Episode 735 - Anime
Apr 14, 2025
Welcome to another DD Quackcast! We were going to discuss Ad Hoc rationalisations and also “what happens AFTER you take over the world” but both topics were waaaay too trumpish and we didn't feel like getting negative and ranty about that fellow's foolishness so we thought we'd talk anime instead! But what is anime? At its simplest it's just cartoons like any other but they happen to be from Japan. There's more to it though, most anime has a articular look to it: reasonably realistically drawn worlds and reasonably realistic figures but they all tend to have slightly oversized heads, huge expressive eyes, tiny noses and mouths, and very stylised hair and reactions. That's not always the case but it's pretty typical. But these days “anime” is also made in Korea, China, France, the USA and more, it's become a style rather than a country of origin thing.
Topics and Show Notes
What differentiates it from Western animation? Mainly that the the figures were more realistically drawn, with more realistic and detailed backgrounds, while the typical Western style was much more stylised, flat, and simplified. These differences do not denote higher quality or a lack of quality, it's just about what's being prioritised: In Western animation all that flatness and stylisation meant that facial expressions could be enhanced, animation could have more more frames and everything could look smoother and more dynamic. For anime that mean you could have much better drawn, more realistic looking figures (always with 5 fingers!), as well as things like shading, reflection, and shadows, along with much more detailed worlds that they exist in. The trade-off was less frames, jerkier animation and many simplified scenes where they repeat movements, pan and zoom over still backgrounds to fake movement, and even replace backgrounds with things like lines to indicate movement.
The upshot of this was that the more realistic style in most anime can have more appeal to adults, while the much more abstract style favoured by Western animation is always seen as a bit childish so it's been harder to maintain the adult animation industry in the west and it's not anywhere near as diverse. But the real difference is that the animation industry in Japan is massive because of the culture of producing manga which gives animation a constant pipeline of massively varied and interesting material, and the insatiable appetite of the public for new series. And because so much is constantly being produced it means the diversity of story style and genre is incredible and there is something for EVERYONE, of all ages groups, rather than the mainly violence and or sex focussed adult stuff, Simpsons clones, or kid focussed stuff in the West. It's a big, fully mature industry, while the western animation industry just isn't- it's much smaller and the older teen and adult part of it is immature so that diversity of style and genre is weak and very inconsistent.
Would you agree? What are your fave animes?
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Landscapes and Stick Figures - A mechanically surreal piece, like mechanised people all made of crystal glass, dancing in an intricate series of interweaving and interlocking moves. It’s quite beautiful.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Water Lily Hight - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/apr/07/featured-comic-water-lily-high/
Featured music:
Landscapes and Stick Figures - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Landscapes_and_Stick_Figures/ - by Lagoticspy, rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
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 729 - The Feather report
Mar 3, 2025
The 3rd in our technical art-making series, we're talking hair, feathers, and fur today. How do you draw those highly complicated, textured things? Well the complicated, difficult way is to draw every single strand of hair, every follicle of fur, and every filament of feather… But that has a lot of disadvantages! So how else do you approach it?
Episode 728 - Skinship
Feb 24, 2025
Today we're going into another aspect of creating artwork for webcomics! This time it's painting skin, a topic that Tantz suggested. How do you render skin? It's a super common thing in comics and there are many, many ways to do it! We're not experts on all the methods so we just cover what WE do. We all have different approaches and you'll have to listen to the cast to see what Tantz and Banes say.
Episode 716 - Identify with characters?
Dec 2, 2024
Is it important to Identify with characters? This question occurred to me as I was watching a rather banal sitcom, Rules of Engagement. I love two of the stars, David Spade and Patrick Warburton, but it's not really that engaging a show, the humour is anodyne and a lot of it is based around traditional gender roles and expectations, but I forced myself to watch it anyway just to see more of the aforementioned stars. The only way I was able to get into it was because I somewhat identified with David Spade's character- being a small blonde guy with long hair and a bit of a perv, haha!
Episode 698 - the Haircast
Jul 29, 2024
Hair is a weird thing isn't it? It's just a bunch of thin filaments that stand out and hang from the body, most visibly from the head. Everyone is bald as an egg underneath this coating of head-fur, but the floof on top takes on a life, body, and shape of its own even though the truth is that it's just thin threads all buffed up with a lot of air. Hairstyles can indicate class, status, wealth, occupation, style, coolness, lack of cool, age, date, and any number of other factors about a person and where and when they fit in society. We also have strong reactions to hair: love, hate, revulsion, or disgust. It can indicate whether a person belongs to a community, a society, a religion or a sect.
Episode 692 - Benevolent racism and other isms!
Jun 17, 2024
Benevolent racism, sexism, ableism, and whatever other “isim” is an interesting aspect of those otherwise negative things. It's not as obvious in its negativity, it's well-meaning and yet quite misguided. So what is it? The term “Benevolent” makes it seem nice and harmless and that IS how people mean it, but that's because they're a bit clueless and ignorant. Benevolent sexism, ableism, and racism is basically using a “positive” stereotype to characterise someone based on their ethnicity, gender rather than as a real person etc, like “all black people have natural rhythm”, or “women are more sensitive and in touch with nature”, or “blind people have all their other senses massively heightened”.
Episode 689 - One Big Passion and Influence
May 27, 2024
What was one significant inspiring piece of pop-culture that a massive influence over your creative endeavours? All of us have had many, many different influences over the years but that's certainly NOT what we're interested in here, what we're talking about is that one thing you can remember that had a huge effect on you, why, how, and when.
