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.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and Show Notes:
Featured comic:
Onward - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Onward/
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Links:
Some of the athlete photos here - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2502477/Can-guess-sport-shape-Olympians-body.html
/>and here - http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/howard-schatz-beverly-ornstein-athlete
/>(The images, taken by photographer Howard Schatz for his 2002 book, Athlete)
Bodyshape pics taken from here - http://bonytobombshell.com/the-scientific-reasons-why-some-women-are-naturally-skinny/
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Typical DC superheros - http://s3.media.squarespace.com/production/465215/5366925/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/dc.jpg
/>Typical Marvel superheroes - http://media.comicbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Marvel-Comics-Characters-Wallpaper-5120x3200-1024x640-e1388356472329.jpg
/>
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace, guitar shaped musician - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
/>Banes, mesomorphic muscleman - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
/>kawaiidaigakusei, hourglass shaped featurer - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
/>
The theme song by Gunwallace this week was for:
YOUR CHOICE - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/YOUR_CHOICE/ - by VinoMas
Episode 204 - Talisman returns from exile
Feb 2, 2015
Way back in 2012 Ozone interviewed the marvellously talented and professional Barb Myers about her art and her fantastic comics. Well it's 2015 now and Barb has finally been able to put out the whole of her comic "Talisman: Return of the Exile" for sale on Amazon! So of course now was the perfect time to catch up for another chat. I first came across her lovely comic on Drunk Duck years and years ago when it was called "Return to Donelly", it was a beautiful looking piece of work and it rightly brought her to the attention of the pros. It was picked up for Keen spot and then a publisher wanted to sell it in bookshops everywhere. Well things went screwy after that and it never really reached its full potential unfortunately. It disappeared from radar totally. Well now it's BACK! You can buy this great 108 full colour fantasy comic book story for only $10 US dollars. Mine should get to me on about the 10th of February. ^_^
Episode 203 - The clothescast
Jan 26, 2015
Clothes maketh the man! If that man is a scarecrow... This Quackcast is about drawing clothing. Two esteemed gents from the Drunk Duck repertoire of experts offer their advice on methods for drawing bodies sheathed in garments. Bravo1102 and Ironscarf are two very worldly and experienced men, as they lounged deep in the dark wood panelled cosy confines of the DD private members club, they discussed the tricky subject of convincingly rendering character costumes. Ironscarf traced circles in the air with his custom made talbot pipe, illustrating his descriptions in smoke. Bravo, a fat cigar in one hand, brandy tumbler in the other, chortled into his voluminous beard as he offered counterpoints. It was a lively chat, but for the purposes of this Quackcast Banes and Ozoneocean have re-voiced their parts to protect their privacy: As you're no doubt overly aware, both men are the targets of numerous legions of female stalkers.
Episode 202 - The Lady is a Stranger
Jan 19, 2015
Howdy Pardner, is you ready fer a western adventure? For Quackcast 202 we decided to build on the experiment we started in Quackcast 201. We constructed a play quickly with four people all working together. It took us all 3 hours to write, collaborating on a Google doc and over skype to make a half hour play, and it seems to have turned out pretty nicely! This is the last for now in our writing exercises. We only really show the play here and not the 3 hours of umming and ah-ing as we worked on it, because that was too much to edit down, but if it's something people would like to hear maybe we'll make a condensed version available some time in the future. For now please enjoy our little Western romance, train and bank heist adventure! And Bane's great piano playing! Oh, and the great intro music by Gunwallace called "Solosteel"!
Episode 201 - The Improvisationcast
Jan 13, 2015
Pitface joins the duo of Banes and Ozoneocean once again, this time for the Improvisationcast! Pitface and Tantz Aerine do a lot of writing together when they work jointly on their script for Brave Resistance, but in order to further exercise their creative and collaborative muscles they also practise a turn by turn writing style where they improvise a story as they go. They start off with their own comic characters, one writes an intro and a bit with their character and the next one carries on after with their own character and also weaving the first person's character into the story with them, and so on. In the end you can produce a startling organic story that has forced you to examine the way your character would react to totally unfamiliar situations and stimuli. In this Quackcast we all experiment with this by doing an improvised play with characters we make up on the spot, to very mixed results....
Episode 200 - DD community 2014 year in revue
Jan 5, 2015
OMG this is our 200th Quackcast! It's also the very first Quackcast of 2015! In this DD webcomics community podcast we invited people to tell us about some of the awesome, terrible and interesting things that happened to them in 2014, and tell us they did! Some of it realy amazingly trivially boring, like ozoneocean's contribution, some of it quite personal and honest, some of it just plain cool. Well, it's been a long year and an even longer time to reach 200 Quackcasts! Let's hope for many more. The glorious Pitface was our guest again, and she did some hilarious voices! It's great to have some more voice talent on show for once. And at the very end we have a precious little cameo by Tantz, the Greek sailorman! Happy Xmas and a merry New year!
Episode 199 - A look back at 2014
Dec 29, 2014
OMG! It's the last Quackcast of 2014! Well Banes and Ozoneocean decide to do a half arse YEAR IN REVIEW! Oh yes, a mighty look back at the year that was 2014... We look over some of the notable Quackcasts and comics that we could recall for the purposes of this particular Quackcast topic at the time when we were recording. Thank goodness for the internet because neither of us can actually remember much of what happened during the year without it. So sit back and tolerate our gala celebrity edition (Ozone and Bases are the celebs), for the year in review! Also, Gunwallace has done a wonderful old timey Jazzy nior theme that YOU WILL LOVE!
Episode 198 - Fallopian Crusader to the rescue!
Dec 22, 2014
Merry XXX-mas! For Quackcast 198 Banes and I interview our second ever adult comic creator, the venerable Fallopiancrusader, on the anniversary of his comic being hosted on DD no less! His comic, "Rimjob" is as hard-core as they come. It's a spoof of the story in the videogame Skyrim: Khthonis, an orc woman is set for execution along with some other prisoners, the way she escapes though is quite a lot different to the events of the game! Fallopiancrusader is an amazingly talented and experienced artist, as you can see from the amazing realism and artistry of his artwork on Rimjob, in fact it's very difficult to find more artistic porn. A graphic designer by trade and skilled at many styles, one of Fallopiancrusader's reasons for creating Rimjob was simply to experiment with a new style! I think you'll agree that he succeeded admirably. If you haven't read Rimjob yet it'll be a rare treat for you. Rimjob is a NSFW adults only 18+ comic so if you're not singed up with the site and you're not 18+ you won't be able to view it. If that's the case though I've included links to two images Fallopiancrusader made for the DD awards so you can see his artistry at depicting his character Khthonis. Also: enjoy the brilliant Bladerunner style theme Gunwallace made for Holon!