Episode 253 - narrative order and the flashback
Jan 11, 2016
Doing stories that start with the climax, then flash back, tell what happened to get there: the old narrative style of switching the first few chapters around to make a more interesting story. Sometimes it works GREAT because it throws you right into the middle of things and you have to work your way back to that point… It works very nicely in The Hangover for example! Often it's used very badly- in anime particularly, where they use it for foreshadowing and a tease to try and get you interested in the rest of the story- but anime story structure is so formulaic that all it really does is give you a cheap spoiler. Other times it doesn't work well is when the writer isn't very good so the viewer loses their way in the plot… If the writer is GOOD though you end up with Pulp Fiction. You'll love Gunwallace's theme here- a super funky jazz track for the comic Nothing Important Happened Today. Enjoy!
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Aidana - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Aidana/
Links:
Quackcast 253 VIDEO - https://youtu.be/4-Xi7qQK_Xg
Contributors:
tupapayon - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/tupapayon/
El Cid - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/El Cid/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
The theme song by Gunwallace this week was for:
Nothing Important Happened Today - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Nothing_Important_Happened_Today/ by RymanNoodles, rated T.
Episode 249 - Bad Drawing advice!
Dec 14, 2015
All too often we try to give out GOOD drawing advice and USEFUL tips on how to do art. Well that all changes here: this time professors Ozoneocean, Tantz Aerine, Banes, and Pitface (our throbbing Head of department), come together to tell you the very worst ways to produce artwork, with the help of a few of our contributors. The advice will help you to become the most horrible artist ever. Gunwallace's theme this week is a creepy sounding classical piece for the creepy classic comic Caggage!
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 193 - Representing inner turmoil in comics
Nov 17, 2014
The idea for this Quackcast came from a newspost by HippieVan. She had just read a comic version of Frankenstein and was disappointed at the simplistic way that the character's inner turmoil was rendered. She wondered about the different ways that "inner turmoil" is portrayed in comics. The lovely and highly intellectual duo of Tantz Aerine and Pitface join Banes and I to discuss farts... and after that we tackle the subject of portraying inner turmoil in comics. Each person brought some rather interesting examples to the table, and we all talked about the many different ways such internal emotional and intellectual changes can be visually depicted on the page for the reader without being stupidly obvious about it.
Episode 175 - Endings, part 2
Jul 14, 2014
Arrrr, this be the second part of our discussion on writing ENDINGS in stories of all kinds, particularly for webcomics! But we discuss a few movie and TV endings here, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, No Country For Old Men, True Detective, and Dexter to name a few. Writings endings is the hardest part of the writing process, so it's lucky we had some wise contributions from people on how to do a good job of it! As well as giving examples of likes and dislikes... This is the second in our 3 part series on endings! I must apologise for the low quality of the recording here, there were very weird delay and repeating effects going on, Banes seems to be singing his own little madrigal at a couple of points. There are a a few parts I had to rerecord later; just a warning about the change of style.
Episode 140 - Ducks of future past, episode ZERO
Nov 4, 2013
Big changes are coming! In this Quackcast we talk about what happened to the duck, what's happening now and what we're trying to make happen in the future. Banes and I chat about all this stuff. Some the most important aspects we mention are the new current domain name for the site http://www.theduckwebcomics.com, a possible name change for the Quackcast, the help from JustNoPoint and ComicRocket in getting us online again, new helpers coming along to do things like features (kawaiidaigakusei replaces Skool in doing features), and all sorts of bug fixes and new features for the site now a real possibility. Then we get onto a lighter note with a discussion about some Superhero movies and cool Anime series.
Episode 115 - A New Order
Mar 4, 2013
Skool has temporarily reformed from her evil ways to come onto the Quackcast with Banes and Ozoneocean to talk about some changes to the newsposting and feature schedule. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *WITH SLIGHTLY LESS TRAFFIC to the site we think it’s better to give one feature an entire week’s focus and spotlight to get as much attention as possible, having it on Wednesday makes sense because it’s the middle of the week, Skool and I will both try and give a bit of a take on the week's feature, if not in the blurb, certainly on the Quackcast! And please remember to give us your feature suggestions! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *MONDAY NEWSPOSTS are now Skool’s space: Monday will be her place for posting her unique brand of skoolness...fun, interesting personality blog posts, not just standard news posts necessarily! Skool is in charge of our Tublr thing, but she also posts a whole lot of her own stuff in her Tumblr accounts. She can bring some of that picture flavoured magic to the newsposts instead to entertain with her personality, give the site more of a face. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *THURSDAY'S NEWSPOSTS will be Ozoneocean's pale reflection of Skool's magnificent greatness. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *FRIDAYS ARE A NORMAL NEWSPOSTING DAY, but we're going to widen what can go up for DD member newsposts! NOT just 25 page milestones. now we'd like you to tell us about uupcoming projects, news about special things like a comic being published, or comic having special coverpages or crossovers or other newsworthy stuff so we can get the word out and advertise your work for you! Even things like New character introductions, Introductions of new comics that’re just starting, Clever ads for long running already established webcomics or related items like comic Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Youtube, twitter accounts etc. As long as it's not spammy we'd like to know about it!
Episode 113 - Never Been Better 23
Feb 19, 2013
Banes and I interview TheJimmy! TheJimmy is the Authour of the very popular and very long standing autobiographical comic Been Better! This is our second try at Quackcast 113, the first try didn't record so we came back another day to try again and it worked, hooray!!!! TheJimmy gives us a deep inside look on what it's like and also what it means to be the writer of a long standing autobiographical comics strip, where you can look back on pages and see significant events of your life rendered in a comedy fashion. Been Better has been witness to his many relationships, old friends, numerous valentines, career changes and a lot of growing up. But he also tells us about how he uses real life events as jumping off points to surreally humorous flights of fancy. It's an interesting chat! Also, the number 23 is watching you.
