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 493 - Use existing IP to explore new things?
Aug 24, 2020
First up… HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO TANTZ! This Quackcast is about the topic of whether it's right to change an established character just to fit with the ideas and styles of a new creator or change them in accordance with an idea or political position you want to explore, OR should you instead create a whole new character or story to do that with? Bane's newspost gave the example of the ersatz justice league created for The Boys, where Homelander =/= Superman. The series was made to look at the dark side of superheros, but it doesn't ruin established and much loved heroes to do that…
Episode 492 - Impermanence of the new digital age
Aug 17, 2020
This Quackcast is about the impermanence of online services and the lie that services are provided for fee and providers have no responsibility to the creators and viewers that use them. Hushicho posted in our forum about Tapas newly restricting nudity in comics which suddenly disenfranchises hundreds of creators who've built up followings on that site with comics that were well within the the Tapas content rules. With that one change these comics have been wiped out, destroying all the hard work by creators to build up their audiences over a long period of time. That can happen with ANY digital service, we are at the mercy of the corporations that provide them.
Episode 491 - Getting retro right!
Aug 10, 2020
DD member Furwerk Studios posted in our forum about how annoying it was that movies try and do an 80s retro thing often get things totally wrong and end up looking dumb because of it: Not just superficial looks-wise but stylistically too in terms of the kinds of shots they do, lighting and story structure. I thought that'd make an interesting topic for a cast! Why do people often mess up retro stuff? We're not talking about historical accuracy here, that's slightly different, what we're talking about is setting something in an era and getting the “feel” of that era right. It pays off hugely when it works, but when it doesn't it comes off as superficial, disappointing and ignorant.
Episode 490 - Genres of webcomics!
Aug 3, 2020
Aren't genres great? They're so useful for categorising what we like and selling our work. Today we're chatting about all the genres that are popular in webcomics now, that we know of. Back in the day webcomics were mainly defined by TWO genres: slice of life, and gaming. And out of those two gaming was king! Actually a lot of comics combined the two. The biggest were things like 8 Bit Fantasy, PVP, Penny Arcade, and Ctrl Alt Delete.
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 473 - Genre vs Setting
Apr 5, 2020
In this Quackcast we talk about the differences between genre and setting and what genre really is. For instance: Fantasy and SciFi aren't genres, they're settings… Mostly. It's complicated but they both pretty much USED to be genres, now they're mainly just settings for genre stories to take place in. What does that mean? Well, Fantasy wasn't even considered a genre back in the day, not really till after the success of Tolkien. Later on a lot of writers began using that same style and consumers really wanted it, so it became a “genre”. It was only later on when it graduated out of that to become a setting that has genre stories set within it.
