Episode 265 - Drunk Duck updates and the future
Apr 4, 2016
For Quackcast 265 I wanted to steer the direction toward the idea of future fixes and features for Drunk Duck! We talked a bit about the 2nd wave of fixes that will be happening now- HippieVan worked to gather people's suggestions for the most important bugs that needed fixing (with our limited funds), and features people want added, and then did a survey to find what people though were the highest priority. It was a lot of work and took a few weeks to come up with the results. Bellow is a summery of what she learned:
Topics and Show Notes
Top results in bug fixes:
- Numerous issues with pre-uploaded comics – 61%, 14.5 points
- When browsing the “comics” tab, the first page of comics is listed by rank, after which it switches to alphabetical. – 32%, 6.5 points
- Multiple page/bulk uploader sometimes ends up with pages out of order. – 25%, 4.5 points
Top results in new features:
- A reply feature for comic comments. – 21%, 5.5 points
- Improve the comic search function – 21%, 4.5 points
- Add the option to choose the exact time/hour when pre-uploading comic pages. – 21%, 4 points
- Active/On Hiatus/Complete tags for comics – 18%, 4.5 points
- More options/more customization for page layout – 21%, 3.5 points
“Specific results aside, it looks to me like the main issues people are concerned with generally are: pre-uploaded comics, dealing with comments, and browsing via the ”comics“ tab. Issues concerning the front page were surprisingly not in any of the top results - I suspect partly because most of the survey-takers are heavy users who don't rely on the front page as much as newer/more casual users.”
Though in all we had about 17 bugs on the list that people wanted fixing. I put all the priority ones at the top of the list but also kept the rest on there because I'd prefer bugs are fixed no matter what. Unfortunately when I gave that list to Alexey, our programmer he said that just fixing all the bugs would eat up most of the budget with very little left over for features (which are a lot more complicated to work on). I might ask him to drop some of the bugs in favour of a couple of the features though because that's really what people would prefer to see added to the site: something new, visible, a tangible benefit.
On that subject though we would REALLY love to get into planning for the future features for DD! The sorts of things we're talking about for THAT are BIG changes: like changing the front page to modernise it; choosing a better colour scheme; having a really useful notification area for DD members that have all your info, notifications, favourites, PQs, comic comments and reply comments all in one single place so you can manage all that easily and naturally in one go-for ALL of that we need our DD community to decide what the want out of that stuff and to help design it, not have the designs just forced on them as in the past.
Above all we want to capitalise on the two things that make DD stand out above the pack: Our focus on community, and our oddball reputation as a site that welcomes and promotes the diverse and the weird, we are truly DRUNK DUCK, not really some corporate, slick “The Duck Webcomics”. We don't all think in the same way as they seem to on some comic sites, our artists don't work in the same styles; there's a slightly grungy, irreverent, off-centeredness that has always characterised the essence of DD and we'd like to reflect that in any redesign.
You can also still donate to our Indiegogo to help us with these future developments!
Gunwallace gave us a lovely track for the comic Wounds!
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Undead 20XX - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Undead_20XX/
Donate to our Indiegogo - http://igg.me/at/DrunkDuck
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Pitface - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Featured music:
Wounds http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Wounds/, by caleb131, rated M.
- See more at: http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2016/apr/04/quackcast-265-drunk-duck-updates-and-the-future/
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.
Episode 234 - Climactic Climaxes!
Aug 31, 2015
What's best? One big climax, multiple small ones, early, or delayed? How much should you work UP to a climax? What about anticlmactic events, how important are they? Climaxes are really important in stories. Often you work up to them over the course of a whole series, but each episode or chapter can have them, maybe even every single page. I find writing “up” to climaxes a bit stressful because you have a lot of preasure and expectation there. And when it's over and you've actually achieved it, it can be a bit depressing: where do you go to from there? You can feel a little lost, at least I do. TALKING ABOUT WRITING HERE. My preference is for multiple climaxes. Do you always need climaxes in stories? I don't think you do personally… there are times when things work fine without one, but it does help better with endings. Sometimes climaxes can be TOO big. Way too much of a story can be invested in a climax, it subsumes everything, everything has to tie in with that specific story flow and that can be REALLY had to pull off. If it's not done right it can be massively disappointing. Anticlimactic. Pitface Joins Banes and Ozone to chat about climaxes in stories and read out the contributions from our climactic contributors. Gunwallace gave us a gorgeous theme for Just Another Day!
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 205 - What about bodyshape?
Feb 9, 2015
This week Banes and I were inspired to talk about body shape in the depiction of figures in comics, inspired by some famous images from photographer Howard Schatz's 2002 book, Athlete. In it there are photos of many athletes who're at the peak of their sports and yet their bodyshapes are vastly different, subverting the idea of an "ideal" bodyshape or what it means to be a top athlete or even fit. too often bodyshapes in comics follow a very narrow range, not getting much past what we think of as the current popculture ideal. We all know that idealised model shape is a problem and yet we all still perpetuate it, most of the time you can only tell most "realistic" characters apart by their hairstyle or costume, especially in superhero comics. And that invents a second problem: the myth of the "normal" shaped body as opposed to the ideal- there IS no such thing as normal, and even the ideal is always changing throughout the ages. There's even a lot more to body shape than the famous categories: Mesomorph, Ectomorph, and Endomorph, or Skinny, Pear, Athletic, Hourglass and Apple. We also have a beif mention of how stylised characters (Sponge Bob, Calvin and Hobbes etc) are exaggerations of these shapes and differences.
Episode 188 - Shoot'n the Breeze
Oct 13, 2014
Hellooooo people! I'd like to welcome you to the release of our début album! We got Banze on vibes, Tantz on bouzouki, Ozone on the fart flute, and Pit on the butt-bongos! Seriously though, this is another in our on-going series of catchup chats with a couple of our fave collaborators to catch up and talk shop about webcomicing. Pit and Tantz are always great value guests and tell the best fart stories.
Episode 169 - The Chatcast!
Jun 2, 2014
In this fake Chatcast, Ozoneocean and Banes receive calls from their versions of various duckers who ask many interesting questions such as "Where do you get your ideas from?", and "Where do you get your ideas from?", and the always popular and thought provoking enigma of our time; "Where do you get your ideas from?". Our fake callers include Bravo1102, Skulbie, Lonnehart, Skoolmunkee, Ironscarf, Genejoke, and Pitface who called especially to tell us about her epic shoe buying expedition. We really had a marvellous time talking to all these totally counterfeit versions of these wonderful people!
Episode 152 - The LurrrrvCast!
Feb 3, 2014
Romance. Love. L'amour. Ozone and I keep talking about getting the community engaged with our Quackcast topics - The ‘Casts that feature those community posts are always my favourite episodes by far! So we put these questions to our community to see how they'd respond: How do you approach love, romance and relationships in your comics? Do you find it difficult to write this stuff? Is it easy? What do you like to see, love and relationship-wise, in the comics you read? Do you like it realistic? Angsty? Or do you like it more fantasy-based? What do you NOT like to see? What are some of the fictional couples/relationships you really like? Were there any you thought didn't work at all? Why? The replies were interesting, engaging, and enlightening. So join us! All aboard for the LurrrrvCast!
