Episode 254 - Sexism in your OWN work?k
Jan 18, 2016
OMFG you sexist PIG! Heh… today we talk about trying to recognise sexism in your OWN work, what to do about it, and WHY. It turns out it can be very hard to do, and if you DO acknowledged it the instinct is to rationalise it away, justify it, or just try and brazen it out in some kind of old fashioned, largely embarrassing, display. I frequently do all three. How do we spot it? Well the Bechdel test isn't that useful, that's better for looking at broad trends not giving specific works a pass/fail - sexy outfits is one thing, if females are dressed minimally or in tight gear in CONTRAST to the males or vice versa - females ONLY having old stereotype roles (maiden/mother/whore archetypes, secretary, nurse, victim, maid etc), though this is context sensitive, i.e. it's more forgiveable if you're doing a historical story or something stylised like a fairytale or a noire story - Gender balance is another thing, it's context sensitive because certain stories will naturally have more of one gender (WW2 submarine crew, Girl's school, a prison story etc), and you don't have to have an exact balance anyway but it's definitely something to THINK about because there is no reason most stories should feature a majority of male characters and a minority of females. WHY should you think about it? Why should you care? Well the audience for almost ALL types of stories, be they action adventure, romance, Scifi, fantasy, historical, even porn, is getting close to 50/50 between men and women these days (maybe it always was?), it really doesn't make sense to alienate or belittle half your audience just because you like to cling to older ways of doing stuff. Gunwallace's theme this week reminds me of a cross between the Knightrider theme and Gunship- it's VERY retro-future. It's the theme to DDSR, a comic with cool custom “sprites”, AKA pixel-art.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Unbroken Seal - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Unbroken_Seal/
Links:
Quackcast 254 VIDEO - https://youtu.be/tv1shC_0KD4
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
The theme song by Gunwallace this week was for:
DDSR - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/DDSR/ by RazorD9 rated T.
Episode 235 - Climax of the Climaxes
Sep 7, 2015
Pitface joins Ozone and Banes again for the second and last part of the climax cast! It's the climax of the climax casts!! We discuss what people think about climaxes in stories, their own and those they watch or read. It's hard to write up to climaxes and even harded to write down from them but they're a good way to pull in and then reward your audience. Different types of stories have to use different types of climaxes, i.e. long series may need to have one every chapter and then one at the end of the arc. You have to adjust to the needs of your story. We read great contributions from some very clever DDers in cool voices :) Gunwallace gave us a gorgeous theme for Just Busty Solar the hilarious adult comedy strip~
Episode 231 - The importance of world building
Aug 9, 2015
You always do a bit of world building in fiction, in some types of stories like alternative histories, fantasy and Sci-Fi you have to do a bit more, in things set in the real world you don't have to do nearly as much - maybe only limited to a few rooms, character occupations and relationships etc, rather than planets and political systems, but the point is you're always doing it. There are good ways to do world building and bad ways i.e. work out as many details as you need to but have that all behind the scenes, not introduced as a wall of text or long explanations on how things work. World building should inform you story and make it work seamlessly, not prop it up like a rickety scaffold. The topic of the importance of World Building was previously touched on a few years ago by Skoolmunkee and Kroatz for Quackcast 39, but things happened at that recording was lost to history, so now we approach it again with all new contributions, strident opinions, and points of view on the subject. Gunwallace did a cool theme for Red Velvet Requiem!
Episode 200 - DD community 2014 year in revue
Jan 5, 2015
OMG this is our 200th Quackcast! It's also the very first Quackcast of 2015! In this DD webcomics community podcast we invited people to tell us about some of the awesome, terrible and interesting things that happened to them in 2014, and tell us they did! Some of it realy amazingly trivially boring, like ozoneocean's contribution, some of it quite personal and honest, some of it just plain cool. Well, it's been a long year and an even longer time to reach 200 Quackcasts! Let's hope for many more. The glorious Pitface was our guest again, and she did some hilarious voices! It's great to have some more voice talent on show for once. And at the very end we have a precious little cameo by Tantz, the Greek sailorman! Happy Xmas and a merry New year!
Episode 199 - A look back at 2014
Dec 29, 2014
OMG! It's the last Quackcast of 2014! Well Banes and Ozoneocean decide to do a half arse YEAR IN REVIEW! Oh yes, a mighty look back at the year that was 2014... We look over some of the notable Quackcasts and comics that we could recall for the purposes of this particular Quackcast topic at the time when we were recording. Thank goodness for the internet because neither of us can actually remember much of what happened during the year without it. So sit back and tolerate our gala celebrity edition (Ozone and Bases are the celebs), for the year in review! Also, Gunwallace has done a wonderful old timey Jazzy nior theme that YOU WILL LOVE!
Episode 195 - The DeadFingers of Peipei
Nov 30, 2014
Peipei, artist of the very long running story comic DeadFingers in on-board for the Quackcast today! Peipei has been drawing the popular DeadFingers comic regularly for forever on DD, in addition to running her own successful business as a professional illustrator, AND being a great cosplayer who guest cosplays at various conventions around the US! She's one talented, dedicated, and interesting individual. Listen as she tells us about the great odyssey that is DeadFingers as well as what it's like to run your own illustration graphic design business as well as a cool titbit about the her wonderfully realistic CG art program of choice: Artrage!
Episode 179 - Token representation in comics
Aug 11, 2014
There's no question in my opinion as to whether representation of different kinds of people in fiction matters. Having spent my childhood poring over superhero comics in which the girl's job is usually to turn invisible and press a button or something, I remember being impressed and delighted by some of the badass female characters in The Spirit. Lady-people could be cool, too?! Is it insulting when comics add token characters to their line up, or does it really make a difference? And what makes a token character anyways? -HippieVan. Banes, HippieVan and I focus on the subject of token representation in media, mainly comics. This discussion was inspired by a newspost HippieVan made in response to a new character in the Archie comic, which got a lot of interesting responses.
Episode 172 - The QuackQuiz!
Jun 23, 2014
Come on down, it's Quiz time! For this week's Quackcast we had a quiz based on DD comics, as a friendly, fun way to try and promote them... there's even a bit of Drunk Duck history mixed up in the questions. Just a smidge. We had three contestants taking part for the honour of telling everyone else to suck it; Archaeologist Amazon Adventurer Artist Pitface, Psychologist Freedom Fighter Lawyer Comicer Tantz Aerine, and Scientist Philosopher Comic Group Leader and all around boob-fancier Abt Nihil. They all competed to the very limit of their abilities, striving for dominance against each other, employing every dirty trick in the book and even some new ones... So please listen to the first ever DD bottomless Quiz! Oh, and there's even some titbits about the totally mythical married life of Ozoneocean and Pitface.
