Episode 652 - Physical traits that set characters apart
Sep 11, 2023
Our topic this week is making your characters individual, distinct and setting them apart through physical traits. In many mainstream superhero comics or manga the only difference between most characters is their outfit, hair, and skin tone. There are a few reasons for that but a big one is that it saves time if the artist doesn't have to change to much when they're drawing different characters. Professional arts work hard and have to work fast so things that make work faster and easier are needed.
Topics and Show Notes
But webcomic artists are a different breed! We don't need to draw all our women with exactly the same body shape and face or our men with one of only 4 different body shapes like pro artists have to. We can mix it up and add interesting differences to really highlight individual character traits and features. We can do far more interesting and cool looking work than most pros have the freedom to. Give your characters a bigger nose, make them shorter, rounder, taller, darker, fatter, thinner, whatever!
In our Patreon video we mainly talked about giving them different shaped boobs...
A really great example of this sort of thinking is Steven Universe where characters are very physically distinct and certainly don't all follow the same old usual patterns.
Do you mix it up with your characters? Or do you prefer to do it like the pros do in Superhero comics or manga where most characters are much the same?
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Oblique - A serious, desolate, mysterious, claustrophobic sound that elevates to a more confident, rocky, open, expansive feel… suggesting open vistas and distance.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Out By The Lab - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/sep/05/featured-comic-out-by-the-lab/
Featured music:
Oblique - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Oblique/ - Written by Genejoke, Illustrated by David Abiola Olukoga. Rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
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Episode 650 - Fake things that only exist in pop-culture
Aug 28, 2023
There are a lot of things that only exist in fiction and really don't have any basis in reality and yet we THINK they do! It's just that fiction has done such a great job of making us believe this stuff and setting it up that it pretty much replaces reality. We focused on spies for our Patreon only video, and how the version we know from popculture in Kingsmen, Mission Impossible, James Bond, Chuck, and many other things is complete fiction.
Episode 649 - Gendered clothing
Aug 21, 2023
When you're drawing people in a webcomic one of the common ways to indicate gender is by outfits, but why are clothes gendered at all and is that a constant?
Episode 648 - Kawaii's Choice
Aug 14, 2023
This week's cast was an experiment and if it works out we'll do more! We came up with the idea for discussing a comic live on air, the hard part was choosing it, for that we settled on our trusty Kawaiidaigakusei to help us. She chose “Up the Pyramid” by BUDLO. And this was her rationale:
Episode 646 - FIGHT! Drawing and references
Jul 31, 2023
Drawing fight scenes is damn hard! One of the best ways to deal with this is to use references, but that's hard too because it's a pain to find the ones you need! So today we're talking about making your own reference pics for fighting because that's what I just finished for Tantz- I stripped shirtless and wielded some of my many antique swords in fight poses for Tantz to use in her new fantasy webcomic.
Episode 645 - AI-cast
Jul 24, 2023
We're chatting about the current state of AI, it's use, abuse, and the moronic way it's typically being utalised by mid-level businesses to screw over creative people and save money in the short term.
Episode 644 - Psychocast
Jul 17, 2023
We're talking about the pop-culture myth of psychopaths and sociopaths and other stuff like serial killers. Yes those conditions do exist, well sort of (not exactly with those names), but the pop-culture versions we know from the media are mostly myths. The real things aren't as exciting or flashy as the versions we know and love/hate from movies, comic, books, TV shows and podcasts.
Episode 643 - Cultcast
Jul 10, 2023
With the release of the new Indiana Jones film comes some questions… We haven't seen it yet but we hear a lot of people don't like it and it's already being called a flop. But is that because it's actually bad, because people want it to be bad, or because it doesn't match people's expectations? What's the real story? It's hard to know at this point.
