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.
Topics and Show Notes
One might say that these things are “free” services and that the hosts have a right to do whatever they like, they provide it all for us and we just use it, but that's not actually true. ALL digital services are completely dependent on their users and content creators for their existence. Sites like YouTube would not exist if it wasn't for the users that content creators bring in through their own hard work and money. And those passive audiences themselves are also responsible for YouTube existing because it's them who bring in the ad revenue and use the services google sells through the site, as well as exploiting them by onselling statistics about their online viewing habits and information about their other online behaviors. Even us on DD, who make no money of off our users and collect zero information about people, we STILL rely on content creators and their audiences for out existence because if there were no people to post comics on our site and no one to read them then we'd have no point and we'd shut down.
What we chat about here is the fact that you can't rely on any one service, no matter how big the company (i.e. Facebook, Google, Apple) to respect your content and to always be around. Services aren't as free as they seem and they're more than happy to exploit you and then discard you. So the answer is to diversify and use as many different ones as possible! Don't be loyal to them because they're not loyal to you! I'd say the one exception is Drunk Duck because we really DO care about and respect our members but the the reality is that no online service is completely safe: even though we are one of the longest running comic sites (18 years and counting), there have been times in our distant past where our service was unreliable and we were even down for almost 3 months once. So mirror your work and do not become reliant on subscription services.
The musical feature this week that Gunwallace has given us is theme to Ingenimia Aus - The start reminds me a bit of Cowboy by Bon Jovi, It has an awesome mystical, exotic medieval guitar sound. This one really takes you away to another place and time with its atmospheric synths, hand drum percussion, and delicate guitar sounds. I love it when the rhythm is taken over by tapping on the guitar strings, it’s a very pretty sound.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Join the Discord server to chat in real time with other DD comics people - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Death-knell for Tapas, by Hushicho - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/178480/
Featured comic:
Filaments a KerBop Story - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/aug/11/featured-comic-filaments-a-kerbop-story/
Featured music:
Ingenimia Aus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Ingenimia_Aus/, by DFlimbingo, rated T,
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Pit Face - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
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 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 489 - Continuity
Jul 26, 2020
It's just Banes, Tantz and me today, chatting about the important topic of continuity! How do you maintain it, what continuity errors have you made, what continuity errors have you noticed in media? What's the difference between character continuity, story continuity and chronological continuity? - Something you notice when you watch or read a series in chronological order that was were NOT produced or meant to be viewed that way.
Episode 485 - For your eyes only
Jun 29, 2020
Do you make work that no one will ever see? Do you do that so you can mess around and experiment without consequences, for practice, for testing out an idea that you MIGHT show later, or just so you can have fun? This was inspired by a newspost from Banes who used to draw figures on chalkboard and erase them as the story progressed. We chatted a lot about this and then moved on to talk about how we've each written or drawn porn that no one will ever see. Have you drawn or written secret porn in your free time for fun? :D
Episode 484 - Background styles
Jun 22, 2020
Backgrounds are part of a choice you make about to best show off your characters and how to present your comic. Plain white backgrounds aren't a very good choice for most comics but they are for some. Random, sketchy lines, pixel art tiles, fully drawn highly detailed landscapes, copy and pasted photos, halftone dots, speedlines etc, the choices are endless but it's important to know what works for you own particular comic! That's what we're talking about this week. Yes, an actual ART based subject on a webcomic site, who'd a guessed?
Episode 483 - Burnt out
Jun 15, 2020
Emma Clare posted about avoiding burnout on Friday and we thought we'd steal that subject to chat about it. Burnout is something that can affect all of us, most especially when you're stuck at home with lots of time to create, funnily enough. When there's a lot of pressure on you to create it often makes you STOP creating. But there are a lot of ways to void burn out and when it actually does happen to you there are a lot of ways to come back from it and rekindle those exhausted flames of creation. How do YOU come back after being burnt out? What was your longest burnout?
Episode 481 - Fun with history?
May 31, 2020
Today we're chatting about using historical stuff in your story and knowing how to use it right! Sometimes it's good to change stuff and sometimes it's not. The thing is that you should ONLY change it if you know what you're doing and why you're doing it. A good example is A Knight's Tale- It has a historical setting and there are a lot of deliberate historical anachronisms in it, and they're all very obvious, they do not pretend to be anything but what they are.
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 ^_^
