Episode 312 - happy little trees
Feb 27, 2017
In THIS particular Quackcast it's just Banes and I chatting about tips and tricks for artwork. Hopefully some of the stuff we mention is helpful to someone, I tried to illustrate some of that in the cover pic. Banes drew the image of Penny crashing through a scene which I've coloured and added trees, oceans, mountains, clouds, fire, smoke etc all with the use of simple custom brushes. The shading was all done just by painting grey over a layer set to “multiply”, which makes all light colours transparent and darker colours less so, so that you get a perfect tool for making shadows! Anyway, listen to the cast and maybe you'll get something out of it! The music that Mr Gunwallace has for us this week is for Mr Valdemar and other gothic tales - The tinkling crystal notes of a piano are paired with the dark woodiness of a mournful cello and touches of strings to give us this haunting gothic soundscape.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
The world outside of time - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/feb/21/featured-comic-the-world-outside-of-time/
Banes recommends:
Draw with Jazza - https://www.youtube.com/user/DrawWithJazza
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Featured music:
Mr Valdemar and other gothic tales - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Mr_Valdemar_and_other_gothic_tales, by jlbpina, rated E.
Episode 310 - Where to begin
Feb 13, 2017
Where to start; in the past, present, or future? Will you structure your story in a linear way or do something more complex? This was the topic of Hyena Hell's newspost on Friday and in this Quackcast Pitface, Banes, Tantz, and I discuss and mull over the ideas ourselves, along with the responses of the clever commenters. Gunwallace has given us a theme to The Archer and the Squirrel, which just so happens to ALSO be our featured comic! - The theme launches abruptly, like an arrow springing from a bow, this tune follows a beautiful arching path against a bright blue sky of melodic, rhythmic flute that begs you to dance a jig with a great big grin on your face!
Episode 309 - boring action scenes
Feb 6, 2017
What makes an action scene boring? Action scenes should be exciting and fun, but often it's just the opposite! In this Quackcast we discuss the topic of Tantz's newspost from the other day and tackle this hard question. These were Tantz's conclusions: - You don’t yet care enough for the characters involved in the action to worry about them; - If the action is introductory you don't get to understand what's happening enough to care; - The action is badly choreographed or ‘cut’ in a way that the audience can’t understand what is going on; - The action is too much too soon, and back to back; In this Quackcast we try to delve a little more into that :) The featured music this week by Gunwallace was for Starfox Adventures The Comic: Firing the main rockets and racing through space, laser pulses and bolts of plasma streak past in glowing lines of destruction as you smoothly barrel roll to avoid them.
Episode 304 - eeeeeevil!
Jan 2, 2017
What defines evil in fiction? I say the simplest one is bad guys are selfish, good guys are selfless. That is massively over simplistic but it's a good easy template for basic hero's and villains. Basic ones I was just doing a quick thought experiment to work out an easy way to define “good” and “evil” characters in fiction. The more selfless someone is the more “good” they are: the more they think of others, want to help people, put the needs of the masses first, the more willing they are to reach across to their enemies etc. The more selfish a person is the more “evil” they are: if they don't consider the needs or feelings of others, help out their own small group and let others suffer, help themselves first. Of course there are many other more advanced aspects, especially if you consider the relative nature of these things: the idea that everyone thinks they're the good guy from their own perspective, being cruel to be kind, being too authoritarian and heavy handed in the use of power, NOT using power when you should, helping in a way that only SEEMS destructive and selfish, trying to help but causing destruction and chaos in the process, which brings us to the dreaded “unintended consequences”. BUT, the selfless/selfish equation is a nice simple starting point to build from. In the Quackcast we discuss these aspects as well as more advanced notions about what makes a good evil character, what makes a bad one, humanising evil, and weakening you evil character by humanising them too much. Gunwallace's musical theme was for The Cull: Dark, haunting, and compelling- Eastern European Jewish, country and rock, reminds me of Tracy Bonham’s later work.
Episode 302 - the agendacast
Dec 19, 2016
Today we talk about works of pop-culture that have an obvious political agenda, so obvious that t not only gets in the way of the entertainment but also dictates to the audience without letting them have a chance to come to their own conclusions: forcing you to see things only one way. Even when we agree with the agenda being presented it can still strike a sour chord, often more-so since they're preaching to the choir and usually just throwing a badly simplified version of the philosophy at you, which can feel insulting. So that's what we chat about. Those views can come from ANY political persuasion, the right the left, communism, fascism, socialism, libertarianism whatever. No one has a monopoly on ideologues. We became overtly political towards the end… Sorry for that. HAHAHA. Do we practise what we preach? HELLS NO! I have to apologise again for the terrible sound quality of my voice recording. I thought I'd fixed the settings from last week, but I was wrong. I HAVE now though. Gunwallace's musical theme was for Grunk - cocktail bar samba played on a church organ. The music of heaven! Cheesy heaven. You can imagine fat angels in hawaiian shirts swanning about drunkenly and spilling their margaritas.
Episode 295 - Sexcast, sex in non adult comics
Oct 10, 2016
This is the Awkardcast! Another take on the sexcast idea but this time we're looking at sex and sexual situations in strictly NON-adult comics. Sex performs a very different role in non-adult comics… You have a much wider audience with comics at the rating, but there are things you can not show, so of course you use sex for other reasons than the way you do in an adult rated comic. In an adult comic you can show all details of the entire act, all the genitalia in all their glistening, gory, gooey, hairy splendour, going in and out and around here and there and all over the place! Oh my! In Mature comics and bellow though, you simply can't, though you CAN have some non-sexual full frontal nudity in Mature comics and you can show bottoms in Teen rated comics. The ratings are similar to what you have with film ratings. In adult comics, like adult film, sex acts are more of the focus, they can still have a story but the sex acts are supposed to be enjoyed in their own right. In non-adult comics the sex has other purposes- subtle titillation is a part of it, comedy, teasing the viewer, furthering the plot, a culmination of a relationship or the establishment of one, etc- there's generally always another purpose to it, unlike adult comics where there sometimes is but doesn't need to be. And unlike adult film there's not much purpose to softcore non-adult rated porn in comics. That type of censored porn is done in film in order to get a wider audience on media that will otherwise not show porn, but on the net porn it's super easy to come by so there's not much reason to do softcore. There are a lot of challenges entailed in depicting non-adult rated porn! Certain positions don't work in well with the limits on nudity (we talk about this in the cast), but there are tricks you can use; symbolism (popping champagne corks, trains going into tunnels etc), strategic positioning of sheets, clever camera angles, fading out before the act and fading in again after, characters with mussed hair and uneven clothing, using dialogue to refer to what they just did, “off-screen” shenanigans, or shenanigans in the dark etc, it can be a lot of fun! Have a listen to how Tantz, I and Banes tackle the idea. The music by Gunwallace for his week was Firefly cross! A very mystical sound, with traditional, middle eastern style music mixed with dark techno fuzz, this one is intriguing!
Episode 293 - THE BURBS DVD commentary
Oct 5, 2016
In this happy season of October we come to that time of year again when Banes starts to get excited by Halloween! This year his idea was for us all to do a real time DVD commentary for The Burbs, that great comedy horror film staring the famous Tom Hanks, from back in 1989 when he was still a hilarious leading man and not a super serious drama guy. We all LOVE this movie, it's very funny, with a lot of cool twists and great scenes. Along with Tom Hanks it stars Princess Leia AKA Carrie Fischer, dudeman Corey Feldman, and Bruce Dern being Dale Gribble before Dale Gribble was even a thing! Pitface, Tantz, Banes and I all talk along to and over the movie as it's playing. To enjoy the FULL effect I strongly suggest you find a copy of The Burbs on a legal streaming site, or less than legal one depending on your ethics, or maybe even a DVD or old video! Pop it on and spoil the movie by listening to us all blather away together, it'll be just like watching the movie WITH us! And wouldn't you like that? I'm sure you would, we're all very friendly people. ;) Our feature AND the music by Gunwallace this week is for the same comic, “Useless”. The theme is atmospheric and haunting, lightened with the strains of a singing, melodic electric guitar.
Episode 289 - Managing your personal brand
Sep 19, 2016
This time we're talking about the weird notion of managing your online brand: what name do you publish your creative works under and how do you go about curating that? It's an idea I had after a great artist friend of mine known as Hyena Hell lost her online presence on Facebook, the main venue for publishing her artistic projects. Both her her private and public creative lives had been merged into the persona that is known as “Hyena Hell” because the act of creation was very personal to her, it was her brand as well as herself. But after a nasty little scum sucking piece of excrement loser arsehole rectum faced coprophagiac reported her name she lost her right to have that as her personal account. Rather than challenge it or compromise she retired her creative persona from Facebook, and it was a shame because we lost a vibrant artistic, thoughtful presence from there. But many of us also have an online brand/persona/nom-de-plume of some sort that our work is collected under and that's the topic of discussion! Gunwallace's theme this week is for Urthe, featuring lashing cymbals and electric guitar that blasts out like a deadly raygun! This is hard rockin’ goodness!
