Episode 731 - Contrariancast
Mar 17, 2025
I love those characters who bitch and moan and want to do things differently, although they don't usually take up the leadership role themselves, they just THINK they should be leader instead, but they don't really want to be one. They become a sort of fake antagonist… they're not the REAL antagonist, they just like to spice things up and add tension because they don't want to go with what the leader or the rest of the gang says.
Topics and Show Notes
This was inspired by Banes' Thursday Newspost “Against the Grain”. There are so many good examples of these characters, Will Scarlet in Kevin Costner's Prince of Thieves, and Rufio in Hook are some of my faves. You can count Hans Solo and Mr Spock in there too actually! Most police chiefs and captains in procedural cop shows fit into this role, though they ARE the leaders they're not the protagonists so they don't lead the story. J. Jonah Jameson in Spiderman is another great example.
As a little kid my fave examples were Jason in Battle of the Planets (anime), and Doctor Smith in the old black and white Lost in Space. Ones I grew up with were Endora, the mother-in-law in Bewitched, Colonel Alfred Bellows, the psychiatrist in I Dream of Genie, Frank Burns and major Charles Emerson in Mash, Colonel Klink in Hogan's Heroes and many more. They were characters you'd almost hate… but not quite.
Not all stories have these characters and many use them in other, cleverer ways. my fave example of that is Farscape, the US Australian Scifi show on the late 90s and early 2000s. It featured a cast of renegade characters where ALL of them took turns being the contrarian! Even the two chief protagonists, John Crichton and Aeryn Sun! That really mixes things up. Though the most usual contrarian was Dominar Rygel XVI who was always extremely selfish, sneaky and underhanded.
Who is your fave example of this sort of character? Do you agree with my picks? And do you use one in your own work?
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by TEMPERAMENTAL - A funky Latin beat coupled with a chaotic, burning fire of scrabbly strings all over a heavily distorted electric guitar… an emotional conflagration paired with a calm, measured, phlegmatic rhythm.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Based on Banes' newspost:
Against the Grain - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/mar/08/against-the-grain/
Featured comic:
A Rallian Chronicles - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/mar/10/featured-comic-a-rallian-chronicles/
Featured music:
TEMPERAMENTAL - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/TEMPERAMENTAL/ - by swordheart, 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 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 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 727 - Painting Series: Sky and Sea
Feb 17, 2025
We haven't done anything about actual art-making for a while so we thought we'd start a series on technical stuff. Starting out we tackle painting sea and sky! These are key general background elements, they're the two biggest simple background features you can get, you don't always need them but it's good to understand these big features for outdoor scenes and how they work.
Episode 726 - Ego!?
Feb 10, 2025
Do you have a big ego? Do you know someone who has? This Quackcast is about utilising egos for comic characters for comedic purposes, to humanise character, or to make villains more unlikeable and or funny. Big egos are a sign of poor self esteem, people inflate their egos to cope with feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. For examples of that we have a certain prominent politician and also a tech billionaire as perfect representations of every facet of that concept. :)
Episode 725 - Your fave comics as a kid
Feb 3, 2025
We're chatting about the comics you liked as a little kiddo this week! The topic was inspired by a thread in the DD forums. This is always a fun topic and I always have to mention Asterix because it was so amazing. This week Tantz had to bow out but we have Gunwallace to replace her, and Banes is back! Gunwallace is a fellow Antipodean, that means he and I share many of the same cultural touch stones, particularity the comic Footrot Flats. (Tantz is still on the Patreon only video)
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.
