiegogo to pay for it. YOU will be helping to pay for a feature that you want. That's how the site works these days, it's our site: yours and mine. In the next part of the Quackcast we have a series of short plays that we act out. They're based on comics here at DD. We start out with custom scripts written by Tantz Aerine for Without Moonlight and Brave Resistance. And then we have a go interpreting comic pages of The Epic of Blitzov, Bottomless Waitress, Typical Strange, and Pinky TA. Which brings us to our next thing: One of the perks you can pay for to help us out with our campaign will be a custom script based on your comic. WE will write it and act it out. YOU don't have to do anything but donate. Finally we have a note from KAM that we read out, informing us of the experience of adapting his comic into a script structure and we talk about that ourselves. If you'd like to write a script for us to act out on the Quackcast, just PQ me and I'll tell you where to send it. :) This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to Bram and Vlad: Welcome to the mysterious, echoing notes of a celestial funhouse. Then settle down to a demonic, yet friendly game of cards accompanied by a jaunty, yet cheeky tune on the piano!
Episode 351 - PLAY time
Dec 5, 2017
We asked for scripts and we got 'em! We have five different scripts in this Quackcast performed by the Quackcast players: A realistic, dramatic one to start with Usedbooks where murder is on the menu. Yuki, played by Pitface, is doing a bit of detective work, questioning her dangerous brother Lee, played by Banes. Crater's Edge gives up a dose of fantasy and monsters. Keego, played by Ozoneocean, is a young boy looking after his ailing mother, played by Tantz Aerine. Daryl and Susie is all about gentle comedy. Daryl, played by Pitface, is a dragon with monsters in his head and he lives with a mischievous 9 year old girl named Susie, played by Banes. Constellation Chronicles gives us dark, scary SciFi. Wainwright, played by Ozoneocean, with Marcel, played by Tantz, are two astronauts investigating a mysterious distress signal from an old drifting derelict space hulk… We finish up with The KAMics for a dose of satirical comedy! It's awards time at the Muzzy Mallard and Rosemary, played by Tantz, and Beth, played by Pit, are up for some honours… or are they? It was a lot of fun to act these out! We can't wait to do more. They all have SFX and we've tried to do as good a job as possible on them. Please send us more scripts based on your comics so we can bring your work to life, just contact me directly to find where to send them! Have a look at the link to the newspost on scripts bellow to know what to include with your script. This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to The Cosmic Star: Fly on out into the deepest reaches of far outer space with us. This tune will groove you on out there smoothly, past glittering star systems and vast, swirling galaxies. Just lie back, get comfortable, relax, close your eyes and let the universe roll on by…
Episode 350 - Scripting
Nov 27, 2017
In this Quackcast we're talking about writing scripts! But not just scripts in general, this Quackcast is about turning your webcomic into a script. As the creator of a webcomic, a story, what is your ultimate goal, your dream? Wouldn't it be marvellous if your characters and story came to life, played by real actors? Emmet, aka Surgeryhead came along to give us some pointers. He's written many scripts himself so he has a bit of experience. Ultimately we want to do performances on the Quackcast of short scripts written by DDers who've adapted parts of their comics, go to this newspost for details: http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/nov/16/turn-your-comics-into-movie-scripts/ Contact me directs for my email for where to send your finished script. This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to Stuffed Nature - Groove to the cool, solid bass line, with a bright lightning squiggle of keys, and the even pacing of a quiet guitar riff, this’ll get you in the mood for action!
