Episode 352 - Help make DD better! Comment notifications! More play
Dec 11, 2017
n this Quackcast we cover a few different things! FIRST up is our latest campaign to give YOU comment and reply notifications so that you can see who has commented on your comic pages easily, you can respond to them right away, then they'll KNOW you replied and they can respond back and so on. But before we can do that we need to raise money via Indiegogo to pay for it. YOU will be helping to pay for a feature that you want. That's how the site works these days, it's our site: yours and mine. In the next part of the Quackcast we have a series of short plays that we act out. They're based on comics here at DD. We start out with custom scripts written by Tantz Aerine for Without Moonlight and Brave Resistance. And then we have a go interpreting comic pages of The Epic of Blitzov, Bottomless Waitress, Typical Strange, and Pinky TA. Which brings us to our next thing: One of the perks you can pay for to help us out with our campaign will be a custom script based on your comic. WE will write it and act it out. YOU don't have to do anything but donate. Finally we have a note from KAM that we read out, informing us of the experience of adapting his comic into a script structure and we talk about that ourselves. If you'd like to write a script for us to act out on the Quackcast, just PQ me and I'll tell you where to send it. :) This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to Bram and Vlad: Welcome to the mysterious, echoing notes of a celestial funhouse. Then settle down to a demonic, yet friendly game of cards accompanied by a jaunty, yet cheeky tune on the piano!
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
**Help add notifications for new comments!**
Contribute here - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/drunk-duck-improvements-notifications-community-website/x/4410947#/
*Please* help us add this improvement to DD so you can get notifications for new comments and replies!
Featured comic:
Really - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/dec/05/featured-comic-really/
The comic versions of our plays so you can compare them:
Without Moonlight - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Without_Moonlight/5474204/
Brave Resistance 1 - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Brave_Resistance/5369318/
Brave Resistance 2 - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Brave_Resistance/5343944/
The Epic of Blitzov - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Epic_of_Blitzov/5525027/
Bottomless Waitress - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Bottomless_Waitress/5497904/
Typical Strange - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Typical_Strange/5459827/
Pinky TA - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pinky_TA/4855370/
Newspost on scripts - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/nov/16/turn-your-comics-into-movie-scripts/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
PitFace - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Featured music:
Bram and Vlad - - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Bram_and_Vlad/, by Strixvanallen, Rated E
Episode 321 - Cafecast
May 1, 2017
We titled this one “Cafecast” on the suggestion of Pitface! Instead of chatting about a subject, we took ourselves off to a metaphorical cafe and all started drawing, working on sketches, our latest comic pages, and chatting as we did. We're all comic artists after all and we talk about doing comic all the time, it's only fair that we actually WORK on them from time to time! Gotta “walk the walk”, not just “talk the talk”. We were also inspired by the video Pitface made of herself drawing her latest page of Putrid Meat for the 10th anniversary (vid linked in the notes). Watch it while you listen to this! So this is just a nice, informal chat from us as we draw. Next week we'll get back to more structured stuff when banes and I talk about how to do comedy and how to make comedic characters in comics. The music for this week by Gunwallace is for Half Hearted Headache. The theme fits very well with the comic title! It brings to mind a desolate wasteland in a post apocalyptic techno future, haunted by cyborgs and the hulks of burnt out military battle robots… Which is not what the comic is about but that’s what it paints for me: Jean Michel Jarre, meets knight Rider!
Episode 310 - Where to begin
Feb 13, 2017
Where to start; in the past, present, or future? Will you structure your story in a linear way or do something more complex? This was the topic of Hyena Hell's newspost on Friday and in this Quackcast Pitface, Banes, Tantz, and I discuss and mull over the ideas ourselves, along with the responses of the clever commenters. Gunwallace has given us a theme to The Archer and the Squirrel, which just so happens to ALSO be our featured comic! - The theme launches abruptly, like an arrow springing from a bow, this tune follows a beautiful arching path against a bright blue sky of melodic, rhythmic flute that begs you to dance a jig with a great big grin on your face!
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!
Episode 253 - narrative order and the flashback
Jan 11, 2016
Doing stories that start with the climax, then flash back, tell what happened to get there: the old narrative style of switching the first few chapters around to make a more interesting story. Sometimes it works GREAT because it throws you right into the middle of things and you have to work your way back to that point… It works very nicely in The Hangover for example! Often it's used very badly- in anime particularly, where they use it for foreshadowing and a tease to try and get you interested in the rest of the story- but anime story structure is so formulaic that all it really does is give you a cheap spoiler. Other times it doesn't work well is when the writer isn't very good so the viewer loses their way in the plot… If the writer is GOOD though you end up with Pulp Fiction. You'll love Gunwallace's theme here- a super funky jazz track for the comic Nothing Important Happened Today. Enjoy!
Episode 230 - Getting the formula RIGHT
Aug 3, 2015
We've talked about formulas before, but mostly in the context of escaping formulas and reinventing them. NOW however we're talking about using existing formulas to create a story, or creating new formulas and sticking to them to come up with your stories. Formulas can be a good tool to write with, along with their close sibling “the trope” they take elements that are proven to work and stick them on a solid framework for you to more easily create your story around. All you need to do is plug in your characters and situation and see how it all fits. Formulas are comfortable for people and make it easier for a writer to structure their story faster AND in a way they know should appeal to people. Enjoy Gunwallace's lovely theme for Rismo!
Episode 103 - Beginning a Collaboration, A Single Step
Nov 12, 2012
They say a long journey begins with a single step... Banes and I are undertaking just such a journey, undertaking a collaborative comic between the two of us! In this Quackcast we finally try and put all the theory into practise, remembering what we have learned from all our many previous Quackcasts on the subject of collaboration and attempting to find what out of all that is most useful to us in our stab at doing a collaborative web-comic.We undertook this Quackcast with no plan or structure, so please forgive us if it was a bit ropey, it was really just an attempt to document the beginning of our collaboration. Collaboration collaboration, collaboration, COLLABORATION!
Episode 69 - Dude with a Problem, Screenwriting: Part 2
Mar 19, 2012
DUDE... where's my problem? In this truly excellent number sixty nine Quackcast we get to the second part of our exploration of screenwriting techniques. We quickly recap on last weeks story structure outline and genres and then move on to talking about three NEW genres: Out of the bottle, Dude with a problem, and Rites of passage; Genres variously represented by things such as The Twilight Zone, Diehard, and Stand By Me. We also have the TENTH episode of our fantastic DD comedy soap "What Happened While I Was Away?' where we have the hilarious introduction of two totally new characters: the frantic, fried and frazzled Macattack, and the debonair cad Ironscarf. Don't miss it!
