Episode 456 - Smackdown on Quackjeeves
Dec 8, 2019
Smack Jeeves has been sold out from under its community to a Korean mobile content provider company NHN. The same company approached us last year but the deal didn't go through because we were too strict on retaining control of the site and protecting our community, SJ apparently didn't have those same concerns for the people that made the site so special and that is a huge shame. What's happened now is that NHN is streamlining the site, minimising the creative members who host their comics there and turning it into a content delivery site for its hand-picked pro work, turning it into another souless clone corporate of Webtoons or Tapas.
Topics and Show Notes
This is a travesty. It's the creative people who host comics on our sites that MAKE the sites what they are. Hosts like us put in a lot of time and money to build these webcomic hosts, but cumulatively the creators that host with us put in a hell of a lot more and it's only down to them that any of us have the profile we do. It's THAT which NHN wanted to by out: the internet traffic and site presence that has been built up over a decade by those site members and they've all been betrayed.
Now there are precious few independent egalitarian webcomic hosts left… just us and Comic Fury I think? It's a shame because in its day Smack Jeeves was awesome with many amazing features that were ahead of their time.
We go into this much deeper as well as our own experience with corporate take overs in the Quackcast. Give it a listen. It's a bit ranty but there's some interesting stuff there.
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to “Banes’ theme” - Welcome to the rockin’ church of Gunwallace! Come on it and say your prayers with all due reverence and an attitude beatific joy for your lord has risen and his name is BANES! (based on Bane's musical intro for last week's Quackcast).
Topics and shownotes
Links
My Newspost (much more detail) - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/dec/08/sad-day-for-smack-jeeves/
Corporate Smack Jeeves :( - https://www.smackjeeves.com/
Religion in Fiction cast from last week - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/nov/30/quackcast-455-religion-in-fiction/
Featured comic:
Barkham Horror - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/dec/03/featured-comic-barkham-horror/
Featured music:
Banes' Theme - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/, by Gunwallace, rated X
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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Episode 454 - Are Marvel movies "Despicable"?
Nov 24, 2019
This week we look at the famous quote by respected film director Martin Scorsese that “Marvel movies aren't Cinema” and also the quote by fellow director Francis Ford Coppola that Marvel films are “despicable”. We try and look at the proper context of these remarks outside of the twitter garbage and social media outrage to see if either had any point or whether they're way off the mark and deserving of criticism.
Episode 453 - Lost in Translation
Nov 18, 2019
Where does your main audience come from? And how do you change your work to accommodate them? For a lot of us it's north Americans (mainly from the USA), which is interesting, especially for those of us outside of there because our cultures are slightly different. We THINK we totally understand each other but there ARE differences. So to make ourselves properly understood with the original intent of the story we often have to translate things slightly (much more in Tantz's case!). This goes doubly when a story is set in a different era. How much do you localise your story for the audience, how much SHOULD you?
Episode 450 - happy Halloween horror franchises
Oct 28, 2019
Tantz is dressed fabulously as a queen and I'm a skull faced monstrosity… I'm also wearing a costume, hahaha! Which you can see in our Patreon video ;) Queen Tantz Bathory and prince of horror Banes join me to talk about Horror movie franchises, what makes them work and what doesn't- as franchises rather than just a stand alone movie. The problems facing a movie series about horror are different from other genres and focus more on formula than just characters the way they do in most other types of film so it's an interesting discussion.
Episode 449 - Star Wars 2 the franchise strikes back
Oct 21, 2019
As promised we dive right into the second half of the Star Wars chat! We cover all the Star Wars stuff besides the original trilogy and the new trilogy. There's a lot to cover and we only touch on most on it: Solo, the Star Wars Christmas special, Droids, the Ewok films, Clone Wars, the games, the books, comics, Solo, Rogue One…
Episode 445 - Copyright and You
Sep 23, 2019
Copyright is a complicated thing and something that all creators should have a little bit of a working understanding off! Checkout my newspost lined bellow for more info! you need to know this stuff. I must apologise… I hadn't had much sleep and it was very late so I occasionally drift off into nonsense during the Quackcast.
Episode 440 - Character tropes VS characterisation
Aug 19, 2019
Today we compare and contrast two ways of making characters: starting with a pure archetype and building it with tropes, or creating a character organically through circumstance and interaction with other characters.
Episode 439 - weather flavour enhancer!
Aug 12, 2019
Tantz's clever idea was that the weather isn't just a backdrop… it's an important prop in it's own right. Weather can be used to drive a plot: the wind snatches a hat and makes a person chase it, which causes them to meet another character. It can be an antagonist: people fighting a storm for example or running form a tornado. It can signal and enhance emotions: rain for a sad funeral or sun for happy for a happy event. Growing shadows can signal an ominous turn of events, wind billowing out a cloak signals a dramatic character! You can just use it for fancy visual effects if you like, snow and rain are great fun to draw, and stormy skies are the best! We chat about all things weather and give examples of how we've used it ourselves.
