Episode 694 - Consistency
Jul 1, 2024
Is your work consistent? It's hard to maintain consistency but it does pay off: consistency in art work, style, character, writing, humour, updates and every other factor. To aid consistency in commercial works they come up with a “bible” which has drawings of character from all angles, all their colour swatches, their outfits, accessories, weapons, vehicles, floor plans of buildings, etc, as well as descriptions of their characters and the story style. That sort of thing is a huge help and especially useful when you have teams of people working on the project and need to hand over to other people.
Topics and Show Notes
For a webcomicers a “bible” is usually overkill and involves as much work as several chapters of the comic itself. Some creators find them very useful, but for most of us it's wasted work. It's a good idea just to just a rough page of profile images to refer to because if you base your references on previous pages that's a great way to compound errors that are made earlier in the comic- believe me I know because I do that all the time.
The very most important aspect of consistency though is style. If you have a characteristic style and a specific style of doing characters it does not matter ONE JOT how “good” your art is, and perfection is irrelevant. As long you draw it the same way each time people will be able to understand it and see that it's a deliberate choice. It will make your work look honed and professional.
How do you go with maintaining consistency? I definitely have my own style but I'm not good at consistency as the images of my main character in the cover image shows.
Today we reissued Gunwallace's theme to - Charby the Vampiriate - A classic comic on DD and a very classic theme by Gunwallace featuring a very Vampiric organ (from Quackcast 173). Charby the Vampiriate is a real poster-child for consistency! Although the comic and style have evolved a LOT over the years, Amelius manages a frightening level of stylistic consistency with a massive ensemble cast of different characters.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Pipeline Lizards - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/jun/25/featured-comic-pipeline-lizards/
Featured music:
Charby the Vampiriate - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Charby_the_Vampirate/ - by Amelius, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 693 - Betray!
Jun 24, 2024
Betrayal is not a fave theme of mine in any media. I really dislike it, but it's so popular! We've talked about this one before but no one really remembers Quackcast 427 so we're having another crack at it! We talk about all the different aspects: political, love, country, loyalty etc and really have fun with it!
Episode 689 - One Big Passion and Influence
May 27, 2024
What was one significant inspiring piece of pop-culture that a massive influence over your creative endeavours? All of us have had many, many different influences over the years but that's certainly NOT what we're interested in here, what we're talking about is that one thing you can remember that had a huge effect on you, why, how, and when.
Episode 686 - May the fourth be with you
May 5, 2024
We recorded the Quackcast on the 4th of May, which of course means that it was “May the fourth”, the Star Wars celebration date! So we decided to talk about Star Wars, but instead of our usual rants about what we think could be done better we kept it to mainly positive stuff, focussing on what we loved about the films, mainly original series, which are the best ones.
Episode 683 - Hot for Teacher
Apr 15, 2024
This week it's a short cast because my computer broke and we wasted time trying to fix it! We're chatting about teachers in fiction, a topic inspired by Banes' newspost on the subject. There have been many memorable teacher based fictional stories, To Sir with Love most famously, The Sound of Music, Blackboard jungle, Goodbye Mister Chips, Assassination Classroom, Educating Rita, My Fair Lady, the Mighty Ducks, Dead Poets Society, Kindergarten Cop, Welcome Back Kotter, and so much more! What are your faves?
Episode 682 - Exposition!
Apr 8, 2024
Tantz came up with this week's topic: Exposition! It's because she's well on her way into starting her latest comic, Verdant, and working out ways to introduce the story, the world, characters, culture, magic systems, religion etc without doing a massive text dump, which people generally don't like too much. So how do you exposit in a good way?
Episode 678 - Panel order!
Mar 11, 2024
Banes did a really interesting newspost about panel order and how we read comics- not just left to right or right to left but which panel flows to what and how you get the reader to go in the right direction when something isn't intuitive. We're all comic people and we host a comic site so this was perfect for us to tackle!
Episode 674 - Fashion
Feb 12, 2024
Do you change your style to go with current fashions or do you stick with your own thing and stay independent of changing trends? This is complicated by the fact that most people's styles are often influenced by an earlier fashion they just stuck with, but certainly not always, and some fashions reach a point where they become fully developed and eternal (like Art Deco), so it's worth sticking with those rather than changing to reflect ephemeral trends that are never properly formed.
