Episode 462 - Jessica Schab, Studio animation, Guru, sceptic, leader
Jan 20, 2020
Today we have a special guest! Jessica Schab. Jessica works for Mainframe entertainment in Canada, one of THE premier digital animation companies! Before things like Pixar they were THE CGI animation people! Behind the Video for Dire Straights' Money for Nothing video back in the 80s, Transformers Beastwars, Octonaughts, Babrie, and my personal fave: Reboot!
Topics and Show Notes
Jessica is an interesting person. She's in charge of production design on an upcoming show for Dreamworks, which involves a particular kind of organisational based leadership which is quite uncommon in a lot of small scale creative projects like webcomics, but still extremely important nevertheless and a lot of projects fail because they don't take account of it.
Jessica is an even more interesting character than that though. She's been a spiritual guru who has lived all over the world. She then reversed course and became a sceptical activist! She's even had a documentary made about her! So she's quite good at building and maintaining a personal brand which is what every webcomicer should know how to do. You'll have to watch our Patron video to find out about that stuff though.
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Grey Sky Blue Moon. I’m tempted to write a bad early 80s rap for this, but I won’t torture people that way. This tune is remarkably 1980s in style: rap, dance style music, exactly like you’d get from a big budget movie from 1984 or ‘85. Think Beverly Hills Cop or Police Academy. It’s perfect! It’s a great match for the crazy light night hi-jinks that the girls of Grey Sky Blue Moon get up too!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Equal time for free thought: WBAI 99.5 FM - http://equaltimeforfreethought.org/
Reboot - https://reboot.fandom.com/wiki/Mainframe_Entertainment_Inc
Mainframe - https://www.mainframe.ca/
Jessica Schab - http://www.jessicaschab.com/
Featured comic:
The Red Moon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/jan/14/featured-comic-the-red-moon/
Featured music:
Grey Sky Blue Moon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Grey_Sky_Blue_Moon/, by xailenrath, rated M.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
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 460 - Enough trope to hang yourself with
Jan 5, 2020
Happy 2020 all you lovely people who listen to us! What we're talking about today are tropes in fiction that bother us because they don't exist in reality: they ONLY exist in fiction pretty much. In the cover pic we have an image from The Witcher: he has two big longswords on his back. In fantasy people always carry longswords on their backs. This is a trope that only exists in fiction because you can't draw a sword longer than about 60cm from your back. So people just didn't carry swords like this. Even if it was only to transport them (although ta transport only option makes a sort of sense). This was only even rarely done with Asian swords. We'd LOVE to hear about more of these that other people have noticed!
Episode 458 - fave Christmas stuff?
Dec 23, 2019
Hey! Merry Xmas! Happy Hanukkah! Merry Kwanza! Merry Festivus! Happy Yule! Happy Saturnalia! Winter Solstice and all the rest ^_^ In this Quackcast Banes, Tantz, and I chat about our fave Christmas stuff, from films to music, to what we like to do on the day and the popular Christmas traditions of our parts of the world- Australia for me Greece for Tantz, and Canada for Banes. What is your fave xmas movie, music, or activity? What's you fave things to do at this time of year? Do you have any rituals or practices that are particular to your part of the world? Let us know! :D
Episode 456 - Smackdown on Quackjeeves
Dec 8, 2019
Smack Jeeves has been sold out from under its community to a Korean mobile content provider company NHN. The same company approached us last year but the deal didn't go through because we were too strict on retaining control of the site and protecting our community, SJ apparently didn't have those same concerns for the people that made the site so special and that is a huge shame. What's happened now is that NHN is streamlining the site, minimising the creative members who host their comics there and turning it into a content delivery site for its hand-picked pro work, turning it into another souless clone corporate of Webtoons or Tapas.
Episode 454 - Are Marvel movies "Despicable"?
Nov 24, 2019
This week we look at the famous quote by respected film director Martin Scorsese that “Marvel movies aren't Cinema” and also the quote by fellow director Francis Ford Coppola that Marvel films are “despicable”. We try and look at the proper context of these remarks outside of the twitter garbage and social media outrage to see if either had any point or whether they're way off the mark and deserving of criticism.
Episode 453 - Lost in Translation
Nov 18, 2019
Where does your main audience come from? And how do you change your work to accommodate them? For a lot of us it's north Americans (mainly from the USA), which is interesting, especially for those of us outside of there because our cultures are slightly different. We THINK we totally understand each other but there ARE differences. So to make ourselves properly understood with the original intent of the story we often have to translate things slightly (much more in Tantz's case!). This goes doubly when a story is set in a different era. How much do you localise your story for the audience, how much SHOULD you?
Episode 452 - Storytelling styles change!
Nov 11, 2019
Storytelling styles change over time for various reasons: fashion, audience expectations, competition for audience attention due to increased choice and availability of media, technological limitations and abilities, and culture. We chat about the reasons for the changes and how styles have changed.
Episode 450 - happy Halloween horror franchises
Oct 28, 2019
Tantz is dressed fabulously as a queen and I'm a skull faced monstrosity… I'm also wearing a costume, hahaha! Which you can see in our Patreon video ;) Queen Tantz Bathory and prince of horror Banes join me to talk about Horror movie franchises, what makes them work and what doesn't- as franchises rather than just a stand alone movie. The problems facing a movie series about horror are different from other genres and focus more on formula than just characters the way they do in most other types of film so it's an interesting discussion.
