Episode 671 - Art Vs the Artist
Jan 22, 2024
Art VS the artist! Can you infer something about the creator from their creation? Do you think the art is an accurate reflection of the artist?
Topics and Show Notes
For THIS Quackcast I wanted to tackle the idea of whether you could judge or infer the mind of the artist from their creation and how wrong some people have been about that, but instead we got all turned around and misdirected and talked mainly about separating the art from the artist when the artist is discovered to have done something horrible, or is at least accused of that. Can you still go back and watch the Cosby Show for example?
The position I'd like to go with is one of default separation- we should always have some sort of distance between the art and the creator when we can because if we don't then it's going to be very tricky to be able to really appreciate anything… there's always someone nasty in the mix somewhere and we're doing a disservice to the other people who worked on the thing as well as culture as a whole if we close of access to stuff or shut off our appreciation for things because someone involved in them was later found to be awful. But then there are other aspects to this too: you don't want your consumption of the art to monetarily advantage an awful person, and it also depends on how closely the art is connected with the artist and whatever awful thing they did.
We also talked a tiny bit about judging the the creator based on their creation and how unfair that can be. One example of mine is Masumuni Shirrow who created many amazing and influential cyberpunk works like Ghost in the Shell, Apple Seed, Dominion Tank Police, Intron Depot, Black Magic 66 etc. but I feel people unfairly dismiss him because he also loves to draw sexy women. He's a genius with incredible artwork, densely plotted, clever, intellectual, thoughtful, philosophical, yet exciting action cyberpunk stories that have been pretty foundational in our modern culture, and yet some morons dismiss him for also drawing sexy ladies. I hate those people.
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by The Focus - a creepy yet beautiful piece that brings points of colour to a cold grey landscape and eventually ramps up to a climax that sounds as if it was played in reverse with pieces of broken glass.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Magic Power Ball - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/jan/15/featured-comic-magic-power-ball/
Featured music:
The Focus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Focus/ - by Spooktergeist , rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 668 - Year in Review!
Jan 1, 2024
Happy new year. Happy 2024! We're doing a year in review show this time because what else do you talk about in the last recorded thing/first presented thing of the year? We chat a bit about the progress of Drunk Duck's massive update and we each talk about what we personally achieved with our own webcomics- Tantz with Verdant and finishing Without Moonlight, Banes with Kaiju Valentine, me with Pinky TA and Bottomless waitress with Banes, and our new 3 way group comic called Key of Dreams, which is still in the planning stages.
Episode 666 - Evil
Dec 18, 2023
We're up to number 666 Quackcasts so our topic this time is evil! Evil is a complicated subject, we all think we know what it is but we really don't, there are just so many aspects to it so it's very hard to fully encompass. Broadly “evil” can be something very subjective: anything that runs counter to our own well-being as individuals- people, things and situations that do us harm. You can expand that to your property, your family, friends, acquaintances, pets etc. As that definition gets bigger though to encompass your neighbours, street, suburb, city, state, and country it becomes more objective bit by bit, till we come to the idea that “evil” is something that runs counter to human rights, or the existence of life in general, or the right to self determination etc. A more objective view of evil.
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 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 653 - Star Treken
Sep 18, 2023
Today we're talking about STAR TREK! Star Trek is a pretty influential piece of pop-culture. Most interesting to me is that it's a future that is NOT a dystopia. It's a large scale vision of a future world where everything is NOT terrible and collapsing in on itself. You can count those on one hand. It's worth talking about just because of that. Instead of taking the boring, tried and true dystopia route the creators of this world decided to explore a premise of “what happens when a world actually works?”.
