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Latest episodes

Episode 443 - sticks and stones

Ozoneocean at Sept. 10, 2019, midnight
tags: ArGH ZoMBiE, Banes Gunwallace, Dave Chappelle, Drunk Duck, featured comic, featured theme tune, Limbo Road, Ozoneocean, Pitface, podcast, QUACKCAST 443, sticks and stones, Sticks and Stones, Webcomics community

Based on Banes' newspost about the latest Dave Chappelle comedy special, this Quackcast talks about the way audience reception to it has been somewhat divided based on the topics covered verses current prevailing attitudes and the so-called “outrage culture”

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Episode 442 - Death comes to all

Ozoneocean at Sept. 3, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes, comics community, Death comes to all, Drunk duck, featured comic, featured music, Gunwallace, kawaiidaigakusei, Ozoneocean, podcast, Quackcast 442, Tantz Aerine, The Shootin', Webcomics hosting, Xyth era

How about having it so anyone in your story can die?
Let me explain: It's fake. NOT just anyone can die OK? Your main character will still survive until the end and all that, but what you do is set things up so it really truly looks like they're vulnerable and can die, this way it gives the story bigger stakes. If all the other characters are obvious redshirts then who cares? You KNOW the main character or characters will make it to the end so the threat of death or even injury isn't that important…
But if you set things up right and have some clever fakeouts then the story will have much more impact!

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Episode 441 - Cooperation = cool

Ozoneocean at Aug. 27, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes Gunwallace, Cooperation = cool, Drunk Duck, featured comic, featured theme tune, Moonscapers, Ozoneocean, Pitface, podcast, QUACKCAST 441, Tantz Aerine, The Adventures Of Kevin Kid, Webcomics community

Cooperation Vs Competition. For decades the mantra was competition is good: it produces progress and makes things better… Well that's actually false. Competition is what you're forced into as a response to limited resources, so you do what you have to to win, which mainly involves losing everything that doesn't serve that specific objective. Competition is massively harmful to progress in general, it ONLY helps you excel in one small area to massive cost. Think of it in terms of an Olympic sprinter: they become the fastest runner in the world, but to what point? Only the artificial structure of a sporting event… they spend years training, exercising, eating right, wasting a huge portion of their lives, creative, and intellectual potential on that one meaningless goal, and IF they achieve it they might get a bit of fame and money and a footnote in history because someone else will inevitably take their spot. More likely though they won't achieve the goal and instead be forgotten.

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Episode 440 - Character tropes VS characterisation

Ozoneocean at Aug. 20, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes, Character tropes VS characterisation, comics community, Drunk duck, featured comic, featured music, Gunwallace, Ice Massacre, kawaiidaigakusei, Ozoneocean, Pitface, podcast, Quackcast 440, Tantz Aerine, The Mystic from Wanzerbe, Webcomics hosting


Today we compare and contrast two ways of making characters: starting with a pure archetype and building it with tropes, or creating a character organically through circumstance and interaction with other characters.

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Episode 439 - weather flavour enhancer!

Ozoneocean at Aug. 13, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes Gunwallace, Drunk Duck, featured comic, featured theme tune, Ozoneocean, podcast, QUACKCAST 439, SWALLOW Vamps in the Big City, Tantz Aerine, The Frolic, weather flavour enhancer!, Webcomics community

Tantz's clever idea was that the weather isn't just a backdrop… it's an important prop in it's own right.
Weather can be used to drive a plot: the wind snatches a hat and makes a person chase it, which causes them to meet another character.
It can be an antagonist: people fighting a storm for example or running form a tornado. It can signal and enhance emotions: rain for a sad funeral or sun for happy for a happy event. Growing shadows can signal an ominous turn of events, wind billowing out a cloak signals a dramatic character! You can just use it for fancy visual effects if you like, snow and rain are great fun to draw, and stormy skies are the best!
We chat about all things weather and give examples of how we've used it ourselves.


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Episode 438 - You just don't get it

Ozoneocean at Aug. 6, 2019, midnight
tags: comics community, Drunk duck, featured comic, featured music, Gunwallace, kawaiidaigakusei, Ozoneocean, Pitface, podcast, Quackcast 438, Tantz Aerine, The Feelings of a High School Girl, The Frolic, Webcomics hosting, You just don't get it

Sometimes your audience just doesn't pick up on the clever symbolism, the hints, the metaphor, the underlying themes and all the artistic cleverness in writing and art that you've filled your work up with!

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Episode 437 - Old Warhorse

Ozoneocean at July 30, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes Gunwallace, Drunk Duck, featured comic, featured theme tune, Old Warhorse, Ozoneocean, Pitface, podcast, QUACKCAST 437, Sunstrike and Bluemist, Tantz Aerine, The Great Khan, Webcomics community

Today we cover the interesting trope of the “old warrior”. This was based upon a newspost Banes came up with last week. He was thinking of Captain Picard in the latest Star Trek series and he also brought up Luke Skywalker from the latest Star Wars movie. The “Old Warrior” makes a really cool protagonist, in this Quackcast we try and discover why that is…

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Episode 436 - Master of none?

Ozoneocean at July 23, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes, comics community, Drunk duck, featured comic, featured music, Gunwallace, kawaiidaigakusei, Master of none?, Nincu the world’s worst ninja, Ozoneocean, podcast, Quackcast 436, The Caraway Crew, Webcomics hosting

To become truly successful at one thing you need to focus on that alone. Is it worth it?

There are MANY calls on our time with all the side things we like to do, ESPECIALLY webcomics. One of the few ways to become a really successful superstar at any one thing is to start dropping all the other things that call on your time and devote all your energy to that one thing! Then you can push past all limitations and devote the effort and time needed to properly succeed.

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Episode 434 - Where do your characters exist?

Ozoneocean at July 9, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes Gunwallace, Drunk duck, featured comic, featured music, kawaiidaigakusei, Ozoneocean, podcast, Quackcast 434, the Outbreak the Stumbling Dead, Unprecedented Cleanup, Webcomics community, Where do your characters exist?

This time we're chatting about settings and where your characters exist in space… where does all the action happen in your comics and WHY does it happen there? Bane's had the really novel idea of thinking of story settings as action playsets, which are toy settings made based on a TV show or movie where you can play with action figures and act out key moments FROM the TV show or movie:
Unlike a dollhouse they only have the key sets where the important things happen.

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Episode 433 - everyone is a beginner

Ozoneocean at July 2, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes Gunwallace, Drunk Duck, everyone is a beginner, featured comic, featured theme tune, Ozoneocean, podcast, QUACKCAST 433, STEEPLEWIND, Tantz Aerine, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Webcomics community

Today we chat about a furore on Twitter focussing on a artist who made a tutorial about the differences between the line work of beginners and advanced artists. Many people identified their art style with the work described as “beginner” and took extreme offence at that characterisation. It's the contention of Tantz that “beginner” is not a dirty word. We're all beginners at something. We can all stand to learn things.

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Episode 432 - How to get more readers

Ozoneocean at June 25, 2019, midnight
tags: Android Blues, Banes Gunwallace, Drunk duck, featured comic, featured music, How to get more readers, Ice Massacre, kawaiidaigakusei, Ozoneocean, podcast, Quackcast 432, Webcomics community

Just Banes and I for this one! Today we have 3 topics:
1. Being positive and how that really helps us in online communication and social networking, as well as giving a boost to those we talk to- very important in comic communities.
2. How to get more eyes looking at your work. We always need to build our audiences!
3. Updates for drunk duck to modernise the site… We're going to have to raise a lot of money for this! How is the best way?

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Episode 431 - Political messages in your work

Ozoneocean at June 18, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes Gunwallace, Drunk Duck, featured comic and theme tune, Monkey Nukes, Ozoneocean, podcast, Political messages in your work, Quackcast 431, Tantz Aerine, Webcomics community

This Quackcast is about having political agendas in your work and expressing them well!
We're talking about deliberately putting in ideas that you want to get across to people, NOT the idea that all work has agendas and ideas no matter what. That's not relevant to this discussion. When you want to want to get your ideas across there are good ways to do it and poor ways. When you do it poorly your work either has the opposite effect (people will laugh at your agenda or despise it), or it becomes propaganda. Propaganda is for preaching to the converted, it's terrible for changing minds. The only thing it's good for is motivating people who are already on-board with you.

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Episode 430 - Good beginnings!

Ozoneocean at June 11, 2019, midnight
tags: Banes Gunwallace, Drunk duck, featured comic and music, Good beginnings!, kawaiidaigakusei, Ozoneocean, Pit Face, podcast, Quackcast 430, QUASI and PSUDO, Webcomics community

At the beginning of a story how do you grab and KEEP your readers? This comes from the Friday newspost by Emma Clare. Her advice was pretty brilliant. From my own perspective it's generally characters that grab me first before anything else. Great art and a fantastic cover can hook your eyes, but without a great story or interesting characters there's zero to keep you there.

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