Episode 471 - Fantasy
Mar 23, 2020
Today we're having a chat about fantasy fiction! Mainly books and the fantasy writing that inspired us and that we love! Faves like Tolkien, Fritz Leiber and Piers Anthony! Just to define, we're talking swords, elves, armour, dragons etc, in a “medieval” context, generally European. As a subset there's native, Arabian, Asian, Mayan etc, also high fantasy, low fantasy, sword and sorcery, historical fantasy and even mythology…. And then techno fantasy, contemporary fantasy, steampunk, fantasy cyberpunk and so on… but we mainly stick to the mainstream stuff and only just touch on the weird little variations for now.
Topics and Show Notes
Fantasy is an old genre and a lot went into creating it: Fairy tales, folklore, mythology, legends, and history.
In the modern day the main influences for modern fantasy were writers like Tolkien with his high fantasy, Robert E Howard with his sword and sorcery, Fritz Leiber, Ursula K Leguin, Andre Norton. It was the massive popularity of Tolkien though in the 1960s and 70s that really created the market for fantasy and that is what really made the genre. As a result most fantasy from then was a copy of that style: small parties made of odd members including elves , dwarfs, wizards, knights, barbarians, and halflings or original equivalents of all of those things, guided by prophecies, fighting orcs or orc-like things, and ultimately facing a “dark lord” character.
Things have since broadened out and diversified again. We have many different kinds of fantasy styles now, but it's good to have a look at where it came from!
Some authors we mention:
Tolkien, Terry Books, Robert Jordan, Tantz Aerine, Robert E Howard, Lovecraft, August Derlith, ER Eddison, David Eddings, Raymon E Fiest, Anne McCaffery, Ursula K Leguin, Robert Aspirin, Mary Stewart and more :D
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to GALAXY ONE - Side scroller action adventure space platform game! This is pure 16 bit videogame nostalgia. Grab your extra life and beat the hard level and the mid-boss before gaining his powers and facing up against the final boss! You can practically hear the pixels forming, coalescing and mutating.
Topics and shownotes
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Links
DD on Discord! - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Moderated by Boundbun - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/BoundBun/
Featured comic:
My Magic Grandpa - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/mar/15/featured-comic-my-magic-grandpa/
Featured music:
GALAXY ONE - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/GALAXY_ONE/, by KPM1578, rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Episode 470 - What stirred your creative juices?
Mar 15, 2020
For this cast I'd thought we'd go through with our promise of last week and talk about things that have made us have a reaction as a creator. This expands on “The Cartoons that Date us” from last week. So today we're talking the creative media that gave you a reaction: Books, movies, comics, TV shows… Not what specifically inspired the comics you do now, but what drove you to create and why.
Episode 469 - The cartoons that date us and Discord
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Episode 468 - Online communities and the friendships that are part of them
Mar 1, 2020
The nature of online communities and making connections with people you meet in them is quite different from what happens with “social media”. The connections are deeper and longer lasting while social media is more about communication, staying in contact, and finding out what's popular at the time rather than sharing creations and forming strong bonds.
Episode 467 - Adaptions and Transmogrification!
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The process of adaptation is quite interesting. Stories go through all sorts of changes when they're transferred from one medium to another. A lot of the time we bemoan that as “not staying true to the original” or “the book was better”, but there are many times where the adaption is really interesting in its own right, even though it's quite different from what it started out as.
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What happens to characters after the big action scene or climactic moment? This could be anywhere in the story but it's usually close to the end. Do they process any of the things that have happened to them to lead them up to that point or do they just forget about everything and simply act as if nothing except the last 4 seconds matter? The later seems to be the trend in a lot of badly written fiction, and it's a notable trope in 80s style action films. Death of family members or lovers are irrelevant when you have a hot action star standing next to you!
Episode 465 - Planning Vs pantsing!
Feb 10, 2020
There are a couple of approaches when it comes to making a big creative project: planing it all out or working things out as you go i.e. flying by the seat of your pants. Well in reality it's a spectrum and those are the two extremes. Most of us work somewhere between those two, sometimes with more or less planning etc… I've tried a lot of different mixtures myself!
Episode 464 - The current digital art landscape
Feb 2, 2020
I recently had to upgrade my main computer because Windows isn't supporting Windows 7 any longer and I don't want to install Windows 10 on the perfectly functioning old one in case it ruins it and my main programs can't run any longer… SO I had to get a new PC. This got me thinking though: The barrier to getting into digital art is lower now than ever!