Episode 323 - A space of your own
May 15, 2017
Drawing in public can be a pain! You really need to find somewhere comfortable, with lots of space, good lighting, and the right atmosphere to be able to settle down and work on your drawings… It can be tricky to find just the right posy. But it also depends on the types of materials you use and the atmosphere that you want to experience while you're working. In this Quackcast we talk about Hyena Hell's newspost on the subject and people's comments, as well as our own experiences with trying to draw in public places and the annoyances of public harassment. Speaking of knowing where to draw, there's the cautionary tale of Canadian Archie artist Gisele Lagace, who was detained and body-searched by US border guards for carrying unfinished drawings! She was intended to finish them at her hotel so she could sell them at the convention, but according to the US border guards and their extremely “strict” interpretation of the regulations due to the current political climate in the US, that constituted “doing work” while on US soil, so she was denied entry and missed out on the convention she was booked to appear at. So there are other considerations to finding the right place to do your drawings! The music for this week by Gunwallace is for Slaughter at Camp Notamoovi - Dark, suspenseful, mounting dread… it’s dark outside and something horrible is lurking, but it turns out to be a man with no trousers on chasing a raccoon with a pair of pants on its head… who are then both BRUTALLY MURDERED!!!!
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Silly Sweetie - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/may/09/featured-comic-silly-sweetie/
LINKS:
Drawing space Newspost - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/may/04/home-v-away-where-to-work/
Canadian comic artist turned away at US border - http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/canadian-comic-artist-refused-entry-us-comic-book-convention-996465
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
PitFace - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine
Ozoneocean - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Featured music:
Slaughter at Camp Notamoovi - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Slaughter_at_Camp_Notamoovi/, by Freakenburger, rated M.
Episode 320 - Making the reader believe
Apr 24, 2017
In this Quackcast I wanted to talk about the magic of authorship: how the creator of a story sets up the whole situation so that they can convince the reader of anything. You can write a story about the smartest man in the world, and the reader will believe that they are, within the story, because you set it up that way: not just by having other characters reacting to them and forming that impression, but also independently convincing the audience of it as well by having them solving riddles and such or knowing lots of languages, quoting literary texts etc, but the creator doesn't have to be a very smart person themselves… Like Sherlock Holmes is seen as super smart because he's meant to, but Arthur Conan Doyle wasn't a super genius himself. You can write about a Casanova type charmer who's fantastic with the opposite sex and readers will believe, but only if you set the stage well enough. You as the creator set the parameters for anything to happen. Without having certain abilities or skills yourself, you can create a character with totally convincing skills far outside of yourself. The music for this week by Gunwallace is for The Gloom, it's creepy, ghostly, unsettling, uneven. This one gets under your skin and keeps you off-balance.
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 316 - The Quirkcast!
Mar 27, 2017
For this Quackcast we decided to chat about quirks- the things that stand out about a character, help you remember them, get interested in them, traits that pick them out as individuals and can ALSO be used to point at deeper character traits! These are so useful in so many ways and really help to define a character as well as giving them a handle for the audience to latch on to. The idea was nicked from a newspost where Tantz goes into it with a lot more depth, so check that out too if you can! the cover image is from the Nazi General sketch by Smith a Jones- it's all based on quirks. This was Tantz's fantastic idea for a newspost. Speaking of Tantz, this newspost was recorded around the time of Greek independence day! Happy independence day to Greece!
Episode 314 - The failure of heroes
Mar 13, 2017
When heroes fail… Hey, why would you ever want a hero to fail? Well there are a lot of reasons and listening to this Quackcast will tell you why, but the quick version is that you don't want your hero to be a perfect Mary-Sue sort of character. Having your hero fail in their goals means you have somewhere interesting to go with your story. Having your hero fail emotionally means you can give them character development and make them more interesting. If you want to learn more then either listen to us or have a look at Tantz's newspost where I took the idea from! Our music this week from our resident composer Gunwallace is a theme to The World Outside of Time. It evokes a cold, echoing club scene, bleak and icy, with the promise of brief companionship, but not the reality.
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 308 - Hyena Hell
Jan 30, 2017
Today on the Quackcast we interview Hyena Hell! You might remember the bombastic, punkrocker HyenaHell for her comic The Hub She used to be very active on all of DD (forums, comics, everything), before life issues took her away from DD. But she was still a prolific poster on social media after that when she wasn't creating comics, posting interesting and thought provoking blog posts about art, life as an artist, and living in a changing New Orleans… She has a unique art style- highly detailed, carefully inked drawings, which are quite similar to her work as a printmaker. You can see a great example of that in The Hub. We have sad news and hap[y news… The wonderful Hippievan has retired from doing Friday newsposts on DD. The happy news is that HyenaHell is going to dive into the driving seat of this out of control juggernaut! HyenaHell has a long history with DD and an amazing personal perspective on art and life that I think would be good for the site. It's always good to listen to a new and interesting voice! In the mean time, listen to Banes, Pitface, TantzAriene and I interview HyenaHell, who tells lascivious stories and her and I going into, Lipstixxx a stripclub in New Orleans… Gunwallace's featured music for today was: Mechaniko - it's the sound of nodes on a neural network firing, connecting, and cascading with shared knowledge: Multilayered, technological robo-future rock!
Episode 307 - The jerks
Jan 23, 2017
Jerky, jerk, jerks! Let's talk about this type of character… This topic is based on Banes' newspost from Thursday, he based it on characters like Reggie from the Archie comics. Jerks can be pretty good characters in their own right. They can be villains, heroes, antagonists or protagonists, they can even be unintentional jerks like Scrappy do from Scooby Do, Alf from Alf, or Jar Jar Binks from that horrible movie he was in. My favourite jerks are Flashman from the Flashman novels by George MacDonald (you should read them!), Blackadder (particularly the second season), and Zaphod Beeblebrox who I'm cosplaying in the cover pic. Who are your fave and least fave jerks? Gunwallace's musical theme was for The Epic of Blitzov. It's Riff based hard rock, driving beat, heavy, distorted guitars layered over and over with a thunderous yet lyrical lead floating over the top. Orange and black sound.
