Episode 422 - Positive promotion and controversial characters
Apr 15, 2019
The entire gang comes together today for two topics that were taken from recent newsposts: Emma Clare's Positive self promotion, and Tantz Aerine's Handling Controversial Characters. First up we chat about why it's always a great idea to sell yourself positively, NOT be arrogant or douchey, but rather by talking enthusiastically about what you genuinely love about your work and using that REAL and SINCERE enthusiasm to infect others with your love of what you do. Emma was mainly talking about the way you introduce your comics to friends and family but it definitely applies more broadly to self promotion in general: Don't try and get sympathy through self depreciation (oh, it's not very good…), and don't be an arrogant ass (My stuff is AWESOME!), rather you should just be honest about what you love about it (This story was so FUN to write!).
Topics and Show Notes
There are exceptions. “READ HARKOVAST” become a great catchphrase for the author of that comic ;)
Next up we talk about Tantz's subject of handling controversial characters: Real controversial characters and established characters in fiction that have very different interpretations and views about them can be tricky to use in fiction. WHICH of the popular interpretations do you choose? - The one that says they were an insane dictator or the one that says they're a hero of their people? Whichever you do you'll have audience members who're angry about it in some way. Examples are characters like Jesus (comics linked bellow), and Mother Theresa. Jesus obviously means a lot of things to different people, there's around about 2000 years of culture focussed on him and people during the time he was meant to have lived would have regarded him very differently to the later worshippers. Mother Theresa during her lifetime was almost universally regarded as a living saint, her name was common shorthand for being extremely caring. After her death opinions changed and fractured desperately. To many she was either a monster, a scheming witch, or a stupid naive backwards woman who was used as a promotional tool. Which approach do you as a writer take?
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Tusk. Fast tribal beat that makes you want to shake your hips, stamp your feet, wiggle, twitch, and vibrate all over! A nice, stompy, vibrating rhythm booms into the centre and slows things down for a change of pace. This is the ultimate dance track. Get hot, sweaty and show off your crazy moves as best you can. Put the other dancers to shame!
Topics and shownotes
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Featured comic:
Breached - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/apr/09/featured-comic-breached/
Featured music:
Tusk - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Tusk/, by Fallopiancrusader, rated T.
LINKS
Positive promotion newspost by Emma Clare - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/mar/30/talking-about-your-comic-to-others-and-why-you-should/
Controversial characters newspost by Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/apr/12/handling-controversial-historical-characters/
READ HARKOVAST - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Harkovast/
Holy Bible the Albino Ginger version - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com /Holy_Bible_the_Albino_Ginger_version/
Jesus 2016 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Jesus_2016/
Look who's back (movie) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4176826/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pit Face - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Episode 419 - The Rating Game
Mar 25, 2019
It's the rating game! Yeah! This Quackcast was inspired by Emma Clare's newspost on Friday about rating levels. On Drunk Duck we have 4 rating levels so they're nice and simple: “E” for everyone, “T+” for teens, “M” for mature, and “A” for Adult! We talk about why ratings exist and how to use them.
Episode 418 - Many kinds of love
Mar 18, 2019
There are many kinds love. Love is a great thing to include in your story for all sorts of reasons: it's an easy way to develop characters, give a character something to strive for, it's universally relatable, You can use it for tension, all sorts of things! There are different kinds of relationships you can use as well, not just heterosexual or homosexual relationships and the common trope of showing the beginning of a relationship, you can show crushes, established relationships, platonic relationships, relationships collapsing and exes coming together. For this topic we were loosely inspired by Tantz and Emma's great newsposts about romance and platonic love. We chat about luuuurv and tricks like lurv triangles!
Episode 406 - Amateur Vs Pros Merry Christmas DD!
Dec 23, 2018
Merry Christmas one and all! And all that stuff. This year our release date falls exactly on the 25th! It was a busy year for us, lots happened. But in this Quackcast what we chat about is something rather different: the difference between pros and amateurs, specifically when it comes to comics. There's this common misconception that an amateur is a novice that will produce work of a lower quality, while a professional is an experienced person who knows what they're doing and will always produce things of the highest quality… The REAL story is more complex than that.
Episode 398 - The sum of all Fears
Oct 29, 2018
This week in the Quackcast we were going to talk about fear in general. What are we afraid of? Why do we like or do not like media that may reflect these fears or lead us to new ones? How do such things inspire fear or similar reactions within us. DO we like horror because we like fear to an extent? It's that Halloween time of year once again so it's time to focus on such things. We had Emma Clare on board as well! Oh it was going to be so amazing and fun! Little did we know…
Episode 390 - Imprinting on your characters
Aug 15, 2018
We nicked the idea for this Quackcast from a newspost by Emma Clare. What we chat about is the unintentional process of giving your characters you own traits or even traits of people you know without realising it: Every time you draw an expression for your character you're not really creating a generic expression but basing it on yourself… when you character is being quizzical or irritated for example people may recognise that as you. It could be in other things too: their taste, the way they dress, what they like to eat, their furniture. things that annoy them, their hobbies etc. It's interesting how tied they are to us.
Episode 379 - Troptastic
Jun 18, 2018
ALL the tropes!!!! Based on Emma Clare's newspost, tropes are damn useful but they can also be your undoing if you handle them badly. Tropes are shortcuts to meanings, scenes, procedures or jokes that take too long to set up in their own right. You can use them like prefabricated parts to build your story, Lego if you will. You really should know how to use them correctly though. If it's for jokes, then work on them and expand on them, if it's for more serious stuff then you should know WHERE those tropes come from so you use them correctly. We chat about tropes, boob-slips, Doki Doki, Baka and Test, Kung Fury, Satan Ninja 198X, and Vaporwave among other things. Gunwallace gave us a lovely theme to Yasu no Monogatari this week: Floating out on a blue river of dreams into an echoing crystal cave illuminated by thousands of refracted glittering lights, traveling on your way further underground, deeper and deeper to more exciting and mysterious sites.
Episode 375 - Categories, genres and rants
May 21, 2018
In this Quackcast we chat about the categorisation of work by specific genres and how it makes it easier to promote your work to people, while for fans it makes it easier to find what you're into, but it can also be a bad thing when people categorise too specifically and narrow their audience to nothing or just pointlessly confuse the crap out of people. I came to this topic because I saw a post on Facebook which was very badly explaining “Steampunk” and “Dieselpunk” while introducing the two utterly superfluous sub-genre names of “Ray-punk” and Atom-punk“.
