Episode 738 - Ensemble casts
May 4, 2025
Ensemble casts is the topic for today! But what do we mean by that? The way I'm defining it for THIS Quackcast is that you have a group of main characters where any of them can function in a chief protagonist role for part of the story, they're all on the same side and they can work together in smaller groups or in one big group. This is a common structure for modern sitcoms and a lot other things like The Avengers, Star Trek the Next Generation, or Lord of the Rings for example. They're not just a group, but a group made up of “main characters”.
Topics and Show Notes
One of the advantages of an ensemble cast as opposed to just a group or a one or two main characters is that they can share the load story-wise and make it much easier to develop new storylines and work your way out of holes and blocks. This is because they all have advanced character development and so create stories and pathways just in how they interact with each other, their differing world views and how they approach situations very differently. It's harder to develop multiple main characters but it's easier to maintain a story in the long run, especially if it's a long running story.
Banes and I have an ensemble cast in Bottomless Waitress consisting of the three waitresses, Polly, Jane, and Francis. There are other characters like Nicky the truck driver, Wilfred the scientist, or Craig the bus-boy but they're not as important or developed. Each of the three ladies can independently drive a storyline on their own, they can work in tandem confronting each other or together against other characters of situations, or all three can work as one. There are a lot of combinations and possibilities.
Do you have an ensemble cast? Do you like it when stories use one as opposed to more of a group with a leader or just one or two main characters?
This week Gunwallace gave us a theme inspired by Plague Rat - a very dark, heavy, and serious intro leads up and into a beat heavy, 80s inspired, cool dance number that just drags you along and up out of the doldrums of the post-apocalyptic disaster of a plague-ridden, sad world, into the coloured lights and cool vibes of the dance floor!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
The Starry Ladders - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/apr/29/featured-comic-the-starry-ladders/
Featured music:
Plague Rat - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Plague_Rat/ - by Rabbit_Dance_, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
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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 724 - America's Plutocratic classism
Jan 26, 2025
Is there a culture of plutocratic classism in the USA? I'm inspired by Trump's America and how people think that people like Elon Musk and him are above the law because they're rich, while conversely the lowest rank in society are the homeless and the poor. But what do I mean by “Plutocratic classism”? A plutocracy is a society where people's position is determined by their wealth, classism is our tendency to discriminate based on social class, put that together and you have people determining social value by how much money a person seems to have.
Episode 714 - Future Weapons
Nov 18, 2024
Last week we had an overview of weapons throughout history and how it's a constant game of balance and oneupmanship. Now we're looking at future weapons and Scifi stuff! There's a lot of potential and a lot of interesting ideas you can use in comics and stories. We talk about a few of these and some of our faves, as well as our own inventions.
Episode 703 - Cross Cultural Influence
Sep 2, 2024
Cross cultural influence is a marvellous thing and very enriching to creativity! It's lovely when you can see multiple cultural influences in things, whether comics, movies, art, fashion, music or anything else. It's inspiring and leads to new and more interesting things. I picked promo images from some recent Pixar movies Turning Red, Encanto, Coco, and Moana, because they're good examples of the process and what it can result in.
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 677 - You can't spell "Fail" without "AI"
Mar 4, 2024
I remembered that a promised Quackcast was AI: slavery for artists and creators. This is an important subject to cover especially from this angle.
Episode 669 - sexelant
Jan 8, 2024
The number of the Quackcast is 669 so that means it's time for sexy stuff again! But despite the topic this isn't an adult cast and we keep things to a respectful tone.
