Episode 324 - The *Bleeping*cast!
May 22, 2017
In this Quackcast we discuss the interesting notion that censorship can actually be a positive force for creation. Sometimes working WITHIN restrictions of censorship can make you more creative and your work a lot more individual, special and more interesting. I came to this subject after reading a review of how Canadian standards forced very specific and particular changes on the TV show Reboot. Had it been made without the censorship restrictions then it would have been more of a generic show, because the methods they had to use to get around or appease the censors helped to differentiate it from similar children's shows. We also discuss how metaphor in song lyrics and symbolism in art and movies are used to talk about restricted subjects like sex, drugs, politics, and religion and how this is another example of how censorship has given rise to interesting creations. Great examples of obvious coded messages about sex are the song lyrics of AC/DC, Led Zeppelin. We also talk about howl ove songs with secret political messages were used in Greece to foment political revolution. And lastly we mention Heintai and ecchi in Japanese comics and anime and the Drunkduck ratings standards. The music for this week by Gunwallace is for Silly Sweetie, it's a dreamlike tour through clouds and wide heavenly vistas, this in turn leaves you feeling warm and refreshed!
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Drachronon - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/may/16/featured-comic-drachronon/
LINKS:
Safe for work porn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYBySPXg8rs
Songs used in the death camps - http://greece.greekreporter.com/2016/10/07/on-this-day-october-7-1944-the-greek-revolt-at-auschwitz-video/
How censorship changed Reboot - http://reboot.wikia.com/wiki/Broadcast_Standards_and_Practices
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine
Ozoneocean - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Featured music:
Silly Sweetie - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Silly_Sweetie_/, by Sillykid, raded E.
Episode 323 - A space of your own
May 15, 2017
Drawing in public can be a pain! You really need to find somewhere comfortable, with lots of space, good lighting, and the right atmosphere to be able to settle down and work on your drawings… It can be tricky to find just the right posy. But it also depends on the types of materials you use and the atmosphere that you want to experience while you're working. In this Quackcast we talk about Hyena Hell's newspost on the subject and people's comments, as well as our own experiences with trying to draw in public places and the annoyances of public harassment. Speaking of knowing where to draw, there's the cautionary tale of Canadian Archie artist Gisele Lagace, who was detained and body-searched by US border guards for carrying unfinished drawings! She was intended to finish them at her hotel so she could sell them at the convention, but according to the US border guards and their extremely “strict” interpretation of the regulations due to the current political climate in the US, that constituted “doing work” while on US soil, so she was denied entry and missed out on the convention she was booked to appear at. So there are other considerations to finding the right place to do your drawings! The music for this week by Gunwallace is for Slaughter at Camp Notamoovi - Dark, suspenseful, mounting dread… it’s dark outside and something horrible is lurking, but it turns out to be a man with no trousers on chasing a raccoon with a pair of pants on its head… who are then both BRUTALLY MURDERED!!!!
Episode 320 - Making the reader believe
Apr 24, 2017
In this Quackcast I wanted to talk about the magic of authorship: how the creator of a story sets up the whole situation so that they can convince the reader of anything. You can write a story about the smartest man in the world, and the reader will believe that they are, within the story, because you set it up that way: not just by having other characters reacting to them and forming that impression, but also independently convincing the audience of it as well by having them solving riddles and such or knowing lots of languages, quoting literary texts etc, but the creator doesn't have to be a very smart person themselves… Like Sherlock Holmes is seen as super smart because he's meant to, but Arthur Conan Doyle wasn't a super genius himself. You can write about a Casanova type charmer who's fantastic with the opposite sex and readers will believe, but only if you set the stage well enough. You as the creator set the parameters for anything to happen. Without having certain abilities or skills yourself, you can create a character with totally convincing skills far outside of yourself. The music for this week by Gunwallace is for The Gloom, it's creepy, ghostly, unsettling, uneven. This one gets under your skin and keeps you off-balance.
Episode 317 - Hannagrid Wright Interview!
Apr 3, 2017
Today we interview Hannagrid Wright aka 5thezombie! She's the creator of the great Sci-Fi webcomic To The Galaxy And BACK! -featured by Kawaii last year. To the Galaxy and back features Kat and Zoey, two girls that have been drawn together by fate, across the universe, to have all sorts of adventures in outerspace. All Zoey really wants is to get back to her dad, but having a dashing adventurer alien companion is going to make the ride a little more fun. Hanna is a cool person, she's just starting out on webcomics and already she has a nicely pro art style. She's mastered an efficient method of storytelling that's compelling, perfectly balanced for frequent updates, and makes her comic very easy to consume! Pit and Banes did a marvellous job in interviewing Hanna with me! I hope you read her comic (To The Galaxy And BACK!) and then listen to the interview! The music of Gunwallace this week is Sedna: A warm, deep blue, liquid, viscous, underwater outerspace world of wonder, joy, and luminescent glowing alien creatures…
Episode 315 - Creepy Pasta
Mar 20, 2017
This week we decided to all read out Creepypastas, just because! I's a popular thing on the net and people like that sort of thing… Well Banes and Pit do anyway. So what ARE Creepypastas? Well they're not the rotten spaghetti that had Banes blasting from both barrels just before the Quackcast, no, the name comes from “copy and paste”, simple as that. Creepypasta are just scary stories that writers have made up and copy and pasted to sites on the net, usually on things like Reddit. Often the writer pretends that it's a true story, but not many, if any at all, are based on real events. Today we're reading a few that we found at random. Hope you enjoy! The music of Gunwallace this week is My Pet Succubus. It’s party time down here! Bouncing, rolling piano notes, tapping drums and ebullient synth strings exemplify the happy go lucky personality of the irrepressible protagonist of this comic.
Episode 312 - happy little trees
Feb 27, 2017
In THIS particular Quackcast it's just Banes and I chatting about tips and tricks for artwork. Hopefully some of the stuff we mention is helpful to someone, I tried to illustrate some of that in the cover pic. Banes drew the image of Penny crashing through a scene which I've coloured and added trees, oceans, mountains, clouds, fire, smoke etc all with the use of simple custom brushes. The shading was all done just by painting grey over a layer set to “multiply”, which makes all light colours transparent and darker colours less so, so that you get a perfect tool for making shadows! Anyway, listen to the cast and maybe you'll get something out of it! The music that Mr Gunwallace has for us this week is for Mr Valdemar and other gothic tales - The tinkling crystal notes of a piano are paired with the dark woodiness of a mournful cello and touches of strings to give us this haunting gothic soundscape.
Episode 308 - Hyena Hell
Jan 30, 2017
Today on the Quackcast we interview Hyena Hell! You might remember the bombastic, punkrocker HyenaHell for her comic The Hub She used to be very active on all of DD (forums, comics, everything), before life issues took her away from DD. But she was still a prolific poster on social media after that when she wasn't creating comics, posting interesting and thought provoking blog posts about art, life as an artist, and living in a changing New Orleans… She has a unique art style- highly detailed, carefully inked drawings, which are quite similar to her work as a printmaker. You can see a great example of that in The Hub. We have sad news and hap[y news… The wonderful Hippievan has retired from doing Friday newsposts on DD. The happy news is that HyenaHell is going to dive into the driving seat of this out of control juggernaut! HyenaHell has a long history with DD and an amazing personal perspective on art and life that I think would be good for the site. It's always good to listen to a new and interesting voice! In the mean time, listen to Banes, Pitface, TantzAriene and I interview HyenaHell, who tells lascivious stories and her and I going into, Lipstixxx a stripclub in New Orleans… Gunwallace's featured music for today was: Mechaniko - it's the sound of nodes on a neural network firing, connecting, and cascading with shared knowledge: Multilayered, technological robo-future rock!
Episode 300 - 3rd DD meetup!
Dec 5, 2016
We finally did it! We got to 300 Quackcasts! We've been doing these non-stop for SIX years! Wow… That's pretty incredible. We couldn't think of anything clever do do so we had another DD electronic meetup. The 3rd DD meetup on the 3rd of December on the 300th Quackcast. So the DD family got together, which is what families do around Christmas, well a few of us anyway! In this Quackcast you can listen to an hour of our blather and carrying on and vicariously experience what it was like if you missed it or listen again if you were a part of it. It's always a blast to have the DD community together, we're spread out all the way across the planet so this is really the only practical way for us to come together. We tried doing it with DD hangouts this time instead of Skype, which was interesting but there were way too many hoops to jump through for people to get into it. We could only have 10 people on the call at the time, With Skype we could have 10 people on video chat and others with voice only and chat was so much better… So NEXT time we will go BACK to Skype. Screw you Google hangouts! It was so nice to see people! I tried to stay up for 10 hours from 11am EST (New York time), to 9pm, but I didn't make it. I fell asleep 2 hours short. :( Gunwallace's musical theme was for Lady Unlucky: a minimal white landscape, furnished with electronica, hints of piano and subtle grandeur.
