Episode 617 - Adventuring we go!
Jan 8, 2023
Adventure is a fun genre! Not as many things get made for it these days but it used to be hugely popular in the past. It's one of my favourite genres and this is what we're chatting about for the Quackcast. What IS adventure? I think it usually involves a whole lot of different things like exploration, action, discovery, heroic protagonists, rivals, travel, exotic places, fights etc. It can be set in the past or in the modern day. Good examples are The Mummy, Indiana Jones, the original Tomb Raider, the two new Jumanji films, Strange World, Pirates of the Caribbean, Ducktales, Tailspin, Jungle Cruise, Uncharted and so much more. I'd love to know your faves!
Topics and Show Notes
Adventure stories have a basis in reality, real life explorers like Sir Richard Francis Burton, Marco Polo, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. And from this background there's a negative connotation in the adventure story DNA: because it comes from a world of colonialism and imperialism. Adventure often involves an emissary from the known world in the west going off to the unknown world in the east, Africa, or South America to see exotic places and discover new things, which of course are not exotic or new to the locals that actually live there!
But even so I think it has a valid rationale because these things were largely unknown and exotic to the wider community in the west and this was the way they found out about them. Adventure stories also work perfectly well from other perspectives- the adventurer can originate in Africa, China, Polynesia and wherever else and they can be exploring Europe or any other part of the world and it works just as well.
No theme from Gunwallace this week because of the holidays, so more best-offs! These are the two themes Gunwallace made for Bottomless Waitress from Quackcasts 423 and 490 -
- Theme number one is such a happy sounding, Southern, joyful track, filled with banjo and layers of guitar, twanging away… bringing notes of sunshine, natural wood, the light glinting softly through tree leaves and making dappled shadows on the ground… Perfect for an advertising jingle!
- Theme number two: Revenge of the banjo! We start off with a tractor roaring into life and a banjo opening us up to the sounds of rural Midwest America- wide open corn fields, golden wheat, grain silos, quiet back-roads, haystacks, big red barns, and a kinky little diner where the coffee is bottomless and so are the staff!
Topics and shownotes
Adventure thread - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179254/
Featured comic:
Arkin Blade - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/03/featured-comic-arkin-blade/
Featured music:
Bottomless Waitress - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Bottomless_Waitress/ - by Ozoneocean and Banes, rated M.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
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Episode 612 - Comfort food for the brain
Dec 5, 2022
There are times when you need to give your brain a bit of a break, that's when comfort shows come in handy! Movies and TV shows you can watch again and again- you can appreciate them every time and they don't get old. The tension never gets too much for you because you already know what's going to happen. You can just relax and enjoy the familiar story, revelling in the company of characters you know and visiting their world once more. They're great for creating to as well because you don't have to worry about missing anything important.
Episode 610 - Beauty!
Nov 21, 2022
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, so the saying goes but it's absolutely true. There is a layered subjectivity to it based on personal preference, the cultural standards of your community, the ethnic traits of you and your peers, prevailing global fashions in appearance, the dominant archetypes in the media and so on. All these things combine to form our personal subjective ideas of beauty. You can see this yourself if you look at paintings, statues, masks, frescoes and other artifacts that have been produced by all the diverse cultures on earth over thousands of years: there IS no standard, eternal, objective of beauty.
Episode 602 - It's my turn now bitches!
Sep 26, 2022
What happens when the victim becomes the victor? Most of the time it's like the classic line from The Who “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss”, typically revolutions (and elections), that promise change don't really deliver, the new people use it as a chance to get revenge on their enemies, take advantage of things the same as the last guys, and do everything they can to cling to power. The true exceptions are rare and special, i.e. Vaclav Havel and the Velvet revolution.
Episode 596 - Leadership!
Aug 15, 2022
Leaders are not born, they're created… literally in the case of fiction, created by creators of comics, books, movies, and other media! For this Quackcast I was inspired by two things: a video on Leader Characters by the satirical YouTube channel Terrible Writing Advice, and the Disney movie Lightyear, in which the lone wolf classical hero figure learns how to lead.
Episode 593 - Risky Business
Jul 25, 2022
The risks of online creative success We live in a wonderful time where you're able to turn your creative passion into a job that can support you just by using freely available online services like YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, Patreon, Ebay, Paypal, Etsy, Webtoons etc. You can start with nothing more than your computer or phone and end up with a thriving business based on your passion project. It's not easy, achieving enough success where you can quit your day job still tends to take a lot of work, but once you get there it can be amazing. However, that's not the end of the story unfortunately.
Episode 585 - Adaptation
May 30, 2022
Adaptations of one thing into another is an interesting process. What's lost, what's gained, what modifications do you have to do to make it happen? As webcomicers we do it all the time in many ways, we have to adapt our influences into ideas, adapt those to stories, and adapt those to images and comics, which isn't trivial! It's often quite difficult to transform the written word into narrative sequential art- what portion of the writing gets directly turned into images, what's cut, and what becomes dialogue? For me about 20% is cut, 78% becomes art and 2% becomes dialogue or captions.
Episode 576 - Retro Adventure heroes
Mar 28, 2022
Retro adventure heroes are an interesting and unique sort of hero. The trope was revived and crystallised by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg with Indiana Jones, but it had existed long before then and continues to persist now in many forms. They're not without their problems But I like these characters. I love their outfits, their competency, intelligence, self sufficiency, and their penchant for exploration and discovery.
