Podcast
The Drunk Duck Quackcast
Hosted by Michael Morris · EN
The QuackCast is a theduckwebcomics.com podcast hosted by Ozoneocean, Banes and Tantz Aerine who run DrunkDuck, the oldest Webcomic hosting site on the net! They chat about all things webcomics, writing and art techniques, social and cultural issues, pop-culture, and a whole variety of interesting subjects!
13episodes
Episodes
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Quackcast 797 - looksmaxing! Ageing your Characters
2d ago00:59:28Tap to summarizeLooksmaxing is a stupid made-up concept designed to be used to market appearance based scams at young people, mainly males, the way the beauty industry has been doing to women for decades. What it actually consists of is immature, undeveloped young people using plastic surgery, cosmetics, and digital filters to fake the features of a 30-40 something adult: prominent jaws, brows and cheekbones, thin cheeks, narrow eyes etc, basically just crudely ageing themselves up prematurely and ruining their faces for life. Young men are known for doing it but women are doing it just as much. This keen awareness of age and facial structure brings me to our comicing skills… So what's the age of your characters and does that change? Depicting the ages of characters is something that all us comicers do. We pick ages that fit the characters and the stories and then we try and make them appear convincing somewhat. Sometimes our comics even call for us to show them at multiple ages as they age over time or show up in flashbacks or flash forwards. Age mainly shows up in a character's face, but we see it in their body-shapes too: Children have proportionately much bigger heads and slimmer frames generally, with narrower hips and shoulders, adults have normally proportioned heads that are smaller, their bodies are thicker, wider shoulders and hips, while older people tend to stoop and bit more and their shoulders droop. Male figures develop more muscle as they age and lose all of it later. Female figures change proportions markedly with maturity as busts and hips widen and then wastes thicken and busts fall. -This is a simplification and doesn't account for weight gain/loss, exercise, or gender fluidity etc. Faces change much more: eyes start off bigger and narrow over time as there's more flesh around them and cheek bones come forward as they accrete bone. Cheeks start off quite round and full, then thin and hollow out over time. Cheek, jaw, and brow bones became harder, more angular and prominent, on men more than women. Lips are small and full initially, they become wider with the mouth with age, and then thinner. Ears and noses increase in size with age. Teeth start off tiny, become bigger, then appear longer as gums recede, and even fall out. Jowls grow on cheeks and droop at the sides of jaws, fatty eye bags grow, expression lines around eyes, mouth, and forehead become permanent. On men, faces become hairier, foreheads grow as hair recedes, eyebrows and noses become bushier. Hair colour fades, and necks thicken and then thin and wrinkle. Realistic teenagers and young adults are rarely depicted in comics, animation or even live action: People in that weird transition between childhood and adulthood with disproportionately long limbs, huge feet on skinny legs, long noses that don't fit their faces, stick thin limbs, bad patchy facial hair etc. For live action they typically either pick people who look too young or too old for their age to avoid those awkward looks, and unfortunately that gives real young adults an unrealistic impression of how they're "supposed" to appear. So what are your tricks for looksmaxing your characters? haha! This week our best-off from Gunwallace is: Old Dogs - The burning of an old fire, glowing red hot amongst the black coals and charred, ashen, grey wood. This is a gritty ode to grizzled, aged, experience and time. It's prickly, with a taste of rock and bourbon, like a good BBQ sauce. Originally from Quackcast 685, 30th of April, 2024. Topics and shownotes Featured comic: Turtle - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/jun/16/featured-comic-turtle/ Featured music: Old Dogs - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Old_Dogs/ - by JCorrachComics, rated A. 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/ Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/ 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
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Quackcast 796 - Your process
1w ago00:55:26Tap to summarizeWhat's your process? We all come up with ways of working that are better for us but one of the traditional issues for webcomics was always "digital Vs analogue". That's ALWAYS been more complex than it seems because no matter how analogue your working method is, it will HAVE to be digital at some point if it's a webcomic because the comic has to get online somehow. So there are zero fully analogue webcomics, all are digital to varying degrees. But it's even more complex when we're talking about lettering. There are a lot of different ways to letter, you can draw a page with pens and pencils, write in all the the dialogue as you go (or type it out and print it etc.), and then digitise the comic page. Not many people do that now though. The conventional way is to add the text digitally: use some program like GIMP, Illustrator, InDesign, ToonBoom studio or whatever to give you a nice font and format things neatly into a speech bubble. Most people who work with pen and paper at least prefer to go digital for lettering because of how clean it looks and how customisable it is, as do those who work fully digitally. Though there are some of us who hand letter, writing out all the words, even though we work digitally, sort of going backwards in a way. There are benefits to digital hand lettering when you can do it well: it looks more engaging to the reader (something very hard to do with font choices), it's FAR more customisable for the stye you want and far easier to fix errors and make changes because you can select, move, and replace individual letters on a finished page without going back to your working files. It also means that the lettering can be done all in the same app you used to draw the page so your process is much more streamlined. There's no auto spell check feature though so you have to be careful, as well as very neat and regular in your writing style. That example just illustrates that the clear distinction between "digital and analogue" these days is largely false and it's more of a spectrum, like a lot of things. Digital tools have gotten so much better now that an artist's work looks the same whatever tools they use. And the convenience and power of at least colouring digitally on an analogue created page you've digitised to display online is too great not to pass up. For me it always came down to the fact that my work was ultimately going to be mainly displayed online so I wanted to retain the original quality as much as possible, which meant gradually transitioning to full digital, since a massive amount of the work I was doing on my pages was simply correcting for the issues caused by digitising pages. How do you work and why? The best off Gunwallace track this week was YOUR CHOICE - Get down with this dirty disco. Makes you want to dress in drag and get on the dancefloor. Originally from Quackcast 205, 9th of Feb, 2015. Topics and shownotes Links Pen or Digital (discussion in the forums) - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/180188/?page=7#3029086 Lettering methods (discussion in the General Discussion thread) - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/180279/ Featured comic: Bionic Age - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/jun/08/featured-comic-bionic-age/ Featured music: YOUR CHOICE - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/YOUR_CHOICE/ - by VinoMas, 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 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
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Quackcast 795 - getting along in a creative collaborative community
2w ago00:52:06Tap to summarizeDrunk Duck has been around for 24 years now and in that time we've been the home for thousands of creators. We're a happy collaborative community that celebrates people's personal creative efforts, all for free, though we do super appreciate people's support through advertising and Patreon. Above all we are egalitarian and community driven, we support diversity of style, talent, and since it's pride month; gender and sexuality too. The creativity of humans on projects that they're passionate about and want to share with others is why we exist. Generative Ai is something we don't support on the site though. We had open discussions about it when it was blowing up and decided in the end that it doesn't fit with the vibe of our site. At its heart it's simply a copyright theft machine that spits of generic pastiche using people's genuine copyrighted creations as fuel, openly stealing their IP and regurgitating an averaged out imitation. We felt so strongly we wrote it into our site's Terms Of Service and appointed Tantz Aerine as our Tzarina in charge of policing that. No one person represents what we are. We support diversity and creation and that's all. This week our best-off from Gunwallace is: Patchwork and Lace - Darkness abounds, walking into a dark tomb, past shadows and demon parasites, into mysteries beyond light and human understanding. Deep underground where humans were never meant to venture, learning horrific truths about the universe and what lies beyond… The distorted bass line takes you down… deep down. Originally from Quackcast 538, 6th of July, 2021 Topics and shownotes TOS concerning AI and behaviour - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/etiquette/ Featured comic: In the Woodland - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/jun/02/featured-comic-drunk-duck-awards-2026/ Featured music: Patchwork and Lace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Patchwork_and_Lace/ - by Itsasooz, 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 Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/ 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
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Quackcast 794 - Living in a Webcomic World
3w ago00:59:21Tap to summarizeThis week we're talking about whether it would be ok to live in the world of your webcomic. This was a fun idea proposed by Takoyama in the DD forums and we thought we'd explore it! Then we expanded it to various cinematic universes. Would you like to live in your own webcomic world or someone else's and if so, which one? And which cinematic world would you like to live in? Out of all our own webcomic worlds we decided that Banes's Typical Strange was the best choice by far. A 1990s video rental place, with friends, hijinks, and shenanigans before the internet took over and ruined stuff? Man, in a heartbeat! That's pretty much a perfect world. Even up to the early 2000s with DVDs it would still be just as good. Take us all there now please. In cinematic universes the choice was more blurred but we decided the Marvel Universe would probably be the worst since normal people are simply there to be victims and super people are the only ones that matter. The Star Wars world seems way too full of war but I remember that one family in Caravan of Courage, who were going off on a camping holiday before everything turned to crap… That seemed to indicate there was some normality in that world though where people can grow and raise families in peace. We also decided that the world of the original Superman film (Christopher Reaves), would be a good place to live too since there's only one main hero there originally and he loves saving people. So what's YOUR choice? Oh, we also read out all the posts by the people who commented in the thread in funny voices. The best off Gunwallace track this week was Holon - Sexy Scifi, Blade Runner meets Roxy Music. Originally from Quackcast 198, 22nd of December, 2014 Topics and shownotes Links Takoyama's thread about living in your webcomic world - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/180266/ Typical Strange - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Typical_Strange/ Featured comic: Naturisers - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/may/25/featured-comic-naturisers/ Featured music: Holon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Holon/ - by Abt_Nihil, 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 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
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Quackcast 793 - Baron Munchausen's Imposter Dunning Kruger syndrome!
May 2600:59:51Tap to summarizeWe're chatting about The Imposter Syndrome! And then that bleeds over naturally to the Dunning Kruger effect… Have you ever experienced imposter syndrome in your comicing or professional life? I think it's one of those things that we all have at one time or another. It's the feeling of "I don't belong", "people are relying on me and I really don't know what I'm doing", "they're going to find out I've been a fraud all along!". When it comes to comics in my case it usually happens after I've just posted a new page, I go from feeling like being at the top of the world to a total fraud and a hack who's not worthy to have their comics seen. The way this bleeds into the Dunning Kruger effect is the healthier side of the imposer syndrome… when you're not feeling like a fraud but rather you're aware that you don't know it all - you know your stuff is ok, it could be better, and that's fine. What is Dunning Kruger effect? It's and informal behaviour pattern that we all tend to gravitate towards: When you don't know anything at all about a subject you're aware of that lack of knowledge, but when you know a tiny bit about the subject you overestimate your knowledge and think you know all there is to know, however when you actually become an expert on the subject then you think that you know less about it than you do because you know how much more there IS to know. Also, there's a balance in the middle where you know exactly how much you know. People wrongly think that only idiots are subject to Dunning Kruger, but the truth is that its universal because we're ALL experts at a few things and novices at a billion other things: from artists, to astronomers, to janitors, to footballers, to street-sweepers. Examples of highly qualified people in particular fields saying moronic things about other fields are legion: two time Nobel Prize winner Dr Linus Pauling came up with the stupid idea that vitamin C cures everything and he's the reason why it's STILL touted as being at all good for colds; theoretical Physicist Avi Loeb promotes the idiotic idea that various extra-solar comets are alien spaceships; former doctor, Andrew Wakefield famously promotes crazed anti-vax conspiracy theories… Actual experts in things are experts for a reason. It's important to have an idea of what you don't know about something, then you won't get hit with imposter syndrome. Achieve that balance point on the Dunning Kruger graph and actually know what you're doing. This week our best-off from Gunwallace is: Simply Sarah - It has lovely female vocals and it's a very nice track. Chosen by Tantz Aerine because Simply Sarah is about self realisation! Originally from Quackcast 178, 4th of August 2014 Topics and shownotes Featured comic: In the Woodland - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/may/19/featured-comic-in-the-woodland/ Featured music: Simply Sarah - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/simply_sarah/ - by Skyangel, rated E. 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/ Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/ 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
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Quackcast 792 - Looking to the Future
May 1901:04:02Tap to summarizeWhat are some of the future things you anticipated back in the day? For me it was a bunch of technological stuff to make my art easier and thankfully some tech people had the same idea and actually made that happen! I remember when I was an art student back in the early 90s and we were asked to design our ideal studio. For me it was a room with the typical stuff you need as a visual artist: big windows, space for canvas, easels, and paint, a sink, a sculpture area, plan draws for my drawings etc. But also huge, thin flat screen TVs for entertainment, flat screen computers to work on, and tablets for art. None of that tech existed in the 90s really, art studios tended to be just plain messy, even high end ones. Spoiler- I have my future art studio vision now pretty much, though I moved out my paints, canvases, and plan drawers from my studio many years ago (I still have them). Back in the day I would go through many sketchbooks. I had Pentel mechanical pencils of different sizes, and different hardnesses of leads for them, I had an eraser that was in a mechanical pencil form too so it would never get dirty and would always be accurate to use, it had a feather on the back so I could flick away the mess without touching the drawing. My pages had plastic clipped onto them so I could work on them without smudging the drawings, and a thin metal sheet under the pages so they'd always be firm. I dreamed of an electronic tablet that would solve all those issues, I even wrote about that when I was at university. And now of course I have many of different sizes. I remember wanting a smaller more portable record player, then we had cassette tapes, and the amazing Walkmans! Those had their limitations though, and I was happy to finally have a Discman by the late 90s. I was not a fan of MP3 players because I thought the interface was limited and crap. but when mobile phones got better I got one the the biggest colour screen I could get and found a way to load heaps of music and books on it, before iPhones were a thing I was the only one on the train staring at my phone with headphones in my ears. Of course now all that is on my phone which also folds out into a tablet, it has a powerful pressure sensitive pen so I can do all my artwork on it when I want whenever I want, and it was cheaper than the huge Wacom Cintiq screen tablet I bought 20 years ago… Though the Cintiq still functions perfectly, I doubt the phone will last even a quarter of that. So, lastly: even though tech has gotten a lot more advanced, durability and longevity has gone RIGHT down. tech you could buy back in the day could be expected to have a massive usage life. A lot of tech now is lucky to last 5 years and 10 years is the maximum. That was not something I ever expected. What were some of your future expectations for art technology and did they hold up? The best off Gunwallace track this week was Antifeatured - Fun retro-future electro. Originally from Quackcast 168 - 26th of May, 2014 Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: YokokasQuest - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/may/11/featured-comic-yokokasquest/ Featured music: Antifeatured - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/ANTI_FEATURED/ - by Locoma, 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 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
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Quackcast 791 - Content Vs Art
May 1201:03:19Tap to summarizeWe're chatting about Content Vs Art! In the world as it is now we have a distinct content creator economy online, that's changing and maybe going away but for now we still have it. "Content" is anything people produce in order to be consumed by others and its generally used to make money or maintain or increase the popularity of the creator. There's no need for quality, production is the important part. "Art" on the other hand is stuff produced with time, passion, and inspiration by the creator. There is crossover between these two things but also differences. In the early days of the internet in the 1990s when it first became widely popular by ordinary people, it was mainly pop-culture that people shared. If you wanted to share your own creations it was difficult, you had to learn to hand code websites, pay for hosting, domains etc. In the late 90s and early 2000s "web2.0" came in, which meant you could actually easily upload things to sites and dynamically transform sites without having to hand code them. Drunk Duck comes out of that era from 2002. The "content creators" at this stage were artists: there were no time constraints on the work, it wasn't done for money or popularity (there were exceptions), these were people uploading their creations online for the passion of it, because there was almost no money in it anyway, though we floated the idea of "micro-transactions". Later websites and apps developed much further down that line, social media was the later evolution of what started with web2.0. Instead of sharing creations people shared aspects of their own lives. That mutated even further and the "influencer" was born- pseudo celebrities who weaponised social media by cleverly manipulating the content they share and people's fascination with the lives of others so they could create fake but fascinating versions of themselves. The popularity they garnered was then monetised by companies who pay hem for advertising and the apps and sites they pay them to continue using them. The dream of "micro-transactions" and creator payments was realised but it mainly goes to those people and not artists… Actual creators found themselves needing to conform to this same pattern in order to become successful and earn money. They had to produce "content" rather than "art" because the needs of the system requires constant production and that means "art" is harder to make and "content" is easier. The pressure of constant creation has driven people to seek the use of scammy production agencies (podcasters, YouTubers etc, they're out there for everyone). It's even driven people to use generative AI. Finally there are creators who only exist only to manipulate and steal from the systems originally made for creators, they use AI to create fake music, fake videos, fake art and all the rest and even have it consumed by millions of AI bots so they eat up all the advertising revenue and work to destroy the content economy, whether Youtube, Spotify, Instagram, X, Zazzle, OnlyFans or whatever else. It's not all doom and gloom though. Drunk Duck stays true to its founding- we are not a content mill, we don't have systems to place to encourage that behaviour. We are a REAL creator community online. There is little money in what we do, but it means our people here lean to being the producers of "art" rather than "content". We go much deeper into this in the Quackcast! And I've finally paid for a Zoom subscription so that our voice quality has improved :) This week our best-off from Gunwallace is: Tomb Busters - Compelling, regal, atmospheric, steel guitar country rock, this is a triumphant epic that will swallow you whole and leave you gasping for air. This is one of my very favourites! Originally from Quackcast 341, 25th of September, 2017. Topics and shownotes Featured comic: Scaredy Crow - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/may/05/featured-comic-scaredy-crow/ Featured music: Tomb Busters - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Tomb_Busters/. - by StorkStudio, 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 Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/ 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
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Quackcast 790 - Catchphrases and content creations
May 500:55:45Tap to summarizeCatchphrases are things that can be used to make characters more recognisable and instantly familiar. It can really help them connect with audiences! But when used badly it can make them cloying, irritating or even hateful. This quackcast was inspired by Banes' use of a catch phrase on his latest page of Continuity Falls: "Ah'll be Gosh-Durned!". We also chat a bit about how content creators in general often come up with catchphrases in order to better connect with audiences and how silly that can be. Coming up with catch phrases like content creation is not usually easy, you have to craft and spit out a lot of it before something sticks and you can never really tell what they will be until it's happened… so the conversation also shifts to the constant treadmill of content creation that has become its own niche in the economy and how that can become a drag on a lot of people and lead them to doing dark deals… For example the once excellent Veritasium channel on Youtube, who's creator went from doing extensive research on interesting and unusual scientific questions, who then after he sold his channel to a production company it degraded to slickly produced illustrations of other people's articles, usually very poorly researched ones that have a lot of popularity. We'll chat more about that next week and how it can drive people to using AI and further degrade their content. But for now: catchphrases! What are your faves and have you ever come up with some for your characters or even yourself? For me a couple of my faves are "UNACCEPTABLE!" from Lemongrab on Adventure Time, and "Bah-leted" from Stongband on Homestar Runner and Friends. The closest I've come in my comics is "Hehe, DIE" by Cc in my comic Pinky TA, that seemed to strike a note with people. The best off Gunwallace track this week was Typical Strange - Great pop! Originally from Quackcast 188, 13th of October, 2014. Topics and shownotes NEXT WEEK'S TOPIC: Content vs Art Links Continuity Falls - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/apr/30/continuity-falls/ Featured comic: Bad Heroes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/apr/27/featured-comic-bad-heroes/ Featured music: Typical Strange - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Typical_Strange/ - by Banes, 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 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
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Quackcast 789 - The anatomy of comedy
Apr 2801:02:02Tap to summarizeThe DD comedy promotion month is coming to a close so we're having a Quackcast focussing on comedy in general this time. Tantz, Banes and I talk about comedy, how it works, and what makes something funny, and ironically that's one if the least funny things you can talk about! There are a lot of different kinds of comedy: puns, slapstick, cruelty based comedy, taboo based humour, humiliation based comedy, non-sequitur "random" humour, cute comedy, intellectual comedy, satire, toilet humour etc. I heard the other day that "slapstick" (physical comedy), gets it's name from the noise making "slap-sticks" used by the harlequin clowns in the commedia dell'arte plays from the 1500s. They'd use those to mark when something was funny and the audience was supposed to laugh, though that sounds a little dubious to me… Personally I think the simple "subverting of expectations" neatly explains the methodology behind most if not all comedy: You set something up which comes with its own inerrant expectations, then you surprise people by giving them a conclusion that goes against those expectations, while still fitting in with the logic of the scenario presented. And if things are done right, then you find it funny! That explains puns, humiliation, physical humour, crude humour, anything! This is why the typical number of panels in a gag comic is 4, because that's the easiest way to do setup: You present the concept, you set it up, you provide a complication or question, then you surprisingly subvert it. I did not invent that idea BTW. Then there's also relatability VS specificity: The more relatable something is, the easier it is for most people to find it funny. But if it's too general then it's seen as lame and obvious. Specific subjects can be cuttingly funny but you limit your audience right down. Related to this: In the Quackcast Banes mentions the idea that comedy helps to tell truths at the heart of things. I do not think that's the case, I think it's just that easy generalities connect with more people, so when you surprise them with your subversion more of them will react and agree that it's funny, rather than because it's a "truth". People often say comedians are "truth-tellers", though again, they're just being relatable with very simplified concepts. I'm examining comedy in a very raw and basic way here that is entirely unfunny! I don't think many people approach it that way when coming up with jokes. For most of us we rely on our instincts and what makes us laugh rather than thinking about how it works and why it's funny. How do you approach comedy? This week our best-off from Gunwallace is: Bruno Harm - an appropriate Rockford files style intro for a guy who thinks he's Peter Gunn. Added comedy lines! Originally from Quackcast 278, 5th of July, 2016 Topics and shownotes Featured comic: Pieces of Lingering Dust - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/apr/21/featured-comic-pieces-of-lingering-dust/ Featured music: Bruno Harm - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Bruno_Harm/ - by Bruno Harm, rated E April comedy them month! - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/apr/24/funny-stuff/ 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/ Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/ 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
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Quackcast 788 - Manipulating your Audience
Apr 2100:59:17Tap to summarizeThis is the second part of our Manipulation focussed Quackcast, and we have a special guest: Gunwallace! This time we're talking about manipulating your audience to think or feel certain things that you want them to in order for your story to have a greater impact. Gunwallace was here to help us with the humour aspect because getting people to find things funny is a challenge all in itself! It could be emotional beats, things like sadness at an event in the comic like the death of a character, betrayal, disappointment, joy, revenge, triumph, elation… If you can make the audience feel that along with the characters then the story events have way more meaning! Conversely, if you mishandle it then the event can be a little meaningless or even funny like the famous miscarriage scene in the Ctrl+Alt+Del (CAD) webcomic. But how do you manipulate people into having the feelings you want them to? I suppose the best way is having them identify with the characters, make their situation relatable, make the audience care about the characters and what they're experiencing, then these effects will have a greater impact. Humour is another aspect of this, how do you convince people that something is supposed to be funny and that they should laugh? That's really too big of a subject, but briefly: you can set up a situation and then subvert expectations in a silly way, you can exaggerate things foolishly, have a character embarrass or humiliate themselves etc. There are a lot of ways to go about it. Humour is very easy to fail at though: generalised humour is best because you'll have the broadest appeal and the most chance to make the joke land with more people, but if you're too general the joke becomes generic and boring. Specific humour about a clever reference or focussed on a particular subculture or scene can be razor sharp and awesome, but if people don't get the references then it comes off as meaningless. Lastly, if you have a character who's meant to be super smart, beautiful, a great fighter, charismatic, mysterious or something else, how do you manipulate the audience into believing that? One way is to have other characters simply describe them as that… which is the worst way to do it, at least in isolation. If other characters are announcing those traits you'll need to back it up with an example or it will come off as silly. Part of the trick then is to have a combination of characters reacting to them in a way that confirms those descriptions as well as a demonstration of it: Show a character is smart by having them quickly solve a difficult issue or come to a clever conclusion, rather than writing something like "they're the world's smartest person, they graduated from all major universities at 9 and they have 5 doctorates in neuroscience, experimental quantum physics, rocket science, genetics, and virology!", rather than giving the audience the impression that the character is smart it will make them think the writer is an idiot. How do you manipulate the audience into having the impressions that you want? Have you ever tried to do that and failed? The best off Gunwallace track this week was picked by Gunwallace himself, it's the theme to Joe Pop - Staring Oz and Banes! This one is funny, and was a lot of fun to do! Oz is so great on base! Originally from 9th of March 2015 Topics and shownotes Links Manipulation part 1, Quackcast 784 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/quackcast/episode-784-manipulation Featured comic: Another Random Sequential Experiment - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/apr/13/featured-comic-another-random-sequential-experiment/ Featured music: Joe Pop - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Joe_Pop/ - by dave63, rated E. 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/ 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
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