Episode 381 - site upgrades and messing with creators
Jul 2, 2018
We talk about all the new upgrades that DD has just gotten: the new comment notification and reply features (a huge thank you to all who donated and helped out with that!!!), our new notification icons, getting HTTPS on the site, moving to the new ad system after the fall of Project wonderful, maybe starting a Patreon for DD, and Tantz's Sunday Twitter features. We also chat about Tantz's latest newspost and Mks Monster's thread that it was based on: basically the idea of forcing creators into boxes. The idea that women should create certain kinds of work and men should create others. Gunwallace gave us a lovely theme to Sky Commander. This is a very futuristic sounding track, at first glance it’s a little modern for the 1940s set comic but I like to think of it as the flight theme of the Sky Commander as he zooms through the clouds in his shiny metal Streamline Moderne gear, producing an expanding vapour trail behind him, crisp and white against the eggshell blue sky.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Bob and Rob - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/jun/26/featured-comic-bob-and-rob/
Links:
Site upgrades! - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/jun/28/upgrades/
Tantz's Twitter Features - https://twitter.com/DrunkDuck/status/1013540066390667264
Proving your Progressiveness (Tantz newspost) - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/jun/29/proving-your-progressiveness/
Messing with creators (thread) - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/177940/?page=1#latest
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Pitface - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Featured music:
Sky Commander - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Sky_Commander/, by Coydog, rated T.
Episode 378 - Your best work, Comicsgate, Mark Wade, Tantz comic spotlight, Twitter
Jun 11, 2018
We have community contributions for this Quackcast! Many DDers told us about their best work and we read that out and chat about in on the Quackcast. We talking about promoting comics through DD's Twitter account. The DD awards have begun, get in on them and get nominated! Tantz Aerine wants to promote comics so send stuff to her.The we had a really long and interesting chat about Comisgate and Mark Wade and then Pitface had a meltdown :D This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Completely unrelated. Slide into coooooool. This is crystal white acrylic decor, this is a level above, this is music for the sophisticated. Feel your stresses melt way as you float off with the smooth jazz. Pure pleasure.
Episode 313 - Technical techniques
Mar 6, 2017
Carrying on from last week's Quackcast discussion on tips and tricks for drawing and artwork, we jump again into the topic and THIS time we have Tantz Aerine on board to lend her perspective and tell us about even MORE little techniques to use to draw better. It's an interesting, technical cast and bellow I've kisted some examples from our own work of what we talk about. Details discussed in this episode: Establishing shots, Facial lines, Scars, Wounds, Snow, Rain, Smoke, Fire, Explosions, Gold, Fur, and Eyes. Gunwallace has given us the music to the Fading World this time, it's an oriental procession into a snowy, twilit, exotic world, unbalanced, and dangerous.
Episode 307 - The jerks
Jan 23, 2017
Jerky, jerk, jerks! Let's talk about this type of character… This topic is based on Banes' newspost from Thursday, he based it on characters like Reggie from the Archie comics. Jerks can be pretty good characters in their own right. They can be villains, heroes, antagonists or protagonists, they can even be unintentional jerks like Scrappy do from Scooby Do, Alf from Alf, or Jar Jar Binks from that horrible movie he was in. My favourite jerks are Flashman from the Flashman novels by George MacDonald (you should read them!), Blackadder (particularly the second season), and Zaphod Beeblebrox who I'm cosplaying in the cover pic. Who are your fave and least fave jerks? Gunwallace's musical theme was for The Epic of Blitzov. It's Riff based hard rock, driving beat, heavy, distorted guitars layered over and over with a thunderous yet lyrical lead floating over the top. Orange and black sound.
Episode 302 - the agendacast
Dec 19, 2016
Today we talk about works of pop-culture that have an obvious political agenda, so obvious that t not only gets in the way of the entertainment but also dictates to the audience without letting them have a chance to come to their own conclusions: forcing you to see things only one way. Even when we agree with the agenda being presented it can still strike a sour chord, often more-so since they're preaching to the choir and usually just throwing a badly simplified version of the philosophy at you, which can feel insulting. So that's what we chat about. Those views can come from ANY political persuasion, the right the left, communism, fascism, socialism, libertarianism whatever. No one has a monopoly on ideologues. We became overtly political towards the end… Sorry for that. HAHAHA. Do we practise what we preach? HELLS NO! I have to apologise again for the terrible sound quality of my voice recording. I thought I'd fixed the settings from last week, but I was wrong. I HAVE now though. Gunwallace's musical theme was for Grunk - cocktail bar samba played on a church organ. The music of heaven! Cheesy heaven. You can imagine fat angels in hawaiian shirts swanning about drunkenly and spilling their margaritas.
Episode 281 - The Joy of SFX
Jul 25, 2016
The Quantum theory of comics! Sound adds a whole new dimension to comics, enriching and enlarging the atmosphere, giving your mind a whole new path of stimuli to explore and queue you into things you just would not have been able to consider without them! Thanks to Ironscarf for his beautifully sexy and punny intro into the wonderful world of SFX, We made liberal use of his newspost in this Quackcast!. Indeed, SFX can be very tough to master in a lot of ways, it can be hard to make yourself use them too because they seem a little twee and unnatural, but once to get over that natural reticence they add a whole lot more to your work and give you many more options to explore. They're a very useful tool in your comic making toolkit! The theme this week was for Planet Chaser, you'll agree that it's bouncy, techno, mystical and danceable!
Episode 245 - fiction influencing reality and the myth of the friendzone
Nov 16, 2015
In Quackcast 245 we TRY to talk about my idea that fictional characters, stereotypes, tropes and situations in media have influenced their counterparts in reality, and in a lot of ways helped to create them. Fictional stereotypes and tropes are made out of simplified models of things that happen in reality, usually by pulling together all the most dramatic, big, bold versions and then turning them up to 11 to make a new, more exciting fictional caricature, that NEW image is then spread far and wide and influences people to imitate it- a good example being the modern “cowboy”. This idea was kicked off by Pitface suggesting one of my characters looked like a douchey friendzoned character. I thought about it and realised that a real life version of this character (who's mooning over a girl in a relationship with another guy), WOULD be exactly as she described, also those characters are common to relationship comedies and so often friendzoned… SO that got me thinking: could the current crop of “nice guy” fedora friendzone exponents have based their crazy theories about relationships on images in the media? -since they don't have much relationship to reality yet they so closely match pre-existing tropes in movies and TV shows. Then we expanded the idea to other examples of media representations influencing reality. Pitface, Banes, and Tantz Aerine join me on the Quackcast. Gunwallace does a lovely theme for Entanglement.
Episode 237 - The Songcast
Sep 21, 2015
For Quackcast 237 we asked people about the songs that inspire them when they do their comics, which songs go with which parts of their comics, what would be the ideal comic movie theme, what songs or music get you in the MOOD to do your comic, and finally; just how great are Gunwallace's fantastic comic theme tunes? And speaking of theme tunes, the masterful Gunwallace has given us a Salsa theme for Taco El Gato!