Episode 670 - Wise use of influence
Jan 15, 2024
This Quackcast is about using influence wisely! I had a DD comic creator come to me, apparently a bit distressed at some of the things we'd said in our last Quackcast about drawing adult comics- they had decided to delete their entire webcomic. I checked on google and it turns out they deleted it everywhere, not just DD, even down to their twitter! I've since talked to them some more and got more of the story and made sure they were ok but it was pretty alarming at the time nevertheless.
Topics and Show Notes
That got me on to the idea of being responsible with your influence: when you have any sort of platform people listen to you and think you have authority. Because of that you have to be mindful and try not to pretend you know more than you do, don't confuse objectivity with subjectivity or opinion with fact, always try to qualify things, add context, and give exceptions. On our Quackcast we talk very authoritatively about ways of doing art, drawing, writing stories, what comics should look like, dos and don'ts etc, and we always have very strong opinions. But the funny thing is that we're usually pretty hypocritical- because we'll do a Quackcast recommending specifically against something and explaining why it's bad and then we'll have another Quackcast parsing that very thing. Sometimes that change of attitude happens during the course of a single podcast!
If you listen to us at all, take what we say as advice rather than instructions. We each have fields of expertise on specific things- Tantz on psychology and ancient Greek history, me on Graphic design and art, Banes on music and comedy, we all have expertise and decades of experience running a webcomics hosting site, producing webcomics and podcasting, but we don't know everything about everything! Outside of those fields our knowledge is a bit general and even within them we all know we still have way more to learn! So take what we say with a grain of salt.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Donkeyskin - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/jan/09/featured-comic-donkeyskin/
Featured music:
Carl and The Lost Shad0w - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Carl_and_The_Lost_Shad0w/ - by Jazzy - rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 663 - AI and The Duck
Nov 27, 2023
This Quackcast tackles the issue of AI comics on Drunk Duck. We're discussing either a ban or rules that would enable them to be posted under conditions. We also talk about AI generated imagery and the issues with it and well as its future and the relationship between it and artists. This is a very complicated and much misunderstood subject.
Episode 662 - Drunkduck tales
Nov 20, 2023
Webcomic communities have different cultures, but why and where do they come from? DD's culture is pretty chill, we're reasonably neutral and accepting of a wide range of ideas and perspectives, we're egalitarian to a very high degree, we don't do cliques, we don't exclude, we don't tend to jump on culture wars… We don't like tribalism of partisanship. So why are we like that?
Episode 661 - Steaks... stakes
Nov 13, 2023
Stakes are a part of a story. What does a character want? What means the most to the character? What are they after, what do they care about? Stakes can be really subjective like that and they can also be objective and more universal like death, debt, a threat to a home, nation, planet or even the universe. The most important thing though is that you can communicate the value of those stakes to the audience! It doesn't actually matter WHAT the stakes are as long as the audience understands that they're important.
Episode 660 - The Multiverse
Nov 6, 2023
Multiverses are really popular in fiction right now, eg. Dr Strange into the mouth of Madness, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Flash, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Rick and Morty, and The Loki TV series (which I love). So what is a multiverse and why is it used? Basically when multiple universes coexist at the same time, either there are a few and they're widely different or they are infinite and every possibility exists. In the real world the idea of multiple universes is purely theoretical and a relatively minor part of various quantum physics theories, while in fiction it's an important tool for mashing together separate IPs that wouldn't normally fit together and also telling interesting stories with parallel elements and “what-if” scenarios.
Episode 657 - The art of the tease
Oct 16, 2023
The art of the tease is what we're talking about here. It's something Banes and I work with on Bottomless Waitress and it's what you see in a lot of raunchy comedies, you also see it in other applications too, like in a slasher thriller where it's teased that a character will become a victim but they never do. My fave application though is the traditional sex comedy where there's never anything explicit even though that is the thing you're always led to expect is just around the corner. The art is to keep people hanging on with the internal expectation of seeing something, while never actually delivering on it and yet not pissing them off.
Episode 654 - tropes vs character growth
Sep 25, 2023
Today we're chatting about characters who're mainly based on tropes VS those that grow. You see this difference quite clearly in a lot of British comedy VS American comedy where characters are set up in certain ways, e.g. the nerd, the sassy one, the mature one etc- in British stuff they tend to revert to type, which is their most important trait, while in American stuff they tend to change and grow based on interactions and experiences. There are MANY exceptions though and one way isn't inherently better than the other.
Episode 649 - Gendered clothing
Aug 21, 2023
When you're drawing people in a webcomic one of the common ways to indicate gender is by outfits, but why are clothes gendered at all and is that a constant?
