Episode 183 - Work Life balance
Aug 15, 2014
This Quackcast topic was inspired by a newspost by Kawaiidaigakusei who described a short autobiographical account of her own experiences managing the difficult work/life balance of doing webcomics online and at the same time having a normal life otherwise. How do you balance those? What do you sacrifice to keep a comic going? Is it worth it? In this Quackcast we discuss those aspects, as well as some saucy banter to begin with...
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and Show Notes:
Featured comic:
All Unicorns to Battle Stations - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/All_Unicorns_to_Battle_Stations/
Work life balance newspost:
Here - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2014/jul/21/the-balancing-act-of-the-real-world-and-creating-webcomics/
Special thanks to:
Kawaiidaigakusei, featurer, newsposter and supermom - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
The musical theme this time was for Dinnersaurus Rex - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Dinnersaurus_Rex/ by Bemirry.
Episode 180 - Colour your world! part 1
Aug 14, 2014
For this week's Quackcast I asked people what colour techniques they use and BOY was I surprised by the high calibre of the responses! We had some heavy hitter contributions, people with colour skill beyond what I can conceive of, and I'm no slouch myself when it comes to colouring. We had such good contributions and the subject is so complex that that we decided to split it over two parts so we can properly discuss this very technical concept: COLOUR! Colouring is an important and advanced skill when it comes to comic art. At the most basic level you can restrict yourself to a simple palette with no shading or tones, if you want to be more advanced though there is no limit to how complex you can get. Hopefully the advice presented here can help you with your artwork!
Episode 179 - Token representation in comics
Aug 11, 2014
There's no question in my opinion as to whether representation of different kinds of people in fiction matters. Having spent my childhood poring over superhero comics in which the girl's job is usually to turn invisible and press a button or something, I remember being impressed and delighted by some of the badass female characters in The Spirit. Lady-people could be cool, too?! Is it insulting when comics add token characters to their line up, or does it really make a difference? And what makes a token character anyways? -HippieVan. Banes, HippieVan and I focus on the subject of token representation in media, mainly comics. This discussion was inspired by a newspost HippieVan made in response to a new character in the Archie comic, which got a lot of interesting responses.
Episode 176 - Endings, part 3
Jul 21, 2014
For our FINAL part of our discussion of story endings we talk about yet MORE ending tropes, methods and styles. In a fit of towering arrogance and indefensible pomposity we even trash the mighty Shakespeare for his ending of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet! Our contributors offered up some truly interesting perspectives on the matter or constructing story endings and we give them their due respect by reading them out in strange voices... As I've said in all of these so far: writing the end of a story is the hardest part so we hope to provide some clues on how to write a good one. Ad with that we reach the END of our exploration of ends! Next week we interview AMY and Nick from CHARBY THE VAMPIRATE!!!
Episode 175 - Endings, part 2
Jul 14, 2014
Arrrr, this be the second part of our discussion on writing ENDINGS in stories of all kinds, particularly for webcomics! But we discuss a few movie and TV endings here, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, No Country For Old Men, True Detective, and Dexter to name a few. Writings endings is the hardest part of the writing process, so it's lucky we had some wise contributions from people on how to do a good job of it! As well as giving examples of likes and dislikes... This is the second in our 3 part series on endings! I must apologise for the low quality of the recording here, there were very weird delay and repeating effects going on, Banes seems to be singing his own little madrigal at a couple of points. There are a a few parts I had to rerecord later; just a warning about the change of style.
Episode 171 - Let's do the timecast again!
Jun 16, 2014
Hello! This is Banes from the future. I've come back to warn you of a grim, grim fate that awaits us all. Please go back in time and contribute to the Quackcast on the subject of time travel. Last time, you didn't contribute and it DESTROYED THE DAMNED WORLD! We can't allow this to happen again. This Dystopia is a true horror. All the toilets operate backwards. A nightmare! We asked people what they thought of the mind-bending story device of time travel, what variations of time travel stories they liked, what variations they disliked, or weather they dislike Time travel altogether (some people do). We also wanted to know their favourite time travel stories (or experiences, if they happened to be a real time traveller), what movies, books, comics, songs, or whatevers about time travel did they like, dislike, and why? We had some good contributions on this fave story theme and it also gave us a chance to chat about some of the great time travel stories in pop-culture that abound!
Episode 169 - The Chatcast!
Jun 2, 2014
In this fake Chatcast, Ozoneocean and Banes receive calls from their versions of various duckers who ask many interesting questions such as "Where do you get your ideas from?", and "Where do you get your ideas from?", and the always popular and thought provoking enigma of our time; "Where do you get your ideas from?". Our fake callers include Bravo1102, Skulbie, Lonnehart, Skoolmunkee, Ironscarf, Genejoke, and Pitface who called especially to tell us about her epic shoe buying expedition. We really had a marvellous time talking to all these totally counterfeit versions of these wonderful people!
Episode 167 - Anatomy of a Villain
May 19, 2014
Today we talk about villians! Kawaiidaigakusei made a newspost about villains that generated quite a bit of interest so Banes and I had her on to chat about them and read out some of the things our community members had to say. Kawaii can introduce the topic in her own words: I used to take the side of the cheerful, positive, and heroic protagonist in films and comics when I was much younger. As I got older, I wised up to the idea that being a protagonist is relative to biases of the storyteller. Now I rewatch those same films with a renewed perspective of what constitutes “good” and “bad”. Lately, I have been finding that more and more, I am a fan of villains. I believe the reason we are seasoned to differentiate heroes and villains at a young age is to train our super-ego about rules and societal expectations. It teaches every Goffus that they should aspire to be more like Gallant. But living a hero's lifestyle by-the-book can be as boring as vanilla. For the record, I love vanilla, it is GOOD, but it does not make it any less boring. Emulating the characteristics of a supervillain feeds our id. It just feels good to break the rules. Give villains a chance. Afterall, without a villain, there would be no need for a hero.
