Episode 496 - titular titularity!
Sep 14, 2020
Titles are surprisingly important for your comic! We don't often realise that when we first start them, but a title is one of the very first ways people come across your work. You have to sell it to them and give them an idea of what to expect in only a very few words. You can take a lot of different approaches to that, like teasing and intriguing them with a title that suggests something interesting or mysterious, character names are great for that. You can be completely literal and obvious. You can use a pun… you can take an existing popular title and alter it in a slight way… There are so many things you can do!
Topics and Show Notes
Ema Clare made a newspost on Friday that had a lot of clever tricks to use to come up with a story title and that's why we picked this topic to discuss. There's also this clever game that was going around on Twitter where you give your comic two alternative titles: one that's a serious title that represents your comic and one that represents it in a humorous way. Like my comic for example, the title is Pinky TA, which is the name of the character, the TA is her initials and can mean many things (T&A), but also helps the name in internet searches because it makes “Pinky” less generic, an alternative “serious” name for it that better explains the comic would be “War in the 1920s with Dieselpunk Mecha and Sexy Girls”, a funny title could be “Mecha Strippers” :D
What approach did you use for a title and have you tried coming up with two alternative titles, one serious and one funny? It really helps you to come up with better ways to sell your work!
The musical feature this week that Gunwallace has given us is theme to the Lich Quing’s Tale. It's a slow march to the deep wooden voice of a cello, then we fall through the floor into something reminiscent of Quadrophenia and the break in Who Are You, classical strings and staccato electronica overlaying and weaving a colourful tapestry of light.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Em's newspost with tricks to make a good title - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/sep/10/insert-title-here-tips-for-titling-your-comic/
Featured comic:
Good Words with Sako The Beautiful Heart of a Steggo Girl - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/sep/08/featured-comic-good-words-with-sako-the-beautiful-heart-of-a-steggo-girl/
Featured Music:
Lich Quing’s Tale - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Lich_Quings_Tale/, by Wolva, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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Episode 493 - Use existing IP to explore new things?
Aug 24, 2020
First up… HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO TANTZ! This Quackcast is about the topic of whether it's right to change an established character just to fit with the ideas and styles of a new creator or change them in accordance with an idea or political position you want to explore, OR should you instead create a whole new character or story to do that with? Bane's newspost gave the example of the ersatz justice league created for The Boys, where Homelander =/= Superman. The series was made to look at the dark side of superheros, but it doesn't ruin established and much loved heroes to do that…
Episode 485 - For your eyes only
Jun 29, 2020
Do you make work that no one will ever see? Do you do that so you can mess around and experiment without consequences, for practice, for testing out an idea that you MIGHT show later, or just so you can have fun? This was inspired by a newspost from Banes who used to draw figures on chalkboard and erase them as the story progressed. We chatted a lot about this and then moved on to talk about how we've each written or drawn porn that no one will ever see. Have you drawn or written secret porn in your free time for fun? :D
Episode 480 - In Style!
May 25, 2020
Styles are a very individual thing. Emma Clare did a great newspost on them last week featuring a pic of Sailor Moon that she drew in her own style. The cover image here features my own version. Pit, Tantz, Banes and I had a good long chat about all the different aspects of style and how you develop them.
Episode 478 - Pity da fool!
May 11, 2020
Fools are an iconic character trope and I wanted to explore them. They're a lot more varied and interesting than is readily apparent. There's a LOT more too a fool than what something like TV tropes suggests, unless you get into the subtypes… And that's what we explored in this free-form discussion. I introduced the idea in the Patreon only video where Tantz, Banes, Pt and I try and get a handle on the idea for the first time, so that's a good behind the scenes insight into what goes on!
Episode 475 - Tropeagedden! overuse of fashionable tropes...
Apr 20, 2020
Certain tropes or stylistic ways of telling a story can get really, really popular and trendy very quickly and it seems like they're everywhere! Suddenly many story are all told with the same sort of stylistic flourishes. The first few times it's done that way it's clever and meaningful but after that people just use the same thing without understanding it properly and consequently usually do a really crappy job!
Episode 469 - The cartoons that date us and Discord
Mar 9, 2020
We're talking about the cartoons that made us! This was inspired by kawaiidaigakusei's newspost from last week about Daria. Daria was a really cool cartoon from the late 90s. It was influential to her, to me as well, and I thought it would be a great idea for a Quackcast to talk about the other cartoons that were influential to us at certain points in our lives.
Episode 460 - Enough trope to hang yourself with
Jan 5, 2020
Happy 2020 all you lovely people who listen to us! What we're talking about today are tropes in fiction that bother us because they don't exist in reality: they ONLY exist in fiction pretty much. In the cover pic we have an image from The Witcher: he has two big longswords on his back. In fantasy people always carry longswords on their backs. This is a trope that only exists in fiction because you can't draw a sword longer than about 60cm from your back. So people just didn't carry swords like this. Even if it was only to transport them (although ta transport only option makes a sort of sense). This was only even rarely done with Asian swords. We'd LOVE to hear about more of these that other people have noticed!
