Episode 79 - Banes on Ozoneocean
May 29, 2012
In this episode Banes turns the tables and shines the spotlight into my squinting, sweating face, forcing me to babble incoherently as I vainly attempt to give a good account for myself and my art technique. It turns out that while I perform ok as a passable interviewer, as an interviewee I'm off with the faeries! Banes is eventually able to dredge some almost useful info out of my jumbled mind, at least some of the time there... so this is where I try and give people some useful info on how to do art stuff and comic things!
Episode 76 - Gunwallace on Short Story Writing
May 7, 2012
Short story webcomics, flash fiction, O'Henry stories, circular endings... what ARE these things? Well our resident writing expert extraordinaire from the land of the long white cloud fills us in with some new insights into the art of short fiction. How many panels, how many pages, what approach should you use typically when going for a short story? Well Gunwallace gives his take on all these questions and more, giving us the benefit of his years or experience and wealth of talent... Along with some extra special bonus ukulele music thrown in on top just for us!
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.
Episode 66 - Why do you do it?
Feb 27, 2012
After finally definitively vanquishing Ozoneocean last week, Banes is now top dog and chief superhero in the Quackcast universe. He begins his reign by trying to find out from the comicers on DD WHY they write and/or draw their comics, possibly as part of a dastardly plan. In Quackcast 66 we wanted to know what drives people to want to create? How did their comics come to be: Ideas-wise, writing-wise, editing-wise, and web-wise? Why did they choose comics as opposed to some other medium, like dance or archery? How/where did people's initial spark come from for their comic? Where do people draw ideas from? These and more questions are answered interestingly by many creative and clever people, giving us a cool insight into their work and hopefully your own as well.
Episode 65 - Men and Women in Tights
Feb 20, 2012
Banes and Ozoneocean round off the topic of superheroes, beating that wonderhorse to death well and truly. There's a lot of reminiscing here about ancient superhero pop-culture and along the way we discuss silver age and golden age comics, supervillains, second stringer superheros and why the remain that way, the gender and culture appeal of some characters, evolution of superheroes towards realism and grit, then webcomic superheroes, especially those on DD, and then finish up with why we like superheroes. Sidekick Captain-Ozone continues to echo disturbingly from the void while the real hero, Ultra-Banes, continues to bring the humour. We decide that it all comes back to Superman and Batman, who are the ultimate prototypes for the two main types of superheros: super, good, and perfect Vs normal, flawed, and human.
Episode 64 - Of Gods and Superheroes
Feb 14, 2012
Superheros Banes and Ozoneocean have it out in a titanic, world-shaking battle complete with sparkly flying electricity vividly written sound FX and a laser light show to see who will be top-dog in the Gothic metropolis of Quackcast city. Ozoneocean attempts to lull the audience into a false sense of security by reciting everything he knows about superheroes and various gods and then comparing the two in his echoy, god-like voice. Meanwhile, banes counters with the rather unusual tactic of trying to entertain them with his hilarious wit and clever improvisations. We discus the origins of superheroes, superheroes movies and everything in between in the first of this two part Quackcast marathon. Re-issued episode 64! We discuss superheros
Episode 63 - Working for a living
Feb 7, 2012
Dressed in a long, tight fitting sparkly black evening gown and elbow length opera gloves, the lovely Skoolmunkee dashes from the scene of the murder of poor Banes to arrive breathless on the Quackcast set and establish her alibi! This week we talk about what us amateur webcomic artists do to support ourselves, or just in those few brief moments when we're not actually making webcomics, and how that affects, influences and changes our webcomic work. We have many interesting contributions from interesting people! I must once again apologise for the sound quality though, major computer trouble I'm afraid. Episode 63 re-issued! How working life affects webcomicing.
