Episode 470 - What stirred your creative juices?
Mar 15, 2020
For this cast I'd thought we'd go through with our promise of last week and talk about things that have made us have a reaction as a creator. This expands on “The Cartoons that Date us” from last week. So today we're talking the creative media that gave you a reaction: Books, movies, comics, TV shows… Not what specifically inspired the comics you do now, but what drove you to create and why.
Topics and Show Notes
When I was young for me it was things like Ed-209 in Robocop, the design of the fighters in Robotech, and the mechanical design in Thundercats. That mecha was so awesome it inspired me to design interesting machines. Lord of the Rings (the books), inspired me to create fantasy art and think about fantasy stories. After watching Tank Girl I stayed up all night drawing a giant image of a tank with Tank Girl inspired women cavorting all over it. Banes talks about being inspired by the band from The Muppets, Tantz talks about the books and stories that inspired her to create alternative endings to them, like Harry Potter.
We'd love to hear about what were the things that stirred up YOUR creative loins back in the day! What were the things that drove you to create and make, write and play music? What was the grit in the oyster shell of your mind that cause you to create a pearl?
The musical feature this week that Gunwallace has given us is another theme to Sex Protectress! This was the original theme he created, he wasn't happy with it but I asked to hear it and loved it. Industrial, synth metal! Fast, burning, heavy, urgent, dark, black, acid, electronic… buzzing. This one seeps up from deep underground pipes, a viscous tarry substance, flaming up as soon as it touches the open air, super-heating and then evaporating.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Chinese Diary - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/mar/10/featured-comic-chinese-diary
Featured music:
Sex Protectress - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Sex_Protectress/, by bmasson33, rated A.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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NEXT WEEK: Fantasy cast!
Episode 461 - Top Comic making 5 tips!
Jan 13, 2020
Today Banes and I chat about our top tips for doing a great comic page: What is most important? I mainly focus on art and Banes is talking about page design and writing tips. Bellow are our top 5s for ways to make better comics! We expand on these and explain them in the Quackcast.
Episode 417 - Can we be better?
Mar 11, 2019
What is Social Marketing? Basically its word-of-mouth and viral marketing smashed together and weaponised: Marketing companies hijack hot-button social issues and hitch their client's brand to them in clever campaigns (“We can be better”, etc). The purpose isn't really to make a brand seem progressive, modern or new, rather it's another way of getting it trending on social media that's guaranteed to work, unlike the legion of hit or miss but mostly failed “Viral” campaigns. Whether people say negative or positive things about this issue is irrelevant to the marketer, as long as people are talking about the brand is all that matters. Free advertising is the goal, but it has a social cost.
Episode 411 - The Right to Copy!
Jan 28, 2019
Copyright is a huge thing! It allows us to make money from our creations and stops other people from stealing them. But culture isn't about a series of billions of totally original ideas invented from nothing- absolutely NOT. Culture grows from ideas that are recycled, reiterated, and reinvented. It's all quite derivative and mixed. So there has to be a balance between respect for rigid copyright and some flexibility to work with existing ideas.
Episode 399 - How many characters is too many?
Nov 4, 2018
How many characters is too many? Ensemble casts can be fun and the interaction between characters can be more interesting than the actual plot of a story! But keeping track of characters from the audience point of view or even from the creator's perspective can be hard when you have a lot. Characters can copy each other and just become bad clones or you can forget what some are meant to be doing and create plot holes, audiences can stop caring about some of them or just become really confused. So how do you keep track? I think breaking them into small groups can be one good way to do it… What are some others?
Episode 383 - Slow burn
Jul 16, 2018
The idea for this Quackcast came from a rant by the irascible PitFace. She was talking about how there's a trend in modern SciFi and horror movies to bash you over the head with constant action and it doesn't allow you time to relax and take in the story, you're just bounced from one relentless scene to the next. In the biggest classics of the genre like Alien, Ghost in the Shell (animated 90's version) or Blade Runner they DO allow the viewer slow moments of reflection and it helps to make the action feel more intense by contrast as well as allowing the viewer time to assimilate and understand all the ideas and themes they've been presented with so far.
Episode 345 - Horror no horror
Oct 23, 2017
Does a horror film without the horror still make sense? If it does then it's probably a really good film… that's what we're talking about in this Halloween themed month! The idea was based on a recent newspost by Banes. We also tapped the massive resource that is Banes for our cover image, which comes from a horror short by Bane's film director brother. Check it out, the link is down bellow. That film, Little Matthew, is a good example of the topic… I won't spoil it, but the scenario and the setup of the film could work just as well without the horror part. The characters are believable and you want to know more about them, this helps you start to care about them, which makes the advent of the horror scenes more effective. In the Quackcast we chat about that, examples that fit the model and possible exceptions. This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to Pulse Comics. It's Creepy, creepy pulsing electronica, like the burrring, burning and zapping sounds of industrial lasers and mechanical robot arms moving in precise, regular rhythm with delicate movements in a vast, echoing fully automated factory of the future.
Episode 321 - Cafecast
May 1, 2017
We titled this one “Cafecast” on the suggestion of Pitface! Instead of chatting about a subject, we took ourselves off to a metaphorical cafe and all started drawing, working on sketches, our latest comic pages, and chatting as we did. We're all comic artists after all and we talk about doing comic all the time, it's only fair that we actually WORK on them from time to time! Gotta “walk the walk”, not just “talk the talk”. We were also inspired by the video Pitface made of herself drawing her latest page of Putrid Meat for the 10th anniversary (vid linked in the notes). Watch it while you listen to this! So this is just a nice, informal chat from us as we draw. Next week we'll get back to more structured stuff when banes and I talk about how to do comedy and how to make comedic characters in comics. The music for this week by Gunwallace is for Half Hearted Headache. The theme fits very well with the comic title! It brings to mind a desolate wasteland in a post apocalyptic techno future, haunted by cyborgs and the hulks of burnt out military battle robots… Which is not what the comic is about but that’s what it paints for me: Jean Michel Jarre, meets knight Rider!
