Episode 290 - Characters coming alive
Sep 26, 2016
The idea fr this Quackcast was inspired by a Korean TV series that Tantz Aerine recommended called “W” (http://myasiantv.se/drama/w/). The show is about a manga artist who does a super popular webcomic. He wants to quit doing it and has decided to end by killing off his main character, but his main character seems to have ideas of his own about that… Tantz and I thought about how that could apply to us real webcomicers. That's a fantasy situation, but if it could happen, which of your characters would do that? Which one is independent enough from you that they would want to take on a life of their own and fight you? Incorporated in this are the idea of characters “breaking the fourth wall” and the fictional characters becoming so well realised and independent from the author (so to speak), that they seem to influence the direction of a story against the intentions off the writer. People will often talk about characters seemingly writing the story themselves or taking things in directions the writer never wanted to go. So that's what we chat about! You really should check out “W”, it's a great series! This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to HardLuckComics. It's full of energy and vive, driving. This is working music! This is the intro to the drive time program on the radio! This is “the news”!
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Aspect Immortal - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Aspect_Immortal/
Links:
Forum thread on the idea - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/177561/
Contributors:
Usedbooks - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/usedbooks/
KimLuster - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/KimLuster/
Bravo1102 - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/bravo1102/
Amelius - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Amelius/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine
Pitface - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Featured music:
HardLuckComics http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/HardLuckComics/ by ComicMan86, rated T
Episode 283 - Writing Dialogue pt1
Aug 8, 2016
Dialogue is a key part of any comic, it pushes the story along, keys the reader in on things that would be otherwise ambiguous, hints and foreshadows at future happenings, creates humour… well, it's just a big part of comics, that's all! And that's what we're chatting about here in this Quackcast! The topic stems from a forum thread I posted a while ago asking people about their approach to creating dialogue and how people go about it; is it heavily scripted in advance or is it one of the last things you come up with? People had some very interesting responses! Gunwallace's musical theme was Magical Misfits. The sound is magical, classical, threatening, yet full of adventure! Love those creeping cellos, the violin and clarinet sound like a humorous dialogue between the wittier members of the party.
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 274 - development of main characters
Jun 6, 2016
Our Quackcast topic was a discussion about how our main characters evolved and changed over time, both in terms of characterisation but also artistically. stylistically and their own looks. Then we chatted about ways to help that along and accelerate it: How do you get to KNOW your character better? How do you help them grow? We toyed with some exercises but eventually came up with a cool one- Swapping a comic page/scene with someone else and redrawing it with your character in there instead of the original main character, and also have your character handling their new situation in the the way that best suits them, the way THEY would handle it. Link bellow… The music this week by Gunwallace was a theme to DELIA- it's a cold, thoughtful tune with a note of unease below, like an icily perfect woman.
Episode 272 - DD electric people, community meetup
May 22, 2016
State your business! Venerable Drunkducker Ayesinback suggested we have an open electronic meetup of DD people, so that's exactly what we did! We all met up in a long Skype session that lasted 10 hours- various DDers dropped in and out over that time and we chatted away about everything and nothing on videochat, meanwhile I tried on a never ending series of antique and novelty hats, one after another… It was really lovely to see old and new DDers all together, to see their faces and hear their voices. A big thankyou to everyone who took part! It was a big success! We will try it again and again in the coming months. The proposed date is the 3rd Saturday of every month, so the next one will be the 18th of June. The session starts at 11am New York time and runs for 10 hours until 9 pm New York time, so you can drop in any time during that! You can get Skype for free here: www.skype.com. It works on all computers, phones and tablets. It can even work just in your web browser alone! You just sign up and install it. Then make sure you add “ozoneocean” as a friend. Gunwallace's track this week was for Darklings. It's nice and long one with a good progressive rhythm. Some of the genius things we discussed: The measure of distance is time. Inbreeding leads to contagious genetic deformity. Direct democracy VS Harkovast. We beet the sugar! Pineapple and artichoke, why eat them?
Episode 258 - Gunwallace music special
Feb 15, 2016
We have a special treat this time! Gunwallace is our guest and he's brought with him 15 of his fave tracks that he created as themes for DD webcomics. For two years Gunwallace has been creating fantastic musical themes for webcomics, the total is now over 90! He, Banes and I chat about the background behind the tracks, there are some interesting stories, and the music is awesome! Gunwallace is the author of many great comics and a contributor to even more as a writer, such as the Drunk Duck Plays. We hope you enjoy his 15 tracks as well as the 5 bonus ones picked out by me, Ozoneocean, including the theme to Valentine's Dei in honour of the day we recorded on. If you want your own theme by Gunwallace, help up by contributing to our Indiegogo campaign and pick it up as a perk!
Episode 244 - Horror playlist
Nov 9, 2015
This week's Quackcast marks the end of the Halloweencasts! Late, I know, but we recorded these all in advance. We dressed in costume again, which you can see in our VIDEO. Banes as the arctic death wolf, Pitface as the evil Nancy Regan, Tantz as a fierce Greek pirate rebel, revolutionary warrior, and myself as a horrible, horrible glam metal rocker. The topic of discussion was inspired by another newspost by Banes, this time the subject was “your horror playlist”, so we chat about all the scary, horror themed stuff we enjoy around this time of year. Gunwallace's theme was for BARBARIAN ADVENTURE, I LOVE this track! It's heavy and bluesy, reminiscent of Lenny Kravitz or Cream.
Episode 240 - The Vampcast - Costumecast
Oct 12, 2015
Happy October, the month of Halloween! For this quackcast we had Tantz Aerine and Pitface along and we did the entire thing full dressed in costume WHILE vidcasting, which was very distracting. We got a few minutes and iffy quality video of the event too. Unfortunately I'm not very skilled with the process yet. We chat about vampires, using the great contributions of the community! Vampires are fun, but what's MORE fun is costumes. Tantz was a librarian vamp, Pit was a deathknight fairy princess, Banes was a werewolf, and Ozone (me) was a costumed idiot. Gunwallace provided us the lovely theme to the vampy comic Danielle Dark!
