Episode 574 - Odd-ball, norm-ball, every ball!
Mar 14, 2022
I consider Drunk Duck (or the Duck Webcomics) to be the Heavy Metal of webcomic hosting sites, because like that excellent anthology comic publication we celebrate the oddballs. On DD we have comics of all different styles, many that would find it hard or even impossible to promote themselves anywhere else. We're open to all skill levels and all styles. We only promote things we consider to have high quality or high potential in our features, but we don't have a particular style prejudice, we don't only feature things that give us a homogeneous, unified look. We're proud of our variety! We don't gate keep or block anyone from access to our site and we feel that's one of our greatest strengths.
Topics and Show Notes
The inspiration for this cast was a thread Bravo1102 made about a mention in the “bad Webcomics Wiki”, about things that indicate a webcomic is “bad”. One of them was that it was hosted on a site like Drunk Duck. The commenters in the thread took exception to that, as you'd expect, coming together to rally against a common threat. I want to be clear that we in no way consider The Bad Webcomics Wiki a threat, it's just an entertainment site focusing on roasting webcomics, the mention of DD was probably made over a decade ago by people who've long forgotten about us now. However the community reaction was interesting and brought up many things worth talking about.
We're the granddaddy of hosting sites, and we're still fit as a bull. We've been around for 20 years (I never tire of mentioning that). Kids have started with us and come back to us as adults. Young adults have started with us and met partners through us. Members have had kids and now their kids have comics with us. Our older members have been with us right up to the end. DD members have gone one to have very successful money making webcomics, have careers in the gaming industry working for people like Rockstar, working in publishing, in Hollywood, working in professional comics for Marvel and DC, etc. Many started out with basic skills and were nurtured and supported by the community here till they developed their skills. And many professional comicers have hosted with us.
Hosting with us is far from being a sign that your webcomic is “bad”, rather it's a sign that you're an independent thinker; that you have something interesting to say that doesn't fit into the cookie-cutter mold of other places on the net. At DD you have a home for your creativity.
This week Gunwallace gave us a musical theme to A Lunatics Tale - Quick step and tap, tap, tap your foot into this funky conversion between Instruments! The light chatter of the electric guitar, the sensible burble of the bass, loud interjections of the trumpets, bombastic quips by the percussion, finishing with an intriguing conclusion from the synth.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Thread about Bad Webcomics Wiki - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179010/
Featured comic:
Atom Man - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/mar/08/featured-comic-atom-man/
Featured music:
A Lunatics Tale - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/A_Lunatics_Tale/ - by BeckKeep, 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
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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Episode 570 - Hair!
Feb 14, 2022
Time to chat about character hairstyles. Tantz did a newspost about them a few weeks ago and I spun the topic off into a fashion subject for a Quackcast, but something really basic and simple like hair has a lot of potential in its own right. There are lots of things you can consider…
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 373 - Stupid millennials, greedy baby-boomers and lazy Gen Xers!
May 7, 2018
Millennials are so dumb, Gen Xers are SO lazy, and those Baby-boomers are just greedy as hell aren't they? But seriously, in THIS Quackcast we chat about the different generations of webcomicers and what's changed and what we have to learn from each other. The first generation of real webcomics came in with Sluggy Freelance, 8 bit theatre and a few others. Webcomics started out in the mid 90s as the web version of “Zines”: independent creator driven personal projects. The second generation came about in the 2000s. Sites like Drunk Duck and Keen Space were a huge part of that. It made it easier for creators to make the jump online. We'd seen what those first guys did and now it was OUR turn, there were a lot of copy-cats in this generation, but a lot of experimentation and creativity too, with sound, animation, interactivity and infinite canvas being a mainstay. Later there was an explosion in hosting sites like DD and comicers moved on to other formats like Tumbler and Twitter etc. The pro comic publishers saw how things were going and tried to get in on the act with online comics too. I think the 3rd generation saw a lot of commercial focussed projects. Comicers saw it as a way to make money so we had a lot of slick, pro work flooding in. In the 4th generation I think we have people doing comics for mobile devices or ON mobile devices. A lot of the comic hosting sites have far more limitations on work than they used to in terms of content and format, a lot of stuff has a bit of a pre-packaged feel, you see almost no experimentation with format now. On the upside though quality is a lot higher and comic sites will reliably work a lot better than they used to. Styles have changed over the generations: In the old days most comics were fully drawn and scanned. Tablets were rare and very expensive and so were graphics programs. If you saw a fully digital comic back then you knew the artist was either a pro or they were at university with access to high level equipment - or it was dodgy work done with a mouse and Windows Paint. Those tools have become far more accessible now and the barriers have come right down. Most work is digital. What generation are you? This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to DreamcomicbookDOTcom! Journey into a claustrophobically narrow electronic service tunnel, filled with high voltage wires humming with unimaginable power and mysterious cables running off endlessly into the dim, dark shadows in the distance. The creepy patterings and low hum of this music will take you there!
