Episode 625 - Designing Women

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.

In this Quackcast we all talk about how we developed some of our own characters, particularly how Banes and I came up with the characters for Bottomless Waitress. Nicky was an interesting example. Banes' outline for her was a rugged, queer woman truck driver, short haired, average height, average build etc, but when it came for me to draw her I had my own vision for an extremely tall muscular, person; she wore bootleg jeans, a tight white tank-top and cowboy boots, a tattoo on one shoulder, pretty eyes with a strong Italian nose, hair dark shaved short at the back of her head with a long blond fringe at the front. I was thinking of Gina Gershon in Bound and Lori Petty in Tank Girl. It was a fun comic to design for!

Lucky Patrons at the $5+ level get to see us talk about character boob design for the Patreon video XD
How do you go about designing your characters?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Sunday Punch! Gunwallace says: I know I've done a theme for Tag Forester before, but since it got featured I made one for the current story (Originally Tag got a theme in Quackcast 464). There’s a mystery to be solved… There is always a mystery to be solved when you’re Tag Forester, detective. He’s out there on the mean streets, alone, looking for trouble to prevent trouble, taking his life in his hands and taking the world by the balls.

Topics and shownotes


Featured comic:
Sunday Punch - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/feb/28/featured-comic-sunday-punch/

Featured music:
Sunday Punch - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Sunday_Punch/ - by Rickrudge, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

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