Episode 336 - Side romance
Aug 21, 2017
Romances don't always have to be the main focus of a story, infact you can have richer, more interesting romances if they occur in support of a bigger plot issue. It can lend them and the story more weight if they're in a secondary position. Characters can form natural, less forced relationships with each other, and this can give the wider plot of the story more urgency or meaning because it has a direct bearing on the health of their union. You can reward fans with a wished for or unexpected blossoming of love between two favourite characters without having the same inevitability that a straight out romance has. Really, there are so many things you can do! This was inspired by Tantz's Saturday newspost. Gunwallace's theme for the week was for Mindfold: A tune that fits very well with its title! You can feel your mind folding with this gorgeous, echoing, evocative multicultural influenced sound, featuring all manner of crystalline ringing synths, soaring violins, drums and so much more. This would fit well with a high concept cyberpunk anime.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Tomb Busters - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/aug/15/featured-comic-tomb-busters/
Links:
Tantz's Newspost about romances - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/aug/18/romance-as-a-side-dish/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
PitFace - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Featured music:
Mindfold - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Mindfold/, by FallopianCrusader, Rated M.
Episode 335 - Dialoguecast
Aug 14, 2017
Dialogue is one of the most important elements for storytelling in most webcomics (there are exceptions). But dialogue is often hard for beginners, writing out imaginary conversations to push stories forward, show characterisation, or expositions are skills that don't come naturally! Banes has given us a helpful newspost on the subject and many DDer's offered their own experiences. In this Quackcast we expand on all of that. Our music theme for the week by Gunwallace was for our featured comic: Kings Club. This is a modern mafia movie soundtrack, starting off eerie and atmospheric and then ramping up the cool and bombastic. There’s traditional theme bolstered by a hard gritty rock techno edge.
Episode 333 - Retcon the retcon
Jul 24, 2017
The thing with retcons is that the author tends to get an idea which makes them want to go back over their story and redo or tweak the whole thing again, that's what's happened here… well sort off. Banes had some more ideas on the subject that he wanted to share, so we dove into the whole thing again! We were helped by a Websnark article on the subject linked to us by Kam in a comment on the last retcon Quackcast. It's a useful guide, breaking down the different kinds of retcon into five types: Category One: Now Revealed! A Lost Tale of the Hero! Category Two: The Story You Thought You Knew! Category Three: The Real Story You Thought You Knew! Category Four: The Story You Thought You Knew Was Right, But Now There's Been A Change! Category Five: Meet the New Hero, Not The Same As The Old Hero Because That Never Happened! In this Quackcast we expand upon those concepts. Gunwallace's theme for the week was for Lego Space - It’s Block time! The sound here brings to mind the techno-mechanistic world of Lego, and especially the bright and glittering transparent blocky world of SPACE lego, vectors, angles, and joins!
Episode 332 - The trouble with immortality
Jul 17, 2017
In this Quast we talk about immortality, which is a common trope in literature. Who seeks immortality in stories? It's usually bad guys, and it usually has some sort of extreme price,catch or dark side, so much so that people actually believe that if immortality WAS real that it would somehow be an evil thing. The fact is that most of the possible downsides are cultural constructions or justifications for our own mortality, if immortality WAS a real thing we don't really know what the down sides would be… But this means that the trope of immortality is not as limited as we've come to believe; it's wide open to be re-written and redefined. And a not, the story mentioned in the Quackcast was The Trouble With Lichen and it was by John Wyndham, not Roald Dahl. Gunwallace's theme for the week was for The Beard. This one is creepy and magical, just the type of music you’d associate with alien hair follicles, it brings to mind strange activity on a microscopic level inside the skin… unsettling!
Episode 331 - Retconning your work
Jul 10, 2017
Starwars, Ender's game, Captain America… All these are great examples (or bad ones) of “retcons”. But what IS a “retcon”? What it means is that you go back and change an established work by adding new information that has the effect of changing it in a small or significant way. You might do it in your comic, or a director might do it to a movie series, like George Lucas did famously with Star Wars: introducing concepts like “midi-chlorians” as an explanation for the force, having Han shooting Greedo second, sticking Hayden Christiensen in Return of the Jedi, among other things. A lot of the time this has the effect of pissing off audiences who've consumed the story and enjoyed it because it alters or even destroys the understanding they've built up based on it and the relationship they have wit the work. Retcons happen frequently in the comic world because publishers have to keep their franchises interesting and saleable to audiences, so origin stories get updated all the time for example. A huge recent retcon was Captain America revealing he'd been a long time sleeper agent for Hydra, which has the effect of messing up stories going back over 50 years… The writer Orson Scott Card had a great deal of success with his novel “Ender's Game”, but for some reason he can't stop retconning it, going back and adding and editing new bits and re-publishing it every few years, and most egregiously penning prequels from another character's perspective that retcon the original story entirely. As web comic creators we have the role of god-author so we all have the temptation to retcon at one stage or another. Can it ever be a good thing? Is it worth pissing off readers who have an emotional investment? Gunwallace's theme for the week was for Optimum: the future is here and it’s in space! This tune is so upbeat, positive, fun and futuristic, it really exemplifies the cute colourful graphics of Skreem’s comic.
Episode 329 - Character Archetypes, the Jung ones!
Jun 26, 2017
Welcome to the the yungle Characters make or break a story. In this quackcast Tantz Aerine brings all her skills as a head-shrink to bear and gives us the low-down on Jungian character archetypes! Jung was a clever Swiss bloke, a contemporary of that strange fellow Sigmund Freud, together they're credited as being the fathers of psychology. What we're chatting about here is a little system Jung thought up to evaluate people's personalities. People just like characters in books can be thought of a mixtures of particular character traits, to whit: The Innocent, The Orphan, The Innocent, The Orphan, The Hero, The Caregiver, The Explorer, The Rebel, The Lover, The Jester, The Sage, The Magician, The Ruler. These are the titles of the traits, the full descriptions can be found on Tantz's newspost, just follow the link bellow in the notes. We had a bit of fun trying to work out what traits define our own characters and then trying to do the same for major pop-culture comic and cartoon characters like Daffy Duck, Superman, Captain America and Batman. Gunwallace's theme for the week was The Dark Crusader: The sun rises on the vast metropolis, slowly sliding up a gleaming skyscraper, and standing heroically upon the very top, his cape blowing in the wind, is THE DARK CRUSADER!
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 327 - Flashback heart-attack!
Jun 12, 2017
FLASHbacks… you have to do them right or they will screw up the flow of your story. That's the theme of the newspost by Tantz Aerine that we stole this podcast topic from. :) Flashbacks can be expository, they can explain story elements and plot to you, they can push the narrative forward in a (seemingly) non-linear way, they can do all sorts of things, but one of the very worst is when they ruin the flow of your story and irritate your audience! That's what we're chatting about today, the poorly handled flashback and how to avoid it! Now let me tell you about that time… JUST KIDDING! Our music theme by Gunwallace this week was Galactic Nebula Race. This is all about speed! Racing, acceleration, hyper-velocity!! Watch those lights fly past faster and faster until they become just a single coloured blurred line… only to see your rival speed past as if you were standing still.
