Episode 293 - THE BURBS DVD commentary
Oct 5, 2016
In this happy season of October we come to that time of year again when Banes starts to get excited by Halloween! This year his idea was for us all to do a real time DVD commentary for The Burbs, that great comedy horror film staring the famous Tom Hanks, from back in 1989 when he was still a hilarious leading man and not a super serious drama guy. We all LOVE this movie, it's very funny, with a lot of cool twists and great scenes. Along with Tom Hanks it stars Princess Leia AKA Carrie Fischer, dudeman Corey Feldman, and Bruce Dern being Dale Gribble before Dale Gribble was even a thing! Pitface, Tantz, Banes and I all talk along to and over the movie as it's playing. To enjoy the FULL effect I strongly suggest you find a copy of The Burbs on a legal streaming site, or less than legal one depending on your ethics, or maybe even a DVD or old video! Pop it on and spoil the movie by listening to us all blather away together, it'll be just like watching the movie WITH us! And wouldn't you like that? I'm sure you would, we're all very friendly people. ;) Our feature AND the music by Gunwallace this week is for the same comic, “Useless”. The theme is atmospheric and haunting, lightened with the strains of a singing, melodic electric guitar.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Useless - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Useless/
Links:
The Burbs IMDB page - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096734/
The Burbs Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_'Burbs
The Burbs trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg7RpL3kTBk
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/
Featured music:
Useless - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Useless/ by uselessvigilantes, rated E
Episode 292 - Separating the art from the artists
Oct 5, 2016
Separating the art from the artist, the message from the messenger… Can you do this? You know, when you find out an actor, musician, comic artist or whatever is an arsehole or says things you disagree with or is a criminal, can you separate that from their work and STILL manage to enjoy it? Or does it taint everything they've ever made? I've thought about this a lot. I think I can usually separate the art from the artist and I DON'T think that consuming the work of that artist in any way legitimises what I disagree with about them personally or endorses their criminal behaviour unless the art is specifically about that. But it can really depend on how personally you're affected by whatever it was about the artist that offended you; A Jewish person could have a far more negative reaction, understandably, to the watercolours of Adolph Hitler than most other people, to use an extreme example. What about you? Can you separate the message from the messenger, the art from the artist? The comic chosen for a marvellous theme THIS week was Cybertech. You'll hear the sounds of apocalyptic destruction and burning plasma in a dark future, epic world.
Episode 291 - The philosophy and politics of comics
Oct 3, 2016
This week's Quackcast is brought to us by Tantz Ariene! Tantz is a very political creature, seeing as she comes from Athens which is pretty much the birthplace of politics AND philosophy, that's hardly surprising. Clever Tantz in her tantzglasses, dudeman Banes, and me,Ozoneocean all talk about this interesting subject: what are the politics and philosophy involved in YOUR webcomic? Even though we don't realise it, there's ALWAYS politics of some sort in a comic, as well as philosophy. If your writing is pretty clever you might have multiple political view points in your comic and a whole range of different philosophies! Consider something as basic as Peanuts. Those characters have all sorts of political viewpoints! Peppermint Pattie is very forthright in her feminist views, but she's also pretty left wing, Lucy is rather domineering and and right off centre in the way she thinks, Charlie Brown is a bit of a fatalist blank slate for the audience to project themselves onto, Linus is a quiet intellectual… etc, I don't know, it's been years since I've read Peanuts! Gimmee a break! In superhero comics it's the same; most of them are pretty right wing, libertarian, individualist sorts of characters- Batman for example, Iron man, etc. There's a good argument for Superman being somewhat more Socialist since he's an ordinary man with an ordinary job most of the time and works out in the open for the good of all humanity, while Batman is a super rich guy most of the time and when he's doing hero stuff it's usually smaller scale vigilante type stuff against people who threaten his city, or commerce in his city like thieves and the Mafia. Try it yourself! Examining the politics and philosophy of your OWN characters as well as classic ones is pretty interesting. Gunwallace's theme this week is for Krasnosvit, a subtle, careful, fairytale theme, inducing you into the dark forest strangeness of Krasnosvit.
Episode 290 - Characters coming alive
Sep 26, 2016
The idea fr this Quackcast was inspired by a Korean TV series that Tantz Aerine recommended called “W” (http://myasiantv.se/drama/w/). The show is about a manga artist who does a super popular webcomic. He wants to quit doing it and has decided to end by killing off his main character, but his main character seems to have ideas of his own about that… Tantz and I thought about how that could apply to us real webcomicers. That's a fantasy situation, but if it could happen, which of your characters would do that? Which one is independent enough from you that they would want to take on a life of their own and fight you? Incorporated in this are the idea of characters “breaking the fourth wall” and the fictional characters becoming so well realised and independent from the author (so to speak), that they seem to influence the direction of a story against the intentions off the writer. People will often talk about characters seemingly writing the story themselves or taking things in directions the writer never wanted to go. So that's what we chat about! You really should check out “W”, it's a great series! This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to HardLuckComics. It's full of energy and vive, driving. This is working music! This is the intro to the drive time program on the radio! This is “the news”!
Episode 288 - Evoking too much Emotion
Sep 12, 2016
Drunkduck's beloved HippieVan was influenced by last week's Quackcast on Evoking emotion to come up with a newspost about NOT invoking emotion when you don't mean to: keeping things funny, even IF heavy stuff happens to be going on, which can be tricky. I thought that was pretty interesting so we decided to talk about that on THIS week's Quackcast. We've also got some clever community contributions on the original theme of evoking emotion. So it's a pretty full Quackcast all up. We also have Pitface and Tantz Aerine joining us again! Yaaaaay! Gunwallace's theme this week is for The weird adventures of Armless Amy, it's touching and evocative, as if it’s setting up to reveal a horrible mystery to us.
Episode 283 - Writing Dialogue pt1
Aug 8, 2016
Dialogue is a key part of any comic, it pushes the story along, keys the reader in on things that would be otherwise ambiguous, hints and foreshadows at future happenings, creates humour… well, it's just a big part of comics, that's all! And that's what we're chatting about here in this Quackcast! The topic stems from a forum thread I posted a while ago asking people about their approach to creating dialogue and how people go about it; is it heavily scripted in advance or is it one of the last things you come up with? People had some very interesting responses! Gunwallace's musical theme was Magical Misfits. The sound is magical, classical, threatening, yet full of adventure! Love those creeping cellos, the violin and clarinet sound like a humorous dialogue between the wittier members of the party.
Episode 280 - Ruts and Dreams
Jul 18, 2016
For THIS particular DD Quackcast we were inspired by clever and incisive newsposts made by Pitface and Kawaii. Kawaii made a great post about the idea of going for your dreams before it's too late, using the Paradise Falls trip from the movie UP as an analogy: the poor old guy and his wife never got to go there together because real life kept on getting in the way, eating into their savings… Sometimes you just have to let things slide a little and take a risk or you never will reach that dream. Pit's post was about always moving forward, and again; not just getting stuck in the rut of routine and the mundane. You don't just want to march forward onto the grey twilight of your life having been stuck doing and knowing the same things. Don't waste your free time solely on entertainments, arguments, and diversions, rather you should take time to work on something- to work TOWARDS something every day… and maybe that will help you achieve your dream? It could be as simple as working on a webcomic, each page brings you closer to the end of the story and producing something you can be proud of and maybe even marketable! little bits of exercise every day will help you work towards that figure you want… Studying or reading on your favourite subject will eventually make you a master of it, and then maybe you can even write your own book on it? Don't just consume for diversion, consume with the intent to create and advance yourself! Use your time wisely. Gunwallace's theme for Mailbox Rocketship is quirky, techno, funny and futuristic! It also features some familiar voices!
Episode 279 - Meet the Mutants!
Jul 11, 2016
Our very own heavily mutated Pitface put up a guest post about her fellow mutants, filling in for HippieVan while Hippy is away fighting the mutants in Japan wearing a tie-dyed sailor suit and riding a Volkswagen battle mecha, as you do in Japan… anyway, as a member of the anti-mutant police force, I had to drag in Pit for questioning! And that's what we did for this Quackcast. Banes and I interrogate Pit on the subject of mutants! Mutants are a forgotten race at the moment: Mutants are the zombies of SciFi in a way; a mob of anonymous monstrous minions who exist to menace the heroes and be gunned down in their thousands. But they're also so much more… Unlike zombies, mutants have a lot more personality and humanity, they can also be far more demonic and revolting than any zombie, they can be any shape, size of configuration. Mutants are so much scarier and adaptable than mere zombies, because unlike zombies they're not always degrading and falling apart, no, mutants are evolving constantly, they can get larger, gorier and more terrifying, i.e. The Thing. For mutant pathos witness the Mars mutants in the original Total Recall: There's a man with a baby in his chest and we feel for him and respect him. We have superhero mutants too in the form of the X-men. Can't forget them! But remember also that “mutants” are also a very real thing in this world, unlike zombies, in fact we are ALL mutants in one way or another, not just those special people with a conjoined twin or extra nipples or genitals or whatever, all of us have our own exciting DNA variation! I have a big nose, crooked lower teeth and pasty white skin myself, I'm practically a Morlock. So what is YOUR “mutation”?