Episode 344 - Active/Reactive characters
Oct 16, 2017
Some characters are active and others are reactive. Reactive characters mostly only react to things rather than make them happen so they can be very boring if not done right! Active characters are the ones that drive events by doing things and making stuff happen, these characters grab your interest. This idea was based on Tantz's fantastic newspost, we talk it out, coming up with some good examples of each character type. Our epiphany for this Quackcast was that if you want a “strong” female character what you REALLY want is an “active” female character. The mistake people made with the trope was that they thought the female character had to be either a main character or a kick-arse masculine style character, when in reality neither is required. Make your character “active”; making decisions, causing things to happen, having an impact, causing OTHER characters to react etc and they will be a “strong” character. She could be a minor character who never lifts a sword or fires a gun but still be the strongest character in the story if she's the most active. ;) This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to Boys Land - This one surprises you, sneaking up with a gentle beginning, then it hits like a bomb bursts of rainbows and warm breezes! Beautifully, the same tune is repeated in many different forms, there’s even a bit of Primus type bass in there. It finishes as it begins, with a gentle acoustic guitar.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Lexi's Fight Against the Dead - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Lexis_Fight_Against_the_Dead/
Tantz's newspost on Active/Reactive characters http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/oct/13/active-vs-reactive-characters/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Kawaiidaigakusei, - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
PitFace - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Featured music:
Boys Land - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Boys_Land/, by Boysland_crew, rated T.
Episode 343 - sexy Drawings
Oct 9, 2017
How do YOU feel when drawing or writing about something sexy? That was the question put to the erotically charged ladies and guys of DD, who answered in a full frontal, frank and unashamed manner! It's a harrrrd question to answer but we were wiiiide open about it. ;) Does writing sexy stories and doing sexy art make you feel erotically charged, leave you feeling cold, or a little pervy? I contend that if you're doing it right then it should turn you on just as much as you intend to turn on the viewer! Pit, Tantz and Banes agreed with me… but many DDers did not and we read out their comments on the subject. *A few new comments were posted after we'd already done the Quackcast so we couldn't get to them. This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to 9th Life: A warm symphony of interlacing guitars, weaving their riffs ecstatically in and out and around each other into a self supporting tower of pure cool.
Episode 342 - Seen unseen
Oct 2, 2017
What is the best approach to make a scary story? To directly show the monster, the horror and the gore, or to hold off on that and let the audience fill in the blanks and guide them to imagine something far more awful and real than you could conceive of yourself? That's what Banes and I talked about in the Quackcast that comes out on the first day of the month of October, the scariest month… the month when my Tax return is due! OOooooooo nooooooo! o_O But it's also the month when Halloween comes around and people like to think about scary things… And THINKING about them is often more scary than seeing them. Or is it? This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to KAYN KOURAGEOUS! Groove on down to the funk! Let’s go back to the 1970s, chow down on some fat tasty bass, a lick of catchy repeating riff, the music of the streets; hot, fresh and savoury!
Episode 338 - Shared DNA of ideas
Sep 4, 2017
The saying goes that “Good artists copy, great artists steal”, it's attributed to various luminaries such as TS Elliot, Picasso, Tantz Aerine etc, but the important thing is the true meaning: there are very few original ideas, culture is built up out of inherited inspiration that is built on and developed by successive generations, many artists will just repeat ideas though (“copy”), without adding much of their own flavour to them, while clever artists take the ideas as influence and inspiration and reinvent them in their own individual style. It's best when an artist brings ideas together, like the shared DNA of two parents, to produce something new and marvellous! This goes for artists, musicians, webcomics, everyone! We reference Penny Arcade, Ctrl Alt Delete and PVP which were the super popular me-too gamer webcomics, we bring up music and cover versions, and my favourite example: the AT-ST from Return of the Jedi and all the other similar two legged mecha like the Zentradi battlepods from Macross/Robotech, the mecha from Mechwarrior, Ed 209 from Robocop and of course my very own Trompers from Pinky TA ^_^ Super Impact High was the theme for this week by Gunwallace. This track really calls to mind the modern, frenetic style of the artwork on Super Impact High. It’s wild, high energy, off balance, and aggressive! This should really get you in the mood for the story.
Episode 337 - Interview with AmeliaP of Kings Club
Aug 28, 2017
This week we interview the artist and creator of the comic Kings Club, AmeliaP! Her comic was featured and Gunwallace also gave it a theme tune that was featured in Quackcast 335. AmeliaP is a talented professional comic creator and game designer. We couldn't interview her directly because she's not confident enough in her spoken English, so what we've done instead is read out a written interview that I did with her especially for this Quackcast. Amelia has some surprising and valuable insights for comic creators. You can read the full text of her interview bellow. Gunwallace's theme for the week was for Abejitas - This tune bounces in like a wild thing, spinning and buzzing crazily, full of black striped yellow techno sweet honey madness and rapid wingbeats of energy, this will sting you into full awareness!
Episode 328 - How to get people to read your comic!
Jun 19, 2017
Today we're going to chat about how you go about getting more readers on Drunk Duck for your webcomic! Hyena hell did an amazing newspost about it for us, outlining all the ways you can increase your audience here on DD in her fantastic, colourful vernacular! Along with many great analogues from the real world. But I'll cover the basics again in quick point form here: -- 1. Make sure you have a signature image banner so that when you contribute to the forums people can see that you have a comic. -- 2. Comment on other people's regularly, recently updating comics, especially the top ten, and others will click on your name to have a look at your comic- make sure you never post “hey check out my work” as a comment though, that will have the opposite effect. Just be complimentary and people will come. -- 2. Commenting on Newsposts can work as well. -- 3. Make sure your profile page has enough interesting info about you that someone would want to see your work. -- 4. frequent updates will put your comic icon on the front page more often so more people will check it out. -- 5. Increasing popularity through outside sources is done by getting a link to your comic on a popular blog, buying advertising through Project Wonderful on other comics or on The Duck Webcomics is a sure fire way. -- 6. If you get enough views you comic will go into the top 10 listing and then more people will see it on the front page. -- Our music theme by Gunwallace this week was for Sword of Kings. It's urgent, regal chase music, Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk meets Ivanhoe. This is an exciting track that conjures scenes of high adventure and epic battle.
Episode 327 - Flashback heart-attack!
Jun 12, 2017
FLASHbacks… you have to do them right or they will screw up the flow of your story. That's the theme of the newspost by Tantz Aerine that we stole this podcast topic from. :) Flashbacks can be expository, they can explain story elements and plot to you, they can push the narrative forward in a (seemingly) non-linear way, they can do all sorts of things, but one of the very worst is when they ruin the flow of your story and irritate your audience! That's what we're chatting about today, the poorly handled flashback and how to avoid it! Now let me tell you about that time… JUST KIDDING! Our music theme by Gunwallace this week was Galactic Nebula Race. This is all about speed! Racing, acceleration, hyper-velocity!! Watch those lights fly past faster and faster until they become just a single coloured blurred line… only to see your rival speed past as if you were standing still.
Episode 325 - walk the line
May 29, 2017
In this Quackcast we cover the Importance of good linework in comics and different line techniques such as Herge's Ligne claire, the traditional thick line for characters and thin for everything else as exemplified in the work of Mucha, variable line widths as in Manga, solid blacks like in American comics, and complex lines like Durer or Hyena Hell. I really seriously thought I could get an entire Quackcast out of the concept and techniques of linework, but honestly I was struggling… Okay, so linework constitutes the skeleton that most comics are built on, with the notable exception of painted comics, photo comics, 3D and vector comic among others… But for most comics line is a pretty essential element. There are a lot of different techniques involved in the use of lines. Herge popularised “ligne claire”, which means that all lines have the same thickness and that there's no line shading. A popular style that I was taut was to have thick lines around characters and overlapping elements, with thin lines for internals and backgrounds. This is popular in a lot of manga, US comics and famously the work of Alphonse Mucha. Part of my technique on Pinky TA involves making my lines grey, so that when I set the line layer to “multiply”, the lines take on some of the background colours beneath them and don't show up as darkly as traditional black lines. The work of Hyena Hell on the Hub is interesting for her use of very complex internal shading line to build up texture and shapes, this can also be seen in the works of Albrecht Durer. Manga is notable for its extensive use of very stylised shading, crisp lines and the use of variable line widths for outlines, while American comics make heavy use of solid blacks for areas of shadow, basically extending the width of the line as far and as solidly as it can go. How do YOU approach your linework? The music for this week by Gunwallace is for The Wallachian Library. It's a dark, black future sounds, neon glows, pulses of energy and ideas, vectors and virtual circuits.Sorry, no link to this comic, the user deleted it from the site.
