Episode 534 - Biting off more than you can chew
Jun 7, 2021
Taking on more than you can handle - i.e. James Cameron and JJ Abrams are good directors and writers but neither could handle the demands of a complex Sci-Fi project that needs full world building and internally consistent logic etc (Avatar and Star Wars). They're great with more simple SciFi that's based on 21st century earth and simpler stories, but epic SciFi was clearly a long way beyond the capabilities of either. We're talking about when WE have been caught taking on stuff we couldn't handle, how we dealt with that and also how other creators dealt with it too.
Topics and Show Notes
It's very easy to get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task that you take on, whether the story style is too much for you, you can't get a good ending, the research is too much, the artwork is too hard, the schedule is too demanding etc. We've all been caught in some way or other, usually multiple ways! One strategy is to break stuff down into more manageable chunks, but sometimes that's just too hard anyway. It can be worth it to battle on because it forces you out of your comfort zone and makes you learn new lessons and techniques. Sometimes you can still produce something great even if you didn't reach what you were originally aiming for. And sometimes it actually makes more sense to quit because you find yourself wasting too much time and energy on it when you could be spending that more profitably elsewhere. There are no single right answers here.
The cover image is emblematic: an antimissle installation developed for billions by the US, which was abaondoned soon after. They bit off more than they could chew... Not only with the idea of hunting and killing balistic missles before they hit the US coast, but pursuing a concept that would have fundamentally unbalanced the M.A.D. docterine of the late cold war: If one side can defeat the other's missles then it becomes practical for them to strike first which makes nuclear war far more likley, which means that the other side becomes more desperate... fortunately the idiocy of this path was abaondoned before it led to further escalation.
(Image: By Pitface, abandoned antimissle site in ND)
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to COSMIC SAFARI: A trip through the wilderness of the vast galaxy, along beautifully coloured nebula filaments, past the rings encircling gas giants, and through the tails of comets! This is Jean-Michele Jarre meets a small remote controlled car!
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
COSMIC SAFARI - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jun/01/featured-comic-cosmic-safari
Featured Music:
COSMIC SAFARI - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/COSMIC_SAFARI/ - by Frenemy, rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
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Episode 509 - Saltcast
Dec 13, 2020
Escapist fiction Vs Gritty and real style fiction… Furwerk-Studio made an interesting post about this subject. They were annoyed at people who dismiss escapism as something lessor or inferior to more gritty and realistic work, so we decided to tackle both sides and take some extreme views on the subject, both for and against! A few years ago Simon Peg made some comments related to this very subject and got a bit of backlash (links in the notes). The idea is that escapist stuff keeps us infantile and malleable… It's actually a really old idea anything that isn't realistic is childish and bad for you while things that are heavier and more adult in tone (whether escapist or not), are far more worthy.
Episode 503 - Changing attitudes
Nov 1, 2020
An old man tries to explain modern culture to an even older man… Attitudes change! Things don't stay the same, culture moves on and when we try to hang onto old ideas we can look like idiots, and even worse than that we can hold up cultural progress and hurt people. That's what we're trying to talk about…
Episode 500 - Celebration!
Oct 12, 2020
Finally we got to the five hundredth Quackcast! Wow! That's so many. We've been doing these for 10 years now. That's a long running podcast! To celebrate we invited our DD members aboard. We had a great fun time, lots of laughs and a really good chat. We even had time to introduce special cotributions from the people who couldn't be live with us. I'm making our exclusive patreon video of this week's cast free for all to view! Just click on the youtube link bellow.
Episode 491 - Getting retro right!
Aug 10, 2020
DD member Furwerk Studios posted in our forum about how annoying it was that movies try and do an 80s retro thing often get things totally wrong and end up looking dumb because of it: Not just superficial looks-wise but stylistically too in terms of the kinds of shots they do, lighting and story structure. I thought that'd make an interesting topic for a cast! Why do people often mess up retro stuff? We're not talking about historical accuracy here, that's slightly different, what we're talking about is setting something in an era and getting the “feel” of that era right. It pays off hugely when it works, but when it doesn't it comes off as superficial, disappointing and ignorant.
Episode 464 - The current digital art landscape
Feb 2, 2020
I recently had to upgrade my main computer because Windows isn't supporting Windows 7 any longer and I don't want to install Windows 10 on the perfectly functioning old one in case it ruins it and my main programs can't run any longer… SO I had to get a new PC. This got me thinking though: The barrier to getting into digital art is lower now than ever!
Episode 462 - Jessica Schab, Studio animation, Guru, sceptic, leader
Jan 20, 2020
Today we have a special guest! Jessica Schab. Jessica works for Mainframe entertainment in Canada, one of THE premier digital animation companies! Before things like Pixar they were THE CGI animation people! Behind the Video for Dire Straights' Money for Nothing video back in the 80s, Transformers Beastwars, Octonaughts, Babrie, and my personal fave: Reboot!
Episode 460 - Enough trope to hang yourself with
Jan 5, 2020
Happy 2020 all you lovely people who listen to us! What we're talking about today are tropes in fiction that bother us because they don't exist in reality: they ONLY exist in fiction pretty much. In the cover pic we have an image from The Witcher: he has two big longswords on his back. In fantasy people always carry longswords on their backs. This is a trope that only exists in fiction because you can't draw a sword longer than about 60cm from your back. So people just didn't carry swords like this. Even if it was only to transport them (although ta transport only option makes a sort of sense). This was only even rarely done with Asian swords. We'd LOVE to hear about more of these that other people have noticed!
