Episode 506 - The fightcast
Nov 22, 2020
Today we chat about fight scenes! This was spurred by a post in our forums about how bad fight choreography can spoil a film. Our Patron vid was mainly about fights in our comics, while the Quackcast is more about fights in movies. One of the things about REAL fights is that they're usually very fast, ugly, stupid looking, and not very exciting. It's important to remember that boxers and UFC fighters are entertainers and sports people, those people are performing for an audience - their fights are real but they're designed to be showy and exciting, whereas true fighting on the street or in war etc is very different, it's more deadly and more stupid looking.
Topics and Show Notes
Cinematic fighting HAS to be choreographed usually to avoid injury, that's just how it is. However, the degree of stylisation varies. If the fighting is too stylised compared to the rest of the film then there'll be a miss-match and the fight will seem silly and weaken the suspension of disbelief. Stylised, symbolic fighting was very common with Kung-Fu movies back in the day. In the late 90s the tricks with wires and other over the top moves started to be aped by Hollywood films with very silly results: That kind of fighting suits Kung-fu movies because they're obviously fantasy in style and not naturalistic, whereas the prevailing style for Hollywood films is naturalistic acting and realism so stylised fight scenes don't fit.
Fights in comics can be done in a few ways, the easiest is to show quick vignettes of different aspects and stages of the fight. The most tricky way is to show a fight from a linear perspective as it flows from one move to another in space and time. Fights are a marvelous way to quickly build drama and tension and to show catharsis in a very compressed way.
The musical feature this week that Gunwallace has given us is theme to Hitchhikers - Operatic depth vs the simple country sounds of a banjo! Reminiscent of Journey of the Sorcerer by the Eagles, which became the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy theme, which shares a part of its title with this comic… I don’t think that’s a coincidence! Gunwallace has given us a lovely homage to that famous tune. The contrast between the rustic simplicity of plucked strings and layered tonal depth!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Fight talk in the forums - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/177412/?page=27
Featured comic:
Strike Pup - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/nov/17/featured-comic-strike-pup/
Featured Music:
Hitchhikers - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Hitchhikers/ - by Fraggle Rocksta, rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
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 504 - Decompression
Nov 8, 2020
For our Patreon video I decided to dress as the WW2 Captain America (from the movie, Captain American the First Avenger). That and the very de-compressed nature of the US election led us to chat about what was going to happen! It wsn't till JUST after the video that we heard that the US offocially had a new president! So you can see me pictured bellow in my costume or become a Patreon and see the vid :)
Episode 502 - Definitive character moments!
Oct 26, 2020
What is the most definitive version of your character? Where does it pop up in your comic? What part of your work most defines your main character and why? What about TV, movie, comic, and story characters?
Episode 500 - Celebration!
Oct 12, 2020
Finally we got to the five hundredth Quackcast! Wow! That's so many. We've been doing these for 10 years now. That's a long running podcast! To celebrate we invited our DD members aboard. We had a great fun time, lots of laughs and a really good chat. We even had time to introduce special cotributions from the people who couldn't be live with us. I'm making our exclusive patreon video of this week's cast free for all to view! Just click on the youtube link bellow.
Episode 499 - Life's worth?!
Oct 5, 2020
What is the worth of human life in your stories? This isn't something people often consider, we just tend to have a fairly accurate guess based on our experience of the real world, but sometimes stories get it really wrong and that can harm suspension of disbelief.
Episode 498 - Your culture is MINE now!
Sep 28, 2020
This week we're talking about cultural appropriation, cultural adaption and adoption, also stereotypes and all sorts of related stuff. It was inspired by a newspost from Tantz discussing the recent live action Mulan movie by Disney. Cultural appropriation is when you take an aspect that is sacred or important to one culture and own it yourself: decontextualising it, stripping it off it's meaning, making a cartoon version of it, commodifying it, commercialising or cheapening it in some other way.
Episode 497 - It's just kid's stuff
Sep 21, 2020
Today we're talking about the idea that entertainment aimed at kids can only be enjoyed by kids and the reason that adults often don't like kids things is because adults just don't “get” them. I contend that everyone, of all ages should be able to enjoy General or kid rated media and the true reason we don't is not because it “isn't meant for us”, it's because it's simply badly written - specifically, it's not the content that's annoying, it's the structure.
Episode 496 - titular titularity!
Sep 14, 2020
Titles are surprisingly important for your comic! We don't often realise that when we first start them, but a title is one of the very first ways people come across your work. You have to sell it to them and give them an idea of what to expect in only a very few words. You can take a lot of different approaches to that, like teasing and intriguing them with a title that suggests something interesting or mysterious, character names are great for that. You can be completely literal and obvious. You can use a pun… you can take an existing popular title and alter it in a slight way… There are so many things you can do!
