Episode 368 - the Blahcast!
Apr 2, 2018
Welcome to another Quackcast! in this “blahcast” we talk about a lot of different subjects. This Quackcast also sees the arival of a NEW feature! It's the Princess January Show, by VinoMas! Where all the hot gos about popularity on DD is covered. Pitface tells us that Fury is the greatest tank movie ever, I correctly state that Tankgirl owns that honour. We chat about mistaken criticism of a movie or webcomic based on what we WANTED it to be rather than what it was, Suckerpunch being a prime example, but also the Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Bad promotion also sinks projects especially films like John Carter on Mars. We chat about Star Wars The Force Awakens AGAIN! Which leads us to badly written female characters: a strong character is a well defined character that drives a story, not characters that are physically strong, they CAN be, but it has nothing to do with being a “strong” character. It's like the famous “survival of the fittest”: “fittest” does not mean “strongest”, it means the best “fit” for a situation. So those are some of the pop-culture things we “blah” about. We have a university student doing a study on webcomics. Please consider filling out her survey, linked in our links section! This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Project Prince. The simple plucked wire chords introduce us to a dark future scene. Synthesised organ and gentle patter of brushes on cymbals tip us off to the action to come. Loud distorted electric guitars give us the feel of a late night 1980s SciFi action movie
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Yasu no Monogatari - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/mar/27/featured-comic-yasu-no-monogatari/
Links:
The Princess January Show - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Princess_January_Show/
Webcomic Survey for a university study - https://www.umfrageonline.com/s/3e56c0d
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
PitFace - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
kawaiidaigakusei - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Ozoneocean - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Featured music:
Project Prince - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Project_Prince/, by Settha, rated E.
Episode Quackcast 367 - reply notifications And titles!
Mar 26, 2018
In this Quackcast we discuss a couple of things. First we chat about the prototype comment reply notification system that Alexey our programmer has just now come up with and people like Albino Ginger helped to pay for! And we talk about ways to make it more user-friendly, like having the first line of a comment show up on the comment notification pages… We'd LOVE more feedback on that! So please consider testing out the system and giving us your take on it. Then we chatted about the art of the TITLE! Why do things have the titles they do? What are some good or bad titles? Why did you choose YOUR title? Star Wars is an example of a good title for a movie: it told people exactly what to expect in a time when there weren't many other films like it, this is why it was never called “A New Hope” or “Episode 4” the way we mistakenly call it today, because no one in 1977 would have gone to see it ;) Happy birthday!!!!!!! Mr Banes! Banes Had his birthday DURING the Quackcast! Woot! Please show some love for this amazing guy ^_^ This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Holy Bible the Albino Ginger Version: Wonder into the giant cathedral of our lord, the revered and sacred Albino Ginger, watch the dust motes dance in the multicoloured sunbeams, tinted into rainbow shades by stained glass windows depicting the mighty feats of the Albino Ginger god as he was creating our world… This is techno trance church music for a new age!
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 160 - SciFi spectacular
Mar 31, 2014
While out on a routine survey mission in the Asimov Nebula, space-Captain Ozone and security officer second class Stanley Banes find themselves face to face with a drunken rampaging mutated alien duckmonster! Join our spacefaring heroes as they ramble about some of their favourite SciFi and discuss some of the best and worst features of the genre. But more importantly; will they get out of this predicament alive and will they ever get their booze back?
Episode 68 - Save the Cat for the Screenwriting
Mar 12, 2012
This marks the beginning of our story writing month! We're focusing exclusively and intensively on the art of writing, following on naturally from Kroatz's clever take on the concept of the monomyth. Bane's special interest and expertise is in scriptwriting, particularly movie screenwriting, so this is the approach we're taking. Screenwriting translates perfectly to comics even more than it does to novel writing or play-writing so hopefully this should come in handy to our webcomicing writers out there! First up we begin with an outline of general story structure, then move on to an explanation of some of the different TYPES of story.
Episode 67 - Journey to the centre of the story!
Mar 5, 2012
Today we have Kroatz with us; A highly intelligent writer from the Netherlands who explains the concept of the monomyth and how to use it to tighten and improve your story writing. He's so bright in fact that he makes Ozoneocean look rather dim, which is embarrassing for Ozone, but he gets over it. We give examples of how monomyth applies to great movies and books like Scott Pilgrim VS the world, Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings, just to help you understand it better... totally NOT to confuse you even more. Totally. And yet again we have brave, loyal, and heroic Banes to thank for the clever editing, especially his fine work with the DD soap, which ironically breaks every single rule of the monomyth paradigm.
