Episode 585 - Adaptation
May 30, 2022
Adaptations of one thing into another is an interesting process. What's lost, what's gained, what modifications do you have to do to make it happen? As webcomicers we do it all the time in many ways, we have to adapt our influences into ideas, adapt those to stories, and adapt those to images and comics, which isn't trivial! It's often quite difficult to transform the written word into narrative sequential art- what portion of the writing gets directly turned into images, what's cut, and what becomes dialogue? For me about 20% is cut, 78% becomes art and 2% becomes dialogue or captions.
Topics and Show Notes
We chat about film and story adaptations as well of course, War of the Worlds (HG Wells) in particular, since it's become several different movies, artwork, video games, a radio play, and a really excellent prog-rock concept album among other things. All those adaptations take different approaches, Orson Wells' radio play version updated it from the late 19th century Britain to his present day and location and framed it as a developing news story, making clever use of the medium it was playing on. Most cinematic versions have followed Orson's style, but the concept album by Jeff Wayne stuck with the original historical setting which made the story much more interesting, tragic and compelling.
Another more current and different take on adaptations is the “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” movie. This is a live action and CG animated hybrid film version of the 1990s Disney adventure cartoon series which featured a crime fighting rodent team. The usual approach to those adaptations is to simply update the origin story, stating from 0 and set it in the present day using current animation technology to make the characters look as real as possible, the original media is treated as lore and inspiration but is not cannon to toe movie. This movie however took the opposite approach: the original cartoon is treated as a real TV show that the characters (who are shown as actors), stared in, and this movie shows their lives 30 years later. The animation is a mixture of 3d CGI and pseudo 2D cell animation, plus pseudo stop motion claymation and the film is largely used to parody and spoof animated adaptations in general, so it’s perfect for this topic!
So what are you fave adaptations? Where dp they go wrong or right? And how do you go about the process with your own work?
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Amie Armageddon. Hard to describe this one, it sounds like a great pop-song you’d hear on the radio or as the theme song to a big budget movie. Echoing tonal vocals, evocative, layered, sounds… It sets a scene and then expands upon it. Just a really lovely piece of electronica.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Amie Armageddon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/may/23/featured-comic-amie-armageddon/
Featured music:
Amie Armageddon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Amie_Armageddon/ - by Machineheadstudio, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 584 - Drawing gender
May 23, 2022
We start off with the idea of talking about art techniques, tips and tricks we've mastered and could help people with but the cast turned into a discussion about drawing male and female characters- also trans, androgynous, etc. There's an art to representing gender in imagery! It's super important to remember that the way we see gender in art is mainly culture based rather than an innate biological reaction and the perception of gender in art is different according to your cultural background. It's basically a visual language that everyone learns, but as an artist you have to learn to actually “speak” it, and that's not as straight forward as you think.
Episode 583 - Why is it bad?
May 16, 2022
Spoiler- we don't actually talk much about Yu-Gi-Oh! But I feel it's a good example of a pretty bad a so-bad-it's-good story, but bad nevertheless. The idea we're talking about here is that it's useful to look at bad stories and stick with them because they can really help you write better. They're a lot more useful than good stories because you'd rather just enjoy those and it's a bit harder to examine them for technical details, but with “bad” stories the faults stand out strongly. Instead of simply dismissing a bad story or making fun of it, it's more useful and valuable to try and “fix” it: try and work out why it seems bad and think about what would be needed to make it better, then think about how that applies to your own work. Maybe you're actually making many of the same mistakes?
Episode 582 - Time travel
May 9, 2022
Let's go forward in time to the past so we can get back to the future and kill our grandfather and be our own ancestor while we step on a bug and change the course of evolution 200 million years in the future and doom the Morlocks to a date with Doctor Who, while Bill and Ted drive a Delorean in the Old West and save Fry's dog as it waits out the front of the Pizza place… Time travel is fun to talk about, but it's easy to mess up because paradoxes in plots pop up all over the place as timelines intersect and cross over and over, getting tangled and logically prevent events that have already happened from happening!
Episode 581 - David's always right
May 2, 2022
David's always right - Introducing Hpkomic! Hpkomic has been with DD since the earliest days, he's a comic artist, writer, English teacher, and podcaster. He even participated in the second comicbook challenge that Platinum held way back in the day when they controlled DD, and came second! He was part of many community events, like the Drunk Duck Civil War (the DD answer to the comic book Marvel Civil War) and DD VS Comic Genesis, which was the DC Vs Marvel of Webcomics! In fact he has the oldest post on this version of the DD forums! After the site was fully deleted at the end of 2005, he was the first person back who commented with an offer of help to get things back online again. Bonus points if you can find it.
Episode 580 - Fantasy worlds crossing over
Apr 25, 2022
The full team is assembled yet again! Tantz came up with the idea of having a look at hidden fantasy worlds in fiction that have strong ties with the “real world” and how they function together. Her main example was the world of Harry Potter which has many strong connections to the real world and yet manages to stay very well hidden, which stretches plausibility a bit. The World of Casandra Clare's Mortal Instruments is similar in that regard, it's deeply tied to the mundane world and yet it stays hidden from it to a degree that isn't really possible.
Episode 579 - 2022DD Awards begins!
Apr 18, 2022
The DD Awards have come around again and now it's time for you to join in! To start with there's the red carpet event! Simply draw your characters showing up to the awards ceremony, submit it to Tantz and get on board with the awards! There's a link bellow… The DD Awards are a fantastic community even that we've been running on the site for years and years. It's a great way to get more eyes on your comic and increase your community presence. All you have to do is join in, create comic pages on the awards theme featuring your characters in the various events and things and you're part of it. Like most awards ceremonies it's not really about who's best or most popular or whatever, it's about participation, making your work visible to people, raising your profile, and getting eyes on you! To that end the red carpet event is up first, get in on that and make a start with the awards!
Episode 578 - Punching toys in the boobs
Apr 11, 2022
BANES RETURNS! …to talk about boobs with the rest of us. The topic of the discussion this week was brought to us by Tantz's newspost on the 2nd of April about bosoms and how their shape and size doesn't matter. In the crusade against “sexualisation” in comics people tend to focus too much on big or “unnaturally shaped” boobs, but the truth is that any type of boobs can be fetishized and by reacting against one type you just cause a new form of exclusion.
