Episode 624 - Comic panel creation
Feb 27, 2023
HPKomic is a great guy, he's been on DD since almost the beginning. He alternates the Friday newsposts with me, he focusses on the intricacies of comic panels. This time he asked people to talk about their own processes though and I thought this would be a good topic for a Quackcast! So on this comic podcast we're finally talking directly about making comic pages, who would've thought?
Topics and Show Notes
Tantz, Banes, and I all have our own methods and it was fun to talk about the differences. The key method I learned early on is to have one “sexy” panel and anchor the page around that. It could be a sexy character, an exciting scene, a giant mecha, a cool establishing shot or whatever, just as long as it grabs the reader focus and make them really want to look at the page and find out what it's all about. I anchor all the other stuff around that. It also means you can get away with less imaginative art and angles in other panels if you like.
It was also interesting to chat about how the long scrolling format has enabled artists to be more creative with storytelling but has meant the death of some of the more artistic traditional techniques of panel structure from traditional pages- which I really like to use. How do you make your comic panels?
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to American Pantheon - Down grimy stairs, duck your head into a dark basement dive bar. Blue smoke curls lazily up towards the dusty, slow moving ceiling fan. A grizzled, craggy faced man with shadowed eyes sits alone nursing a glass of whisky, a battered pork pie hat on his head. He throws you a gap-toothed smile, clears his throat and lets out a racking cough…
Cool, slow jazz…
Topics and shownotes
Links
HPKomic's newspost on comic panel creation - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/feb/24/panel-by-panel-let-me-ask-you-something/
Banes' newspost on the differences between writing comics and prose - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/feb/22/prose-v-comics/
Featured comic:
Sell Outs - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/feb/21/featured-comic-sell-outs/
Featured music:
American Pantheon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/American_Pantheon/ - by Serg19, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
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Episode 623 - Arrogance vs humility
Feb 20, 2023
Arrogance is a fun subject. Related to cockiness, hubris, assertiveness, self confidence and pride. It's a fantastic trait for a villain and it's really fun to write. Heroes are often arrogant too when they need to learn a lesson in order to become a better person, it's super common in stories. We're all a bit arrogant ourselves about our skills, our knowledge, where we come from, what we look like etc. It's a universal trait! It often strikes when we think we know better or know it all on a subject: the human tendency to over-reach and to speak for others.
Episode 622 - Whaddaya take me for?
Feb 12, 2023
This is when the writer leads you to think something big has happened in the story, like a character dying or falling in love or winning a big prize or something, only to have the character alive in the next part, or the prize or love never mentioned or addressed- this is “schmuck bait”. The writer gets you invested and excited for something but cops out, leaving the audience frustrated and cynical. This was common in older episodic things where the episodes are intended to be seen in any order, so the writers couldn't have continuing arcs and development across a season. It's also common in bad writing where the writer builds things up a lot for an events but then loses their nerve or just doesn't posses the skills to properly resolve things.
Episode 621 - Live Laugh Love
Feb 6, 2023
Toxic positivity can take all sorts of forms, but I think it's most easily recognised by someone telling you to be happy about something when you just don't feel it. It's a really odd, nasty, weird feeling when a person tells you you're basically not allowed to be grumpy or even neutral, you MUST be happy. How many times have we all been told to “smile” by someone?
Episode 620 - losers are human too
Jan 30, 2023
My idea was to talk about social pariah characters, people who it's socially acceptable to laugh at, despise, or even hate. They can be the uncool people, the dorks, the dags, the idiots, the overweight, the ugly, the old, the out of touch, the over the hill… On the extreme end they could be monsters and criminals. Generally they're written pretty two dimensionally as a collection of cliches, but when the writing goes beyond that to lend them humanity is when it goes to the next level.
Episode 618 - The grass is always Greener
Jan 15, 2023
The Saying goes that The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Fence. Envy and jealously are destructive, negative feelings that either lead to bad outcomes or just make you feel pretty crappy. It especially affects creators! We get down about our artwork, our writing, the popularity of someone else's comic etc and we wish WE were as good as them and wonder why we aren't… maybe we're just not as good? If we could only just have their talent, their luck, their skill then WE'D be awesome too. it's just not fair…
Episode 617 - Adventuring we go!
Jan 8, 2023
Adventure is a fun genre! Not as many things get made for it these days but it used to be hugely popular in the past. It's one of my favourite genres and this is what we're chatting about for the Quackcast. What IS adventure? I think it usually involves a whole lot of different things like exploration, action, discovery, heroic protagonists, rivals, travel, exotic places, fights etc. It can be set in the past or in the modern day. Good examples are The Mummy, Indiana Jones, the original Tomb Raider, the two new Jumanji films, Strange World, Pirates of the Caribbean, Ducktales, Tailspin, Jungle Cruise, Uncharted and so much more. I'd love to know your faves!
Episode 615 - Happy Christmas!
Dec 26, 2022
Happy Life Day! Hahaha! Merry Christmas for 2 days ago… This week we're talking about the “Christmas specials” that populate entertainment media this time of year. No particular reason for it, it's just because it's seasonal! It's not always Christmas focused there are the occasionally hanukkah things as well, and in the northern hemisphere this is the season for traditional winter festivals afterall.
