Episode 362 - Triumph der Ente
Feb 19, 2018
In this Quackcast we chat about all the different options for hosting your webcomic. At the moment it seems the fashionable new young kiddies on the block are Webtoons and Tapastic, but they're certainly NOT the only choices for webcomic hosts out there and certainly not the best choices. I think we make a good case here for why Drunk Duck is a better choice in many ways, but we also bring up other host sites like twitter, comic fury, comic Genesis (used to be Keenspace), Tumblr, Deviant Art, Smack Jeeves, Fur Affinity, self hosting on a Word Press site etc. In the early days of the millennium there were just two hosts for your comic: Drunk Duck and Keenspace. Drunk Duck was a better choice for most since it was a lot easier to customise and it had a friendlier, smaller community. Keenspace had a two tier system: the picked comics with all the best stuff were in their “keenspot” site while the rabble were stuck with the slower hosting and slower updates. The main thing they had going was a gigantic member base. But they even changed the site's name from “keenspace” to “comic genesis” to further separate KeenSpot from the rabble, which left a sour taste in the mouth. By contrast Drunk Duck was always dedicated to being fully egalitarian. One of our main strengths is that we accept all without stigma: manga, furry, adult comic, sprites, American style, superhero, slice of life comedy, photocomics, professional published comics or stick figure amateur work and we welcome them all the same with the same level of enthusiasm. The big young Webtoons and Tapastic have some of the same issues Keenspace used to have: a big community where you will be lost in the crowd. And no site has as solid and safe programming and hosting as Drunk Duck does. Plus we're community run so you're same from corporate oversight and interference in the content you're allowed to post. You can read more about comic hosting sites in Emma Clare's news posts linked bellow. This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Odd Days. Sometimes you just have one of those days… or many of them in a row! Odd days. The sound here has a positive, optimistic theme overlayed with a harsh zigzag of electric guitar. This tune does well to illustrate the twisted euni, the off-balance and askew takes on everyday life and situations dealt with in this slice of life, humorous comic.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Flesh and Wires - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/feb/13/featured-comic-flesh-and-wires/
Emma Clare's webcomic host newspost 1 - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/dec/05/mirror-mirror-part-1/
Emma Clare's webcomic host newspost 2 - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/dec/14/mirror-mirror-part-2/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
PitFace - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
kawaiidaigakusei - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Featured music:
Odd Days - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Odd_Days/, by Nightmarelunatic, rated T.
Episode 361 - Primordial Creations
Feb 12, 2018
Today we talk about where our characters began, not their origin stories or why we started writing them but rather what they used to look like! Pitface was inspired to create a thread based on this idea by Emma Clare's newspost series of origin stories. So we just HAD to have Emma Clare along with us to discus this too! Pit, Tantz, and Emma discuss their bishie origins and talk about maybe doing a bishie DD calendar… We HAVE to make them do that! Emma Clare of course does our Friday newsposts as well as the comic Puppets and Strings and is the artist on Constellation Chronicles. What did your character look like when you first started? This week Gunwallace has given us the theme Wolf Moon - A slow, rich acoustic beginning lulls you calmly, then we roar into a rough, electric feast, a veritable tidal wave of sound washes over you and carries you out to sea.
Episode 360 - How did you start in webcomics?
Feb 4, 2018
In this Quackcast I thought we'd chat about Emma Clare's great and thoughtful topic of webcomic origin stories: Basically, what was happening to make you start your webcomic on DD, all that stuff in your life back when you first began posting… Emma's newsposts are a great read and they made us all think back to how we began. Pit, Tantz and I have a long talk about our comicing origins. What were YOU doing when you started webcomics? What made you begin? This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to NanoCritters. It's a minimalist white expanse, dotted with mysterious little marks of sound. What do they mean, what do they represent, is it code? Read NanoCritters to find out! Also included in the Quackcast are extracts from a lovely Starwars themed rap that Tantz's Greek students performed in English.
Episode 356 - Readers
Jan 7, 2018
READERS are a massive part of Drunk Duck! Actually readers are a huge part of ANY comic. But Drunk Duck tends to focus far more on creators than perhaps we should… This idea was inspired by a newspost of Tantz's. We talk about ways to make DD more accessible to readers, including highlighting comics in similar genres and guest representatives giving us recommendation lists of comics they like from a genre so we can promote them on the front page. Emma_Clare has done some GREAT mockups for a redesign of DD and in those is an example of the DD front page where we highlight comics by genre! We chat about comic listing sites like Comic Rocket, Top Webcomics and the brand new Archive Binge, along with other various topics like who are the best hosts for adult comics, cross promotion etc. This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to Blood and water: Cool, quiet, and creepy. This one will have you on edge from start to finish. There’s an undertone of cool nonchalance that’s surprisingly at odds with the on-edge feel! Please donate to our our Indiegogo drive to raise many for the latest improvement to DD: Comment notifications! We know that everyone wants those.
Episode 340 - Reviews
Sep 18, 2017
In this Drunk Duck Quackcast we chat about the importance and the process of reviews! Good ones, bad ones, why they all matter, and also why they often don't! ;) Reviews are an interesting animal, they're a parasitic form of entertainment. They rely wholly of other forms of entertainment for their existence, while those forms do not require reviews at all! But reviews also serve a good function, they tell us what's bad or good, what fits with our tastes and emotions, and lets us know what we may be interested in seeing. They can also save us from wasting time on horrors. Sometimes though they can drive us away from something magical… Here we discuss all that and more! Gunwallace's theme this week was for Reversion, This is a really dreamy, evocative tune about warm, faraway places, it’s squinting into the distance down a long dusty deserted highway and sighing.
Episode 337 - Interview with AmeliaP of Kings Club
Aug 28, 2017
This week we interview the artist and creator of the comic Kings Club, AmeliaP! Her comic was featured and Gunwallace also gave it a theme tune that was featured in Quackcast 335. AmeliaP is a talented professional comic creator and game designer. We couldn't interview her directly because she's not confident enough in her spoken English, so what we've done instead is read out a written interview that I did with her especially for this Quackcast. Amelia has some surprising and valuable insights for comic creators. You can read the full text of her interview bellow. Gunwallace's theme for the week was for Abejitas - This tune bounces in like a wild thing, spinning and buzzing crazily, full of black striped yellow techno sweet honey madness and rapid wingbeats of energy, this will sting you into full awareness!
Episode 328 - How to get people to read your comic!
Jun 19, 2017
Today we're going to chat about how you go about getting more readers on Drunk Duck for your webcomic! Hyena hell did an amazing newspost about it for us, outlining all the ways you can increase your audience here on DD in her fantastic, colourful vernacular! Along with many great analogues from the real world. But I'll cover the basics again in quick point form here: -- 1. Make sure you have a signature image banner so that when you contribute to the forums people can see that you have a comic. -- 2. Comment on other people's regularly, recently updating comics, especially the top ten, and others will click on your name to have a look at your comic- make sure you never post “hey check out my work” as a comment though, that will have the opposite effect. Just be complimentary and people will come. -- 2. Commenting on Newsposts can work as well. -- 3. Make sure your profile page has enough interesting info about you that someone would want to see your work. -- 4. frequent updates will put your comic icon on the front page more often so more people will check it out. -- 5. Increasing popularity through outside sources is done by getting a link to your comic on a popular blog, buying advertising through Project Wonderful on other comics or on The Duck Webcomics is a sure fire way. -- 6. If you get enough views you comic will go into the top 10 listing and then more people will see it on the front page. -- Our music theme by Gunwallace this week was for Sword of Kings. It's urgent, regal chase music, Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk meets Ivanhoe. This is an exciting track that conjures scenes of high adventure and epic battle.
Episode 326 - changing our look
Jun 4, 2017
In this Quackcast Tantz Aerine, Banes, Pitface, and I (Ozoneocean) discuss the changes that we'd like to do to the look of Drunk Duck! Contribute designs here: - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/177679/ We want YOU to help us come up with different design concepts for ALL sections of drunk Duck, not just the front page. It has to look good, be modern, be usable, fit within the broad theme of drunk duck (colours, style etc), and the design has to be adaptable to different screen sizes. And that's what we chat about here, rather than functional changes and new features, which are something ELSE and will cost extra. As soon as we HAVE our new designs then we can get a quote and raise money to have them applied to the site! So the sooner we come up with some new designs the sooner we can get this stuff happening!
