Episode 371 - PC GORN MAD!!
Apr 23, 2018
Everyone tends to have a strong opinion on Political Correctness so I thought why don't we try and have a chat about that and ask what people think. Can it be a problem in comics and other creative works? I was inspired by a video by Youtuber Metaron. He was talking about the decision to put a black actor in the role of Greek mythical figure Achilles in a BBC series about the fall of Troy and questioning the reasoning for it given that being a blonde haired incarnation of the sun-god Apollo is a huge part of the character. My main issue is that the actor is as bald as an egg! At least give him a blonde wig, I don't care how silly it looks. To be fair Achilles has rarely been portrayed well on the big screen, there was Brad Pitt's petulant version in Troy and an even balder Joe Montana in Helen of Troy! Do we spoil creative works by trying to be too inclusive or not being inclusive enough? This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Wanted dead or dead: Welcome to a much cooler version of the old west… we open on a widescreen panorama shot of a dry, dusty desert scene and a lone cowboy all in black, kicking his toe in the dirt. This music is as warm as the hot desert breeze, the guitar is as hard as gunmetal.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Empress Mother Earth's Handmaiden - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/apr/17/featured-comic-empress-mother-earths-handmaiden/
The things that inspired the cast:
Metatron's video on the subject of Black Achilles - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZH35n7SxW8&t=0s
Troy: Fall of a City - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5103758/
Helen of Troy - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340477/
Troy - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332452/
PLEASE TEST OUR COMMENT REPLY SYSTEM!
Comment reply notifications newspost - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/mar/23/test-the-comment-notifications-today/
Reply Notifications - http://next.theduckwebcomics.com/user/replies
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Emma Clare - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Emma_Clare/
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:
Wanted dead or dead - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Wanted_Dead_or_dead/, by MayelV, rated T.
Episode 362 - Triumph der Ente
Feb 19, 2018
In this Quackcast we chat about all the different options for hosting your webcomic. At the moment it seems the fashionable new young kiddies on the block are Webtoons and Tapastic, but they're certainly NOT the only choices for webcomic hosts out there and certainly not the best choices. I think we make a good case here for why Drunk Duck is a better choice in many ways, but we also bring up other host sites like twitter, comic fury, comic Genesis (used to be Keenspace), Tumblr, Deviant Art, Smack Jeeves, Fur Affinity, self hosting on a Word Press site etc. In the early days of the millennium there were just two hosts for your comic: Drunk Duck and Keenspace. Drunk Duck was a better choice for most since it was a lot easier to customise and it had a friendlier, smaller community. Keenspace had a two tier system: the picked comics with all the best stuff were in their “keenspot” site while the rabble were stuck with the slower hosting and slower updates. The main thing they had going was a gigantic member base. But they even changed the site's name from “keenspace” to “comic genesis” to further separate KeenSpot from the rabble, which left a sour taste in the mouth. By contrast Drunk Duck was always dedicated to being fully egalitarian. One of our main strengths is that we accept all without stigma: manga, furry, adult comic, sprites, American style, superhero, slice of life comedy, photocomics, professional published comics or stick figure amateur work and we welcome them all the same with the same level of enthusiasm. The big young Webtoons and Tapastic have some of the same issues Keenspace used to have: a big community where you will be lost in the crowd. And no site has as solid and safe programming and hosting as Drunk Duck does. Plus we're community run so you're same from corporate oversight and interference in the content you're allowed to post. You can read more about comic hosting sites in Emma Clare's news posts linked bellow. This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Odd Days. Sometimes you just have one of those days… or many of them in a row! Odd days. The sound here has a positive, optimistic theme overlayed with a harsh zigzag of electric guitar. This tune does well to illustrate the twisted euni, the off-balance and askew takes on everyday life and situations dealt with in this slice of life, humorous comic.
Episode 334 - body technique!
Aug 7, 2017
Let's get physical! let me hear your body technique! As a follow up to my newspost on Friday about figure drawing, we all got together to do a Quackcast about it, along with contributions in the form of comments from DDers on my newspost. Figure drawing is hard, it takes a lot of practise, but there are a lot of approaches you can take to improve like wire frame drawing, gestural sketches, geometric shapes, drawing shapes and silhouettes, using mirrors, photos, and copying what others have done to try and understand and improve your technique. We add our own insights and use silly accents to read out the contributions :) Gunwallace's theme for the week was for Cerintha: Classical, careful, creepy, The clarinet plods along methodically while the violin skips, leaps and dances, pure piano tones ring out like tinkling bells, sparkling with light and joy.
Episode 280 - Ruts and Dreams
Jul 18, 2016
For THIS particular DD Quackcast we were inspired by clever and incisive newsposts made by Pitface and Kawaii. Kawaii made a great post about the idea of going for your dreams before it's too late, using the Paradise Falls trip from the movie UP as an analogy: the poor old guy and his wife never got to go there together because real life kept on getting in the way, eating into their savings… Sometimes you just have to let things slide a little and take a risk or you never will reach that dream. Pit's post was about always moving forward, and again; not just getting stuck in the rut of routine and the mundane. You don't just want to march forward onto the grey twilight of your life having been stuck doing and knowing the same things. Don't waste your free time solely on entertainments, arguments, and diversions, rather you should take time to work on something- to work TOWARDS something every day… and maybe that will help you achieve your dream? It could be as simple as working on a webcomic, each page brings you closer to the end of the story and producing something you can be proud of and maybe even marketable! little bits of exercise every day will help you work towards that figure you want… Studying or reading on your favourite subject will eventually make you a master of it, and then maybe you can even write your own book on it? Don't just consume for diversion, consume with the intent to create and advance yourself! Use your time wisely. Gunwallace's theme for Mailbox Rocketship is quirky, techno, funny and futuristic! It also features some familiar voices!
Episode 210 - DD Fashion Show!
Mar 16, 2015
Have you heard the word about the DD Fashion Show Free For All that's currently going on? No? Well now's your chance, so listen up good! Banes and Ozoneocean interview VinoMas aka Travis Michael Moore about the great community project he's running. Here's the low down: You go to the Fashion Forum in the links here (http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/13117/), desing an outfit for one of the figures there and post it in the catwalk thread for all to see and admire! You can put the outfit on your own figure and offer your own figure up for use as a model too if you like. Join in the fun, it's super easy. As long as you're a member of the forum and know how to host pics on photobucket.com or some other image sharing service you're all set! NOW GO TO IT!!
Episode 205 - What about bodyshape?
Feb 9, 2015
This week Banes and I were inspired to talk about body shape in the depiction of figures in comics, inspired by some famous images from photographer Howard Schatz's 2002 book, Athlete. In it there are photos of many athletes who're at the peak of their sports and yet their bodyshapes are vastly different, subverting the idea of an "ideal" bodyshape or what it means to be a top athlete or even fit. too often bodyshapes in comics follow a very narrow range, not getting much past what we think of as the current popculture ideal. We all know that idealised model shape is a problem and yet we all still perpetuate it, most of the time you can only tell most "realistic" characters apart by their hairstyle or costume, especially in superhero comics. And that invents a second problem: the myth of the "normal" shaped body as opposed to the ideal- there IS no such thing as normal, and even the ideal is always changing throughout the ages. There's even a lot more to body shape than the famous categories: Mesomorph, Ectomorph, and Endomorph, or Skinny, Pear, Athletic, Hourglass and Apple. We also have a beif mention of how stylised characters (Sponge Bob, Calvin and Hobbes etc) are exaggerations of these shapes and differences.
Episode 144 - Bold New Experiment with the Top Ten!
Dec 2, 2013
For this Quackcast it's just Ozone aaaaaand HippieVan! We're discussing various things, the most important of which is the Top Ten rating system for the front page of DD. It has been frozen solid since the site stopped tracking stats about TWO years ago. Hopefully we'll restart hat when we figure out how to code it up, but for now HippieVan and Irreverent came up with a good idea: The Top Ten comics will be based on how many "likes" they have. This will be calculated every week by HippieVan. So now comics have the ability to get into the top ten if they can get enough "Likes", so start campaigning people and you'll have a spot on the front page! Unfortunately we're not including Adult rated comics in that list because those can't be seen by people who aren't signed into the site so would just look like blank boxes on the front page. Never fear though, Adult comics are still ranked proudly on the comic search page in their true like order.
Episode 139 - Telling Gender From Comic Styles
Oct 28, 2013
For Quackcast 139 Banes and I were joined by Kawaiidaigakusei, who had an amazingly interesting subject to talk about: “Telling Someone's Sex By the Way They Draw". Kawaiidaigakusei says:This has been a subject matter that is of great interest to me since college, and I am sure a lot of people who draw webcomics can relate. The early periods of Western Art have been mostly dominated by men. Female artists were rare during the Baroque Period with the exception of a key figure, Artemisia Gentileschi, whose dark interpretation of Judith Beheading Holofernes can be read with psychoanalytic overtones of a woman asserting her dominance over a man by decapitation. The twentieth century welcomed an influx of women artists during the Feminist art movement that began in the late 1960s. In the present day, with the introduction of webcomics and the Internet, women and men now have a level playing field to showcase their art to the public. Now the question remains–Is it possible to tell a person's sex by the way they draw?
