Episode 665 - Eyes
Dec 10, 2023
This week our talk is an art one: eyes! We talk about how to draw them, adding meaning and expression, the way different cultures use them, different styles for doing eyes, reflection, shadow, focus and a million other things!
Topics and Show Notes
Eyes anchor a face, they're THE most important landmark because humans are instinctively drawn to them as are most other creatures because eyes are an ancient thing that connects most animals, not just mammals but birds, reptiles, fish, crustaceans, arthropods, arthropods, insects and more. And for this reason hiding eyes or blocking them or even removing them is a great indication of evil or that something is wrong. There are Soooo many ways of drawing them from simple dots, circles within circles, lines, or going full on with something more realistic.
While not the first to develop it, Disney is famous for popularising a particular style of big eyes, which notably went on to influence early manga creators and that in turn became the main style throughout eastern Asia in animation and comics. Large eyes in narrative art in the region have been honed to an intricate art form with extremely complicated reflections, intricate colourings, and a multitude of expressions and indications of character and mental states.
Typically western comic art uses eyebrows and eyelids to a lessor extent to indicate expressions. Usually eyes are either proportionally realistic or in more stylised art they tend to be large and simplified. And while the eyes in manga style art are able to take the entire burden of representing expression, in western art they tend to have to work in concert with other facial features like the mouth, brows, set of the jaw and creases on the face.
One of the toughest things with eyes is to make both of them the same. A trick is to simply copy and paste to mirror one eye. In the old days you'd use tracing paper, carbon paper etc… Ironically though if you make both eyes too perfectly mirrored and alike things look LESS real and relatable because in reality eyes are rarely perfectly mirrored and when they are it's a little weird, though it's not something you notice most of the time because your brain automatically corrects for things like that. The upshot is that you shouldn't get too crazy about making sure the eyes you draw match perfectly, as long as one isn't too tilted or higher than the other.
We talk a LOT more about this on the Quackcast of course…
So how do you go about drawing eyes? Do you prefer the manga look or the Western approach? Do you have any issues with drawing eyes?
This week Gunwallace was too busy to we replayed an old fave, Gunwallace's theme to Android Blues - Cold blue, ancient mechanisms, clicking and pulsing… springs contracting, gears turning, cams slipping, servos spinning, capacitors whining… the machine works perfectly and mysteriously.
NEXT UP - Quackcast 666. Something evil…
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Short changed - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/dec/05/featured-comic-short-changed/
Featured music:
Android Blues - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Android_Blues/ - by Stahlberg, rated A.
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 664 - Parody and satire
Dec 4, 2023
We're talking about parody and its evil twin satire. There are good parodies and bad ones but we feel the better parodies are the indirect ones that make fun of and exaggerate the theme or the vibe of something rather that simply doing a direct copy but with jokes; For example, Austin Powers and Kingsmen are indirect parodies of spy films, Blazing saddles is an indirect parody of Westerns, The Princess Bride and Shrek are indirect parodies of fairy tales, Galaxy Quest and the Orville (first season) are indirect parodies of TV SciFi shows etc.
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 658 - Marvelous musicals
Oct 23, 2023
We're chatting about the subject of musicals for this particular Quackcast. You might think this has nothing to do with webcomics but webcomic musicals popup from time to time, like The Black Parade on DD by Ashlee S.
Episode 656 - Character Growth 2, Indiana Jones
Oct 8, 2023
This Quackcast is a sequel to our Quackcast last week on alternative character growth, but instead of Star Wars this time we decided on Indiana Jones. It's a really interesting creative writing exercise, we think up a better, more interesting way of of growing and continuing an established character and their adventures.
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.
