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.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Sedna - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/feb/28/featured-comic-sedna/
LINKS:
Drawing cast 1 - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/feb/25/quackcast-312-happy-little-trees/
Goat fur vest in Brave Resistance - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Brave_Resistance/5367303/
Smoke and fire in Pinky TA - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pinky_TA/5358464/
Gold and fur - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pinky_TA/5468472/
Falling snow and establishing shot - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pinky_TA/5520818/
Explosion - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pinky_TA/5414878/
Wounds - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pinky_TA/5402885/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Featured music:
Fading World - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Fading_World/, by EllirhShaa, rated T.
Episode 276 - Time management, Deadlines and Organisation
Jun 20, 2016
For Quackcast 276 we had a discussion about the topics of time management, organisation and deadlines- all things essential to the practitioners of webcomics, and even more-so to people involved in webcomic collaborations! This is tricky stuff to handle, you have to balance your webcomicing with your other life activities as well as audience expectation for updates! And as you go on it gets harder and harder to stick with self imposed deadlines, so how do you combat that? Well one way is to make a Patreon account so people will put money towards you updating, That can make an excellent incentive to stick to a deadline, when there's money involved! Collaborations can be easy or hard to keep alive, as long as everyone is equally eager to take part and everyone wants it to succeed then you're good, if not then your group project needs a good leader: not someone who WANTS to be a leader, rather someone who's dedicated to getting the project DONE and needs to be the leader to make that happened, sort of like my role at Drunk Duck. They need to be willing and able to coordinate people and tell them what to do, handle their strengths and weaknesses right to get the work done. The last part to remember is contingencies for when things go wrong! What are your safeguards? i.e. buffers, finishing early so you've got extra time to work on the project if it needs it, have backup people lined up to do work for you, filler art at the ready, guest strips, maybe even simplified techniques or just posting line art instead. How do YOU stick to deadlines (if you do), how do you handle time management and organisation with your comics and collaborators? Gunwallace's theme music this week was Z74's Star Knights. It's An operatic swarm of hornets on a massed bombing run over enemy territory.
Episode 275 - Layouts, what to do and what not
Jun 13, 2016
The topic this week was ALL Banes' idea! We talk about page layout: techniques to make a good, readable layout, and stuff to avoid. We have Tantz Aerine (greetings), Banes, and myself, Ozoneocean, chatting about how best to do page layouts, at least from our own limited perspectives. None of us are pros in this regard, but we've been doing comics for many years now and we've all developed some pretty decent ideas about how best to do it, in our own ways. Banes is mostly influenced by American style comics, which have more interesting layouts. Tantz and I were manly influenced by European comics, which tend to have a more conservative by very constantly readable style of “box” layout. On Pinky TA and Bottomless Waitress the majority of my pages are in a fairly standard box format, but every now and again I experiment with crazy shapes, overlapping panels, no panels at all, and even “infinite canvas” pages that work with the scroll function. Speaking of which we briefly mention Scott McCloud and the comic Heart of Keol, which uses vertically scrolling large pages. The music this week by Gunwallace was Wastelanders Anonymous, an epic classic rock tune with a lovely repeating upward base rhythm, soaring guitars and authoritative keyboard.
Episode 181 - Colour your world! part 2
Aug 14, 2014
This is part 2 and the final of our look at advanced colouring techniques. This week we had even more heavy hitters with fantastic ability and skill weighing in on the topic of colouring. These guys can teach us a LOT! We like to do these technical Quackcast subjects to hopefully help people improve their comicing skills and it's great to have people sharing the wisdom of what they've learned while they've been making comics themselves and spreading it around to the rest of us!
Episode 180 - Colour your world! part 1
Aug 14, 2014
For this week's Quackcast I asked people what colour techniques they use and BOY was I surprised by the high calibre of the responses! We had some heavy hitter contributions, people with colour skill beyond what I can conceive of, and I'm no slouch myself when it comes to colouring. We had such good contributions and the subject is so complex that that we decided to split it over two parts so we can properly discuss this very technical concept: COLOUR! Colouring is an important and advanced skill when it comes to comic art. At the most basic level you can restrict yourself to a simple palette with no shading or tones, if you want to be more advanced though there is no limit to how complex you can get. Hopefully the advice presented here can help you with your artwork!
Episode 129 - Wizards of Webcomics and Their Marvellous Techniques
Jun 10, 2013
Quackcast 129 fits in with our technical series of Quackcasts when we investigate different comic making tools, like pen and paper, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Toon Boom Studio, Manga Studio etc. except this time we asked people to tell us about the tools they use to make their comic, the pros and cons, how much it costs, how long it took to learn how to use it, where other people can get it... all that sort of stuff, we wanted to know- that info can help others too so it's good to share it! And thankfully the wonderful wizards of webcomics graced us with the secrets of their best methods.
Episode 128 - Ozone and Banes Print Comic Origins
Jun 3, 2013
Like Quackcast 127, 128 is about early print comic influences, except this time it's the influences of Banes and Ozoneocean. We have a good long chat together about some of the old print comics that had the biggest influences on us in our early days of comic making... and reminisce about good old fun times reading those great comics like Mad Magazine and what we learned and took away from those experiences in art style, genre, comedy, and writing style.
Episode 127 - Early Influences in Print Comics
May 28, 2013
For Quackcast 127 we asked the DD community about the traditional print comics that influenced them over the years, from their early days onward. No webcomics! Only the old printed kind in comic books or newspapers, or gum wrappers or... however else people got their comicbook goodness. And it was TOTALLY ok to talk about mainstream comics like Batman and Superman if that was their thing or obscure stuff no one ever heard of or weird embarrassing crap like He-Man comics, whatever, it's all good, we wanted to know! We got quite a few responses and we thank everyone for those, It also gave us a chance to do our funny voices again, which we appreciated!
