Episode 363 - The Art Of Comments
Feb 26, 2018
Jason Moon, author of Crater's Edge, messaged me about some comments he had. He was perturbed about reader reaction to his storyline and wasn't sure how to handle the comments. I told him that those sorts of comments are the very greatest compliment an author can get, because once you get them you've reached the stage where people care about your work enough to get angry: they're invested emotionally in the characters. Yes. It is initially confronting to have someone commenting like that but what you really need to do is step back for a moment and realise what a gigantic compliment it is in actuality. It means you affected them strongly, and that's quite an important thing to be able to do. It doesn't happen much but it's quite a GOOD thing when it does. It's not an easy thing to do to get people that invested. What it really means is you have succeeded as a writer and reached an important milestone. We also have a chat about getting comments in general and also GIVING comments! Hopefully our new comment notification feature will be a boon for this kind of interaction. This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Kitty Kitty Bang Bang: Multilayered Chinese video-game war anthem with a modern twist! That’s how I’d describe this complex little piece. It’s the final boss battle, you’ve got no spare lives, you’re down to your last powerup and time is running out!
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Stringy and Mopy - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/feb/20/featured-comic-stringy-and-mopy/
Jason Moon's Crater's Edge - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Craters_Edge/
Comment notification Beta-testing - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2018/feb/07/youve-got-mailnotifications/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
PitFace - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Ozoneocean - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Featured music:
Kitty Kitty Bang Bang - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Kitty_Kitty_Bang_Bang/, by MoeAlmighty, rated T.
Episode 357 - Power, baddies, and sexiness
Jan 15, 2018
Sexy badguys: power vs confidence vs sexiness. That's what we chat about here. Why do we have sexy bad guys? Are all bad guys and girls sexy? What makes them sexy? Is power truly sexy in fiction or is it confidence? There are so many aspects to this and so many totally unexamined assumptions, misconceptions, and cilches. We try our best to examine all these aspects because we all love a sexy villain and we loved talking about them even better. This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to Really? It's ultra poppy Daft Punk-like, bouncing with joy and enthusiasm, this one wants you to get up and go and it wants you to do it now! Really!
Episode 348 - Action Talking
Nov 13, 2017
Special treat at the start of this Quackcast, a Spang news announcement from the oooooold days of DD! This week's Quackcast is on the interesting notion that talking CAN be action. It's based on a newspost of Tantz's. I'm not quite bright enough to fully explain it here so I'll quote Tantz: “Often in making webcomics, creators may try to have more action than discourse, as it tends to make the comic more visually interesting and give opportunities to avoid ‘talking head’ scenes. However, I think that sort of conundrum is a potential trap that might prevent creators from truly making use of all the potential their story and characters have- because if done right, everything on the webcomic page IS action. Discourse or discussions between characters have a natural dynamic and pacing that has to be tapped in, in order to make the scene itself dynamic and powerful even though the character’s aren’t physical with each other.” Basically, even the talking IS action, not separate from it. The talking give the action meaning and context after-all! This week Gunwallce has given us the theme to Energize: Serious beats, plodding purposefully, harsh guitar, flashing like the pulse of a police light, eclectic electric rock, flavours of early 80s ska and post-punk create an unusually tasty mixture!
Episode 304 - eeeeeevil!
Jan 2, 2017
What defines evil in fiction? I say the simplest one is bad guys are selfish, good guys are selfless. That is massively over simplistic but it's a good easy template for basic hero's and villains. Basic ones I was just doing a quick thought experiment to work out an easy way to define “good” and “evil” characters in fiction. The more selfless someone is the more “good” they are: the more they think of others, want to help people, put the needs of the masses first, the more willing they are to reach across to their enemies etc. The more selfish a person is the more “evil” they are: if they don't consider the needs or feelings of others, help out their own small group and let others suffer, help themselves first. Of course there are many other more advanced aspects, especially if you consider the relative nature of these things: the idea that everyone thinks they're the good guy from their own perspective, being cruel to be kind, being too authoritarian and heavy handed in the use of power, NOT using power when you should, helping in a way that only SEEMS destructive and selfish, trying to help but causing destruction and chaos in the process, which brings us to the dreaded “unintended consequences”. BUT, the selfless/selfish equation is a nice simple starting point to build from. In the Quackcast we discuss these aspects as well as more advanced notions about what makes a good evil character, what makes a bad one, humanising evil, and weakening you evil character by humanising them too much. Gunwallace's musical theme was for The Cull: Dark, haunting, and compelling- Eastern European Jewish, country and rock, reminds me of Tracy Bonham’s later work.
Episode 226 - The Power of Contrast
Jul 5, 2015
In this Quackcast I interrogated Mr Banes on the subject of his first newspost: Contrasts. It's a subject near and dear to him, even his comic "Typical Strange“ has its name based on the concept, i.e. two words with the opposite meanings put together to create an effect. In imagery contrast is used to make darker shapes appear darker and lighter shapes lighter and to create a tension where those areas meet at the penumbra. In writing and comics it's much the same, ”laughter and tears“, ”good and evil", a sad scene contrasting with a joyous one etc. Contrasting makes both contrasted elements appear far greater than they really are, as well as serving as a source of tension, conflict, or humour. Banes and I talk about this in a rambling fashion. Gunwallace has a special treat for us today with a brilliant theme for Dead Leon! You'll want to ask him for a copy of his one ;)
Episode 182 - Biggest mistakes made in starting a webcomic
Aug 14, 2014
This Quackcast came about in response to an article that was supposed to be about the biggest mistakes in starting out with a webcomic, I felt it was incredibly superficial and that it was mainly focussed on someone who wanted to go straight for the “pro” side, jump right in and make it BIG right away… The trouble is that there's WAAAAAAY more to the subject than that! Hence this Quackcast on the subject. I've seen thousands of webcomics come and go over the years, most fizzle out in the first few weeks or months for a whole lot of reasons, but even the ones that have staying power still run into many issues at the beginning. Here we cover a lot of the big mistakes webcomic creators make early on. We've also got some great contributions too!
Episode 177 - Charby the Vampirate forever!
Jul 28, 2014
Guess who we had on THIS week? It was Amelius and Evil Emperor Nick! The husband and wife powerhouse behind some very popular comics on DD including Charby The Vampirate and Cwen's Quest. We haven't had them on since Quackcast 10 and 11 which have unfortunately been totally wiped from the interwebs... But that doesn't matter so much since you can hear them both afresh now and they have some goo stuff to say, including talking about the newly revamped version of Charby on charbythevampirate.com that's only up to 50 or so pages as well as the new related project Here there be monsters. We apologise for some slight technical difficulties, but Amy and Nick were good sports anyway and it was a an enjoyable interview!
Episode 172 - The QuackQuiz!
Jun 23, 2014
Come on down, it's Quiz time! For this week's Quackcast we had a quiz based on DD comics, as a friendly, fun way to try and promote them... there's even a bit of Drunk Duck history mixed up in the questions. Just a smidge. We had three contestants taking part for the honour of telling everyone else to suck it; Archaeologist Amazon Adventurer Artist Pitface, Psychologist Freedom Fighter Lawyer Comicer Tantz Aerine, and Scientist Philosopher Comic Group Leader and all around boob-fancier Abt Nihil. They all competed to the very limit of their abilities, striving for dominance against each other, employing every dirty trick in the book and even some new ones... So please listen to the first ever DD bottomless Quiz! Oh, and there's even some titbits about the totally mythical married life of Ozoneocean and Pitface.
