Episode 639 - Nudity
Jun 12, 2023
Today's topic is Nudity: Nudity in comics, censorship, self censoring, what you can get away with on DD, ratings, nudity on other platforms and how it affects the reach of your work, and more!
Topics and Show Notes
There are a lot of reasons for using nudity in your creative work, it can be fun to draw, it catches audience attention, it can be quite dramatic or funny or shocking. Nudity is a useful tool, but it can really limit the reach of your work so you have to be very careful with it because ironically even though lots of people like to look at it there are very few ways to show it to them. This is because most platforms out there have restrictions on what they allow to be shown. Drunk Duck is one of the more open and accepting sites when it comes to nudity but even WE have to have restrictions! We have two levels: a Mature rating where nudity is allowed as long as it's not the entire comic and it's not openly and graphically sexual. Then we have Adult rated comics that are restricted to only people who're over age and logged into the site, where you can show far more.
If your work has nudity you have to be aware of ratings on the platform you're showing it on and even where you can print it. In addition to that those rating can change and you can face bans to your account for stuff that was previously allowed! This has happened many times on sites like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Webtoons, and more. What tends to happen then is that we self censor and eventually internalise that censorship so that we just avoid nudity in our work all together.
Nudity is a part of normal human existence, there's nothing essentially wrong with it, BUT we don't exist or create in a vacuum- there are all sorts of cultures and societies around the world that have different attitudes towards nudity for various reasons. There are laws, taboos, ratings, customs and lord knows what else so for that reason you'll always find it easier to get your work out to more people the less nudity it shows.
What do you think about nudity in webcomics? Do you use it yourself, or a variation of it like partial or implied nudity?
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Nordmand - Dance a jig and slap your leatheren heels into the wooden floorboards, kick up dust and jump to the infectious rhythm! Garb a partner, hook your arm into theirs and take a spin. This is a fun folkish, high energy dancing tune made with traditional instruments.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Gaia Comic - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jun/06/featured-comic-gaia-comic/
Featured music:
Nordmand - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Nordmand/ - by Hart, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 492 - Impermanence of the new digital age
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This Quackcast is about the impermanence of online services and the lie that services are provided for fee and providers have no responsibility to the creators and viewers that use them. Hushicho posted in our forum about Tapas newly restricting nudity in comics which suddenly disenfranchises hundreds of creators who've built up followings on that site with comics that were well within the the Tapas content rules. With that one change these comics have been wiped out, destroying all the hard work by creators to build up their audiences over a long period of time. That can happen with ANY digital service, we are at the mercy of the corporations that provide them.
Episode 463 - Sexposition is not a new thing
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Episode 419 - The Rating Game
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Episode 405 - Escape from Tumblr!
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On the 18th of December people who post things with nudity on Tumblr will be kicked off the site. That means all the adult bloggers, comicers and things that made that journalling site stand out above the rest of the vast sea of blog sites and image hosts are being screwed out of what they helped build up! The reason of course is to make the site more attractive to advertisers and so it can more easily fit the standards of puritanical companies like Apple and Google who have taken it upon themselves to scrub the world clean of anything that defines us as adult human beings.
Episode 295 - Sexcast, sex in non adult comics
Oct 10, 2016
This is the Awkardcast! Another take on the sexcast idea but this time we're looking at sex and sexual situations in strictly NON-adult comics. Sex performs a very different role in non-adult comics… You have a much wider audience with comics at the rating, but there are things you can not show, so of course you use sex for other reasons than the way you do in an adult rated comic. In an adult comic you can show all details of the entire act, all the genitalia in all their glistening, gory, gooey, hairy splendour, going in and out and around here and there and all over the place! Oh my! In Mature comics and bellow though, you simply can't, though you CAN have some non-sexual full frontal nudity in Mature comics and you can show bottoms in Teen rated comics. The ratings are similar to what you have with film ratings. In adult comics, like adult film, sex acts are more of the focus, they can still have a story but the sex acts are supposed to be enjoyed in their own right. In non-adult comics the sex has other purposes- subtle titillation is a part of it, comedy, teasing the viewer, furthering the plot, a culmination of a relationship or the establishment of one, etc- there's generally always another purpose to it, unlike adult comics where there sometimes is but doesn't need to be. And unlike adult film there's not much purpose to softcore non-adult rated porn in comics. That type of censored porn is done in film in order to get a wider audience on media that will otherwise not show porn, but on the net porn it's super easy to come by so there's not much reason to do softcore. There are a lot of challenges entailed in depicting non-adult rated porn! Certain positions don't work in well with the limits on nudity (we talk about this in the cast), but there are tricks you can use; symbolism (popping champagne corks, trains going into tunnels etc), strategic positioning of sheets, clever camera angles, fading out before the act and fading in again after, characters with mussed hair and uneven clothing, using dialogue to refer to what they just did, “off-screen” shenanigans, or shenanigans in the dark etc, it can be a lot of fun! Have a listen to how Tantz, I and Banes tackle the idea. The music by Gunwallace for his week was Firefly cross! A very mystical sound, with traditional, middle eastern style music mixed with dark techno fuzz, this one is intriguing!
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This is another of our technical Quackcasts, this time Banes and I are talking about my own mobile digital art processes. The tools I currently use for that are a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet and Sketchbook pro by Autodesk is the software. It's a bit of a rambling discussion but hopefully we managed to impart a bit of sensible info! I even drew a a picture using this equipment during the Quackcast and you can see that in the links bellow as well as links to some of the other stuff we talked about! Regarding the tablet and software though, as a digital artist I highly recommend it to everyone!
Episode 31 - I Want to Debate About Webcomics, Like Common People Do
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This week skool and oz review some common debates in webcomics, the ones there are no right answers for, and go over some of the pros and cons of each side. Our points may be old-hat to some, but everyone's got an opinion on these and they're worth thinking about!
