Episode 319 - Roll out the photocomics!
Apr 17, 2017
Photocomics don't get nearly enough love. A while ago Banes did a great newspost on the subject where he did some great little promotional reviews of some prominent photocomics on DD. I thought that was a cool idea and I've been meaning to return to the subject for a while. In this Quackcast Pitface and I use funny voices to talk about photocomics. But what ARE photocomics? Well the artist sets up models, toys, artwork, or themselves, and shoots photos of them in certain scenes in order to create a narrative. Later on they'll edit those together in something like Photoshop, adding captions and word bubbles and basically turning them into a conventional comic. People like Bravo1102 go the extra mile to construct elaborate sets and shoot the entire comic as you would a film, taking photos out of sequence because sets have to be broken up and new ones constructed. He even does greenscreen! Gunwallace and and Kdog buy special sets of Playmobile or Space Lego in order to expand and continue their elaborate stories. Trevor Mueller used himself and his friends as models. VinoMas creates really cool artworks out of collage. Rawdale uses stock photos to create his political commentary comics. Sameth uses Superhero figurines… there are so many approaches to the concept. Bellow I've linked a few examples to check out! The music for this week by Gunwallace is for Neander Chan, it's the primal beat of life! This is an utterly danceable sound, driving syncopated rhythm travels up your nerves and down deep into your bones, spiky, distorted electric guitar adds a touch of lyricism.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
half-hearted headache - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/apr/11/featured-comic-half-hearted-headache/
LINKS:
Photocomic Newsost - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/mar/08/photocomics/
Lego Space byKdog - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Lego_Space/
Your Choice… by Vinomas - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/YOUR_CHOICE/
A$$hole by Trevor Mueller - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Asshole/
Trumped by Rawdale - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/TRUMPed/
Interstellar Blood Beasts by bravo - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Interstellar_Blood_Beasts/
Pegwarmers by Sameth - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pegwarmers/
Utterly Rucked by Gunwallace - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Utterly_Rucked/5331040/
Sword of Kings, the newest comic by bravo - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Sword_of_Kings/5535525/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Pitface - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Featured music:
Neander Chan - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Neander_Chan/, by Lemniskate, rated T.
Episode 318 - Maintaining enthusiasm!
Apr 10, 2017
The most important thing when doing your comic is to maintain your enthusiasm- THIS is what helps you keep working, not feedback, not praise, not fans, but your own internal passion. Feedback is great, but you can become addicted to it and when it's not there or there's not enough of it your work can die. In order to be able to keep creating your passion for your work should be internal, not external, you need to be self sustaining: A readership is nice and feedback is great, but you really have to do your comic for yourself, not for other people. But there's more to it than that. Bored by doing your webcomic? Why is that? What do you need to change to make it interesting to do once more? What is holding you back? Those are some of the things we talk about in this Quackcast! The music for this week by Gunwallace is for the previously featured comic Numb. This is the sound of a long road trip under the burning sun in the hot, dry, dusty, desert air, and on into a cold night through a desolate city lit by retreating streetlights. Progression, but where to?
Episode 309 - boring action scenes
Feb 6, 2017
What makes an action scene boring? Action scenes should be exciting and fun, but often it's just the opposite! In this Quackcast we discuss the topic of Tantz's newspost from the other day and tackle this hard question. These were Tantz's conclusions: - You don’t yet care enough for the characters involved in the action to worry about them; - If the action is introductory you don't get to understand what's happening enough to care; - The action is badly choreographed or ‘cut’ in a way that the audience can’t understand what is going on; - The action is too much too soon, and back to back; In this Quackcast we try to delve a little more into that :) The featured music this week by Gunwallace was for Starfox Adventures The Comic: Firing the main rockets and racing through space, laser pulses and bolts of plasma streak past in glowing lines of destruction as you smoothly barrel roll to avoid them.
Episode 295 - Sexcast, sex in non adult comics
Oct 10, 2016
This is the Awkardcast! Another take on the sexcast idea but this time we're looking at sex and sexual situations in strictly NON-adult comics. Sex performs a very different role in non-adult comics… You have a much wider audience with comics at the rating, but there are things you can not show, so of course you use sex for other reasons than the way you do in an adult rated comic. In an adult comic you can show all details of the entire act, all the genitalia in all their glistening, gory, gooey, hairy splendour, going in and out and around here and there and all over the place! Oh my! In Mature comics and bellow though, you simply can't, though you CAN have some non-sexual full frontal nudity in Mature comics and you can show bottoms in Teen rated comics. The ratings are similar to what you have with film ratings. In adult comics, like adult film, sex acts are more of the focus, they can still have a story but the sex acts are supposed to be enjoyed in their own right. In non-adult comics the sex has other purposes- subtle titillation is a part of it, comedy, teasing the viewer, furthering the plot, a culmination of a relationship or the establishment of one, etc- there's generally always another purpose to it, unlike adult comics where there sometimes is but doesn't need to be. And unlike adult film there's not much purpose to softcore non-adult rated porn in comics. That type of censored porn is done in film in order to get a wider audience on media that will otherwise not show porn, but on the net porn it's super easy to come by so there's not much reason to do softcore. There are a lot of challenges entailed in depicting non-adult rated porn! Certain positions don't work in well with the limits on nudity (we talk about this in the cast), but there are tricks you can use; symbolism (popping champagne corks, trains going into tunnels etc), strategic positioning of sheets, clever camera angles, fading out before the act and fading in again after, characters with mussed hair and uneven clothing, using dialogue to refer to what they just did, “off-screen” shenanigans, or shenanigans in the dark etc, it can be a lot of fun! Have a listen to how Tantz, I and Banes tackle the idea. The music by Gunwallace for his week was Firefly cross! A very mystical sound, with traditional, middle eastern style music mixed with dark techno fuzz, this one is intriguing!
Episode 293 - THE BURBS DVD commentary
Oct 5, 2016
In this happy season of October we come to that time of year again when Banes starts to get excited by Halloween! This year his idea was for us all to do a real time DVD commentary for The Burbs, that great comedy horror film staring the famous Tom Hanks, from back in 1989 when he was still a hilarious leading man and not a super serious drama guy. We all LOVE this movie, it's very funny, with a lot of cool twists and great scenes. Along with Tom Hanks it stars Princess Leia AKA Carrie Fischer, dudeman Corey Feldman, and Bruce Dern being Dale Gribble before Dale Gribble was even a thing! Pitface, Tantz, Banes and I all talk along to and over the movie as it's playing. To enjoy the FULL effect I strongly suggest you find a copy of The Burbs on a legal streaming site, or less than legal one depending on your ethics, or maybe even a DVD or old video! Pop it on and spoil the movie by listening to us all blather away together, it'll be just like watching the movie WITH us! And wouldn't you like that? I'm sure you would, we're all very friendly people. ;) Our feature AND the music by Gunwallace this week is for the same comic, “Useless”. The theme is atmospheric and haunting, lightened with the strains of a singing, melodic electric guitar.
episode 282 - MOOD
Jul 31, 2016
The topic of THIS particular Quackcast is MOOD! And for no particular reason I dressed as the Mad Hatter, as typified by Tom Petty in the film clip to Don't Come Around here No More... So that was the mood of this Quackast... We based it on Bane's Newspost about creating Mood in comics from the book “Framed Ink” by Marcos Mateu-Mestre. The idea of creating mood with imagery is key to my own art practise in Pinky TA, I use lighting, angles, eye-levels, perspective, colour and many other combinations of effects to manipulate the viewer to feel the correct emotions for the scene... and that's exactly what we're talking about here! The music by Gunwallace this week is for Mindmistress, it's sexy, atmospheric, light, sparkly music from a futuristic nightclub in Saturn’s rings.
Episode 275 - Layouts, what to do and what not
Jun 13, 2016
The topic this week was ALL Banes' idea! We talk about page layout: techniques to make a good, readable layout, and stuff to avoid. We have Tantz Aerine (greetings), Banes, and myself, Ozoneocean, chatting about how best to do page layouts, at least from our own limited perspectives. None of us are pros in this regard, but we've been doing comics for many years now and we've all developed some pretty decent ideas about how best to do it, in our own ways. Banes is mostly influenced by American style comics, which have more interesting layouts. Tantz and I were manly influenced by European comics, which tend to have a more conservative by very constantly readable style of “box” layout. On Pinky TA and Bottomless Waitress the majority of my pages are in a fairly standard box format, but every now and again I experiment with crazy shapes, overlapping panels, no panels at all, and even “infinite canvas” pages that work with the scroll function. Speaking of which we briefly mention Scott McCloud and the comic Heart of Keol, which uses vertically scrolling large pages. The music this week by Gunwallace was Wastelanders Anonymous, an epic classic rock tune with a lovely repeating upward base rhythm, soaring guitars and authoritative keyboard.
Episode 274 - development of main characters
Jun 6, 2016
Our Quackcast topic was a discussion about how our main characters evolved and changed over time, both in terms of characterisation but also artistically. stylistically and their own looks. Then we chatted about ways to help that along and accelerate it: How do you get to KNOW your character better? How do you help them grow? We toyed with some exercises but eventually came up with a cool one- Swapping a comic page/scene with someone else and redrawing it with your character in there instead of the original main character, and also have your character handling their new situation in the the way that best suits them, the way THEY would handle it. Link bellow… The music this week by Gunwallace was a theme to DELIA- it's a cold, thoughtful tune with a note of unease below, like an icily perfect woman.
