Episode 739 - Deferring to Experts
May 12, 2025
When you're working on a project with other people, a comic collaboration for example, it's usually best to decide on different roles for everyone according to what they're best at (writer, artist, layout design, pencils, inks, colour, backgrounds lettering etc), and let them handle it. You don't micromanage and make decisions for them. Basically they're the “experts” on those things now so you wait and see what they do.
Topics and Show Notes
The idea for this Quackcast came to me after someone defended the super clunky Star Wars prequels with the old argument that George Lucas created them and he also created the original Star Wars so he must know best and certainly better than any “haters”. In reality though the prequels are an excellent example of why you MUST defer to people who know better. The original trilogy of Star Wars movies were created at a time when George was still a small fish in a big pond, he wasn't powerful or rich enough to have much control in the industry at that stage. He came up with great ideas (Star Wars, Indiana Jones etc), but had to rely on the studio system to get them made, which meant he had to collaborate with people who's job it was to make great movies: directors, script editors, Foley artists, casting directors, concept designers, model makers etc. As well as studio execs and producers. He had to compromise on what was feasible.
But after the massive success of the movies, making a mint off of the sale of IP and merchandising, and his SFX studio Industrial Light and Magic being the industry standard, many years later when Luca worked on the prequels he had unrivalled power. He didn't have to defer to anyone anymore, he didn't have to collaborate or make compromises. He was the last word and he knew best… Except he didn't. In the years since he made those initial movies he hadn't directed much or written many scripts and the Prequels show that all too well with bad dialogue, clunky direction, bad plot choices etc. He even got rid of his expert model makers and all the work they did and used CGI instead because it gave him more control.
TL,DR: The original Star Wars were good because they were made as collaborative projects by very experienced people while the prequels were mainly controlled by a guy who lacked a lot of expertise and it shows.
The Dunning Kruger effect makes us think we're experts in things we only know a little about, ALL of us suffer from it constantly, even me, but when you've had some success in a field: that gives you confirmation bias that “proves” you really ARE an expert. This was Lucas's position during the prequels.
I've worked in 2 collabs recently, Bottomless Waitress with Banes and Key of Dreams with Tantz and Banes. On both those projects we all have distinct roles and we stuck with them very easily! We worked within them and didn't ever bump into each other or try and take over anyone's role and so these are good examples of smooth collaborations which produce results people like. Bands are great examples of collaborative projects, especially when they're working with people who all get the chance to shine and handle their own roles. This is why I love Led zeppelin so much: back in the day Jimmy Page was the band leader and lead guitarist but he let each member handle what they were best at in their own way so it worked as a group of collaborative experts and you can really hear that in the sound!
I ramble because I'm tired and I have a headache but I think this is an interesting point: You can't be an expert at everything so when you work with others let them handle what they do best and you do what you do best. There are many examples of great collaborative projects where many people working on them are great at what they do and come together to produce something magical. Some of my faves are Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds (rock opera), Led Zeppelin, The Life of Brian, The Empire Strikes Back and more… What are yours?
This week it's another best off from Gunwallace! The Jacket Comic - Wiry, punk, gritty, shiny and cool, this one jangles in on lyrical chords, sounding indie-rock with an almost Arabian flavour at times as the strings howl and echo up and down the scales. A rocky tune it for the coolest jacket in the world.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Highly Devolved - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/may/06/featured-comic-highly-devolved/
Featured music:
The Jacket Comic - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Jacket_Comic/ - by RTHaldeman, rated M.
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 736 - Resurrection
Apr 21, 2025
Happy Easter! Well that was Sunday, but happy Easter anyway. In honour of that yearly and ancient ritual holiday that has its roots in the rebirth of spring in the northern hemisphere our Quackcast is on the theme of resurrection! The idea that people can come back to life in realty is pure fantasy but it is an essential part of all different kinds of fiction.
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.
Episode 732 - Meet the Parodians
Mar 24, 2025
Parody and satire are a certain kind of humour. They're VERY easy to do because you just base them off real, already existing things, then you twist it a bit to add humour and make it ridiculous. But that's where it gets tricky! Satire is a parody of a real situation rather than fictional, it tends to have a harder edge. Where it usually goes wrong is that people mistake it for something straight, i.e. NOT satire, not comedy, not exaggeration or ridicule. The two main approaches to parody are a broad satire of a genre, like Princess Bride on fairytale fantasy, or a more targeted approach like Spaceballs which satirised Star Wars, and things in between like Airplane, which made fun of the film Zero Hour but also used it as a chance to parody the disaster movie genre and include a shotgun approach to pop-cultural jokes, making fun of everything happening in the 1970s.
Episode 730 - Lighting by The Doodler
Mar 10, 2025
Today we have on a super special guest, The Doodler! This is another on our technical series about art making and this time we're talking about lighting. Tantz suggested we interview The Doodler for this because she's Tantz's go-to person for lighting issues in scenes. It was great to chat with The Doodler about her lighting techniques and the different challenges presented by different scenes. The Doodler was much better at explaining the concepts than I could have been so it was a pleasure to have her on the cast!
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 715 - Apocalypse
Nov 25, 2024
This is the third in our weapons trilogy and it's about what happens AFTER the ultimate weapons have done their work: Apocalypse! The end of all things… This term comes from the bible, with the Book of Revelations which talks about what happens during the end of the world, but aside from the myth it's a pretty real concept- there are a LOT of ways the world can end and has indeed ended for various civilisations throughout history.
Episode 704 - The Cultcast
Sep 8, 2024
The topic we're talking about today was inspired by my ruminations on Bullshido martial arts promo demonstration videos. These are the videos where a martial arts master shows off their skill in a patently fake demonstration, usually starting with breaking concrete slabs or wood and then progressing to a performance where they show how easily they can defeat all of their students who try and attack them.
