Episode 271 - Pitface’s tales of ribaldry
May 15, 2016
What makes the “meat” of a story? What makes you fall in love with it, keep coming back for more watches or reads or whatever? I contend it has nothing to do with conflict or culminations or climaxes, those are merely generic structural plottings that are pretty much the same format no matter what story you read- you know they're coming and you know what form they'll take and once they're over it's not really that significant anymore; “re-playability” is low, they're just too tied in with the story structure to have much life away from it in your mind. What keeps me coming back to a story and fall in love with it are the Characters, exploring the world in which they exist, and the development that occurs during the story. Gunwallace provides us a theme to CTV Revamped, the new version of Charby the Vampirate! Good and creepy techno for Charbs!
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
The Magpie - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Magpie/
From THIS thread - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/177504/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Pitface - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Kawaiidaigakusei - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Featured music:
CTV ReVamped - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/CTV_ReVamped/, by Amy Of Darkness, rated T.
Try and join us for the big DD electronic meetup on the 21st of this month, over Skype! Details here - https://www.facebook.com/events/1088004541241456/
Episode 266 - An evening with Banes
Apr 11, 2016
Banes, in case you were unaware, is the gold plated titanium platinum alloyed anchor of the Quackcast. This stand-up Canadian gent has been a solid part of DD for a while now, without his great humour, jovial personality, great talent, and lightning wit this podcast would have died out long ago. Not only that but he's super adaptable and always willing to spend his valuable time to go above and beyond to help members of DD in whatever's going on, always there to be a part of the DD awards and other community projects. Banes donated a great big sum of money to the DD Indiegogo campaign and his reward is this very interview! Tantz Aerine, Pitface and me, Ozoneocean delve into the man behind the mystery that is BANES. Who IS this jovial, friendly, helpful Canadian guy? Well here we try and find out! Of you'd like to know more about Mr Banes yourself, please ask a question here and we'll put it to him in the next Quackcast!
Episode 265 - Drunk Duck updates and the future
Apr 4, 2016
For Quackcast 265 I wanted to steer the direction toward the idea of future fixes and features for Drunk Duck! We talked a bit about the 2nd wave of fixes that will be happening now- HippieVan worked to gather people's suggestions for the most important bugs that needed fixing (with our limited funds), and features people want added, and then did a survey to find what people though were the highest priority. It was a lot of work and took a few weeks to come up with the results. Bellow is a summery of what she learned:
Episode 264 - How to improve your online presence
Mar 27, 2016
In this Quackcast we interview Marie Tary, AKA ShadowsMyst. We haven't talked to her since Quackcast 32 and 33 way back in 2011 when Skoolmunkee and I interviewed her about The art of analytics and how to market your webcomics properly. Now Banes and I talk to her about the changed landscape of website marketing, brand management, SEO and how it applies to comics and most particularly Drunk Duck itself. Brand management and marketing is Marie's job, as a senior graphic designer for a major university. She gives us some invaluable information about how we can put Drunk Duck back on top and return it to its former glory- very useful information that applies just the same to any online property, especially webcomics! So this will give you a clue what's in store for Drunk Ducks future and the sort of thing the future 3rd wave of fixes and features will entail. We also have the presentation of a lovely track by Gunwallace, the theme to Tangled river!
Episode 260 - D.U.C.K. Radio1
Feb 29, 2016
Welcome to D.U.C.K. Radio! Get ready for your DJs: Smooth Ramone, Hard rock Jimmy Storm (BRINING THE THUNDER!!!), Weatherman Rhet Blanket, Conspiracy theorist Smiley Fraudson, and hilarious* Maple and The Syrup (*they're not funny). This is the first part of Radio DUCK, we're bringing you ALL of the fantastic themes Gunwallace has composed for many great webcomics. You got a small, tiny, insignificant taste little taste of it in Quackcast 258, now be prepared to take the FULL blast! 29 of Gunwallace's classic themes in this cast and two more casts to go to get the rest so stay tuned. Gunwallace radio - All great music all the time!
Episode 259 - Drawing Crowd Scenes
Feb 22, 2016
Crowd scenes of any sort can be horrible to draw. There are many, many reasons for this, one of them is that it's quite boring to invent a whole lot of new character models just for the purpose of making a group scene. My own way of combating that problem was to do cameos of other characters that I stole from my fellow Quackcasters, Banes, Pitface and Tantz. There are many other tricks and clever ways of managing crows though which you can hear bout in the Quackcast or see us talk about in the Quackcast video. Gunwallace's theme for Phineus Magician for Hire is VERY Sword and Sorcery! It reminded me a little of the famous music to the first (and best), Conan film, and brought to mind the writing of Fritz Leiber.
Episode 257 - Accents in Comics
Feb 8, 2016
Using accents and different languages in comics can be a challenge, or at least a challenge to represent. Some people will actually have their text IN a different language or even a made up language in the case of aliens, and they'll have translations in a footnote. Some will use pointed brackets to represent the different language, some will use different fonts, and some won't bother showing that there is a different language being spoken at all. We spoke to Tantz Aerine and Pitface about this because that's something they both have to tackle in Brave Resistance and Tantz's solo comic Without Moonlight because it's very central to the plot: Tantz uses different colours for the languages. Pitface phonetically represents different accents in her comic Putrid Meat quite expertly. However, there can be challenges to phonetic representation when you get it wrong, most frequently in the case of Irish and Scottish accents! This was inspired by a newspost by Hippievan! Listen ad enjoy Gunwallace's audio interpretation of Aidana. VERY Pink Floyd!
Episode 256 - Using and creating weapons in fiction
Feb 1, 2016
Tantz Aerine, Banes and Ozoneocean discuss the topic of using and creating weapons in fiction and some of the pitfalls involved- all the things you can easily do wrong and do better! Stuff like using overly specialised weapons in too general a role, like giant swords where they'd be next to useless, or tricked out assault rifles with way too many things hooked onto them so they're oversized and weight a ton- also copying ideas and tropes about weapons usage without understanding why the exist and in the process making many of the same mistakes as others have in the past.
