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!
Topics and Show Notes
You might know the Doodler for her long running comic The Second Crimean war, about an alternate history of the Russian takeover of the Crimean region after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 90s- this comic was created in 2010, before the modern takeover of Crimea in 2014. It's a popular and well drawn comic with top level artwork. It's mostly black and white with some limited use of colour. It's over 800 pages so it's a sizable chunk of comic to get into and I highly recommend it!
Lighting is the most fundamental thing there is to visual art because it allows all things to be seen: a radiating body sheds light rays in straight lines around itself and these are absorbed or reflected off the objects they hit, in turn we see those objects because of the photons that are reflected into our eyes… It's MUCH more complex than that though. As comic artists we usually do things backwards: we draw line art, which would mean the default is that EVERYTHING is fully lit and visible, then we work out where the light comes from and what's in shadow.
The simplest way to handle lighting in a comic is just to draw stuff as if there ware spotlights illuminating it all from the viewer perspective, like a stage play or TV sitcom- no shadows, full lighting. A more advanced, realistic approach suggested by The Doodler is to treat the image like a 3D space and work out where the light comes from (the sun, a flashlight, an overhead light etc), then ray trace from that point to work out what's in shadow and what's lit up. Listen to the interview to get a much better discussion on it than what I can write here!
Gunwallace wasn't able to give us a theme this week so we're replaying his theme to The Second Crimean war - Heavy, grey winter skies, pregnant with snow and sadness. Cold snaps the brittle air, crystal daggers hang in the forest, a whistling breeze sings of desolation and loneliness. A thaw will be long in coming to this blighted world of war and suffering… Synth violins and cellos set the scene beautifully, touches of quiet bass and piano round out the landscape of the Second Crimean war. (Originally part of Quackcast 494)
Topics and shownotes
Links
Our guest The Doodler! - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/The%20doodler/
Featured comic:
Black Tiger - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/mar/04/featured-comic-black-tiger/
Featured music:
The Second Crimean war - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Second_Crimean_War/ - by The doodler, rated T.
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
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Episode 707 - Fight Choreography
Sep 30, 2024
Fight choreography is tricky. We have it in comics, plays, movies and TV. When it's in full motion the trick is that you cant usually show things connecting so you have to work around the safety aspects in various ways. In comics you can show things connecting but how do you make the movement and the narrative believable and exciting just by using still images? It takes a lot of skill! Animation has to be the easiest way to depict fights because you can show the results of hits AND you can easily make moment believable but there are always challenges.
Episode 625 - Designing Women
Mar 6, 2023
Character design is a fun process but not without its challenges. Do you design the character or their story first? I've followed both of those approaches, they have pluses and minuses. On one hand when you create the character first that can make it a real passion project, you make a cool character and then create a story for them to live in and be themselves. But that can also lead to Mary Sues, wish fulfillment and self inserts, which makes for a weak story. Creating characters to fit a story can sometimes lead to using a lot of stereotypes and ending up with fairly generic and bland characters, which can make for a dull story. So it's best to use a bit of balance and judgment.
Episode 586 - Working with disability
Jun 6, 2022
How do you keep on with your creative output when something happens to you? When you lose function or are impaired in some way, how do you adapt or relearn so you can keep on as you were before? Maybe you can't and have to change to another medium that's a better fit for your abilities? Comic creator Bravo1102 once talked about how he moved from drawing to using action figures to make his comics partially because of his eyesight. My own eyesight has suddenly started to go bad and I'm having to adapt to that, and Tantz tells us how her deteriorating eyesight forced her to work digitally.
Episode 562 - the plots the themes - The space between
Dec 20, 2021
Merry Christmas and whatever you celebrate :) Interesting topic from Banes! It's his idea that sometimes the literal elements of a story (the plot etc.) are simply too weak to properly support the theme. He gives the example of The Truman show, where the idea is that a person is living a fake life under constant surveillance as the star of one of the most popular real life TV shows ever and he doesn't know anything about it… The themes are the power of the media, commercialism, the American dream, obsession with reality TV etc. Banes felt that although these themes were very strong the practical setup of the world and story weren't quite strong enough to support it.
Episode 526 A return to Mary Sue!
Apr 12, 2021
Mary Sues are always a fun topic! There are some misconceptions about them though… Mary Sues aren't all female, they can be any gender. Being super powerful or super popular or super pretty etc doesn't equal a Mary Sue, not even if your character super stands out next to all the others, those things ONLY indicate they might possibly be one. What equals a Mary Sue is a character that doesn't have to struggle very hard for anything, a character that is almost universally admired, and or loved (even by the enemy), a character that masters hard skills with ease and ends up teaching the teachers and beating the masters, a character that's destined to succeed and does in spite of internal story logic… All these things and more can add up to make a Mary Sue.
Episode 454 - Are Marvel movies "Despicable"?
Nov 24, 2019
This week we look at the famous quote by respected film director Martin Scorsese that “Marvel movies aren't Cinema” and also the quote by fellow director Francis Ford Coppola that Marvel films are “despicable”. We try and look at the proper context of these remarks outside of the twitter garbage and social media outrage to see if either had any point or whether they're way off the mark and deserving of criticism.
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!
