Episode Quackcast 367 - reply notifications And titles!
Mar 26, 2018
In this Quackcast we discuss a couple of things. First we chat about the prototype comment reply notification system that Alexey our programmer has just now come up with and people like Albino Ginger helped to pay for! And we talk about ways to make it more user-friendly, like having the first line of a comment show up on the comment notification pages… We'd LOVE more feedback on that! So please consider testing out the system and giving us your take on it. Then we chatted about the art of the TITLE! Why do things have the titles they do? What are some good or bad titles? Why did you choose YOUR title? Star Wars is an example of a good title for a movie: it told people exactly what to expect in a time when there weren't many other films like it, this is why it was never called “A New Hope” or “Episode 4” the way we mistakenly call it today, because no one in 1977 would have gone to see it ;) Happy birthday!!!!!!! Mr Banes! Banes Had his birthday DURING the Quackcast! Woot! Please show some love for this amazing guy ^_^ This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Holy Bible the Albino Ginger Version: Wonder into the giant cathedral of our lord, the revered and sacred Albino Ginger, watch the dust motes dance in the multicoloured sunbeams, tinted into rainbow shades by stained glass windows depicting the mighty feats of the Albino Ginger god as he was creating our world… This is techno trance church music for a new age!
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Demon Plague - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/mar/20/featured-comic-demon-plague/
Links:
Titles newspost - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/mar/14/say-my-name-titles/
Comment reply notifications newspost - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/mar/23/test-the-comment-notifications-today/
PLEASE TEST OUR COMMENT REPLY SYSTEM! - http://next.theduckwebcomics.com/user/replies
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
PitFace - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Ozoneocean - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Featured music:
Holy Bible the Albino Ginger Version - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Holy_Bible_the_Albino_Ginger_version/, by Albino Ginger, rated M.
Episode 352 - Help make DD better! Comment notifications! More play
Dec 11, 2017
n this Quackcast we cover a few different things! FIRST up is our latest campaign to give YOU comment and reply notifications so that you can see who has commented on your comic pages easily, you can respond to them right away, then they'll KNOW you replied and they can respond back and so on. But before we can do that we need to raise money via Indiegogo to pay for it. YOU will be helping to pay for a feature that you want. That's how the site works these days, it's our site: yours and mine. In the next part of the Quackcast we have a series of short plays that we act out. They're based on comics here at DD. We start out with custom scripts written by Tantz Aerine for Without Moonlight and Brave Resistance. And then we have a go interpreting comic pages of The Epic of Blitzov, Bottomless Waitress, Typical Strange, and Pinky TA. Which brings us to our next thing: One of the perks you can pay for to help us out with our campaign will be a custom script based on your comic. WE will write it and act it out. YOU don't have to do anything but donate. Finally we have a note from KAM that we read out, informing us of the experience of adapting his comic into a script structure and we talk about that ourselves. If you'd like to write a script for us to act out on the Quackcast, just PQ me and I'll tell you where to send it. :) This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to Bram and Vlad: Welcome to the mysterious, echoing notes of a celestial funhouse. Then settle down to a demonic, yet friendly game of cards accompanied by a jaunty, yet cheeky tune on the piano!
Episode 349 - Bad Gods
Nov 20, 2017
This is the Quackcast where I get things wrong! Haha, I DO love to imagine that I know everything but fortunately Tantz and Pit are there to correct me! For this Quackcast I was thinking about the way we assign villains when there's a religious theme or anything influenced by mythology really. You know the way Hel in Thor Ragnarok and Hades in the Disney movie Hercules are cast as villains just because they're in charge of death, even though in the mythology they're not supposed to be bad guys at all. Perhaps it's our modern Christian influenced culture that makes us wrongly associate death with the bad guys…? Our topic meanders a little but it's mainly about how our interpretation of mythology and legend in modern pop-culture is influenced by our modern ways of thinking, which causes things to be quite drastically changed. This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to Puppets and strings - a sepulchral, hollow, sombre theme, yet also grand and portentous! Stirring, melancholic, epic.
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.
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 341 - Objectification and porn
Sep 25, 2017
In this Quackcast we chat about how objectification can rob the humanity from a character and turn them into a meaningless object which can in turn alienate your audience by making your work less relatable, but with things like porn where character is less important than the on screen action objectification is more acceptable. We chat about the development of porn and why it became so objectified, from the early beginnings where story, setting and character were always a factor, till the days of home video and the internet and how that changed the balance due to various factors, and the way higher production values, better acting and story is actually making its way back in some instances. We also chat a bit about the differences between porn aimed at women and that aimed at men. “Sexposition” in mainstream entertainment like Game of thrones is possibly an interesting outgrowth of the acceptability of pornography and the idea of mixing story and onscreen (simulated) sexuality. The theme Gunwallace has given us this week was for Tomb Busters! It's compelling, regal, atmospheric, steel guitar country rock, this is a triumphant epic that will swallow you whole and leave you gasping for air. This is my new fave!
Episode 339 - Communicate With Clothes
Sep 11, 2017
Tantz Aerine did a great newspost the other day about how the clothing of comic characters can be used to communicate information and emotions just as much as any other element in your comic making arsenal. And that's what we discuss in this Quackcast! Clothing can communicate state of mind, occupation, status, personality, era, class and a host of other things. Have a listen to our Quackcast to learn more! Gunwallace's theme this week was for RUNRUN - a symphony of urgent electronica. This track wants to get you moving in a linear fashion, faster and faster, rhythmic and regular like the pace of a runner. Run into a bright, white high tech future with RUNRUN!
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!
