

Episode 398 - The sum of all Fears
Oct 29, 2018
This week in the Quackcast we were going to talk about fear in general. What are we afraid of? Why do we like or do not like media that may reflect these fears or lead us to new ones? How do such things inspire fear or similar reactions within us. DO we like horror because we like fear to an extent? It's that Halloween time of year once again so it's time to focus on such things. We had Emma Clare on board as well! Oh it was going to be so amazing and fun! Little did we know…
Topics and Show Notes
But I won't spoil it.
Do you remember Quackcast 99? That was the first time our whole team of me, Banes, Pit, and Tantz all got together to do a Halloween episode together. Good times. We were so young and naive then. Little did we know what would befall us…
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Tales of Schlock. A wakka, wakka, wakka, wak… A slow, effortlessly pacing cool, building up step after step, with a little flourish and a dance step every so often. This is music to strut your fine stuff to! Slip on your snakeskin boots, your purple velvet suit with the flared legs. Straighten your wide brim purple hat with the long orange pheasant feather, adjust your big blue bow tie, pull out your fluffy shirt cuffs and get out on the town!
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Paladins - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/oct/23/featured-comic-paladins/
Quackcast99 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/quackcast/episode-99-halloweens-a-commin/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Emma Clare - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Emma_Clare/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Featured music:
Tales of Schlock - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Tales_of_Schlock/, by Rampant404, rated A.

Episode 397 - Horror Comics
Oct 22, 2018
Fear: What are we afraid of? Why do we like or do not like media that may reflect these fears or lead us to new ones? How do such comics inspire fear or similar reactions within us. DO we like horror because we like fear to an extent? This Quackcast is about horror comics, how they work and why we like them. We chat about many of the horror comics on DD.

Episode 395 - Fighting ladies
Oct 8, 2018
Fighting ladies, female bad-ass characters… There are a lot more of them around now, but once upon a time they were pretty thin on the ground. I love a good badarse lady, my own comic character Pinky TA exemplifies that character type. There's something about a tough lady who can kick butt with the best of them that's especially compelling. They evolved from something a little more exploitative, ladies fighting in bikinis basically, then we had ladies that were just the female version of a male character (Batwoman, Supergirl etc), which is something we're starting to see a little more of unfortunately, but on the good side of things we ARE actually getting fighting ladies who're their OWN women: Original characters. In this Quackcast we talk about some of our faves and some of the earlier incarnations of the character type, from Robert E Howard's Red Sonya and Valeria, to Catherine L Moore's Jirel of Joiry, to Wonder woman, then later characters like Red Sonja (from the comics), She-Hulk, Sarah Conner, Ripley, Buffy, Xena, Aeon Flux… What are some of YOUR faves? Mine are Tank Girl, Lara Croft, Motoko Kusanagi, Garnet and many more :) This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Dolphin Bros: Jump, jump, jump up and down to this mad dolphin party scene. It’s all over the place but all it wants you to do is MOVE!

Episode 392 - Outside hobbies
Aug 19, 2018
In this Quackcast we chat about what interests we have outside of webcomics and we want to know what YOU do as well. What are your hobbies and interests? Our interests and hobbies really inform what we do as comic creators in all sorts of ways, it can be fascinating to learn about what drives a person and what led them to be where they are now. For Banes it was music, keyboards, drums, magic and ventriloquism. For Tantz it's writing and a fascination with surgery. For Pit it's archaeology, heavy metal, and art. For me it's making, art, costume and sewing. What about you?

Episode 390 - Imprinting on your characters
Aug 15, 2018
We nicked the idea for this Quackcast from a newspost by Emma Clare. What we chat about is the unintentional process of giving your characters you own traits or even traits of people you know without realising it: Every time you draw an expression for your character you're not really creating a generic expression but basing it on yourself… when you character is being quizzical or irritated for example people may recognise that as you. It could be in other things too: their taste, the way they dress, what they like to eat, their furniture. things that annoy them, their hobbies etc. It's interesting how tied they are to us.

Episode 388 - Coding for Men and women
Aug 15, 2018
In this Quackcast we discuss the artistic coding used to represent males and females in comic art in a simple, minimal way. Pitface joins us, along with Banes and Tantz Aerine! Much like an expert physicist is able to simplify enormously complex equations into something seemingly simple like E=MC2 a good comic artist simplifies the essence of what they're drawing into something that's immediately recognisable without a lot of complexity. We're mainly talking here in terms of drawing men and women. It sounds like the most basic, silly thing, but even pros with years of experience have trouble with it. Some of the art for the new She-Ra cartoon is a great example of that.

Episode 389 - Intimidating Baddies
Aug 14, 2018
What makes bad guy intimidating? Tantz Aerine made a great newspost about the question, carefully outlining various key bad-guy properties like confidence, composure, efficiency, and amorality. Banes, Pitface, Tantz and I stomp ALL over that, traipsing about like drunken, muddy rugby players, as we blather on about our opinions of the idea and finish up with no idea what we're talking about...

Episode 387 - History and Pastiche
Aug 7, 2018
In this Quackcast Tantz and I chat about the differences between working with historical settings and the different approaches we take. Tantz's comics (Without Moonlight and Brave Resistance), are both set in a real period of history: Nazi occupied Greece during WW2. Pinky TA is set in the 1920s in an alternative version of history, with Pinky coming from the fictional “Crimean Empire”. Tantz has to keep times, places, and details close to real history while with Pinky TA I can pick and choose the things from history I like the best and create my own idealised pastiche. The advantage of Tantz's approach is that everything is there, nothing has to be invented, just researched and reproduced, whereas my approach involves a lot of creation which slows things down and makes it harder. On the upside Pinky TA is much more flexible, I can easily fit whatever I want into the story, whereas Tantz's comics are bound by the rules of the history she's presenting.