Episode 435 - Spinoffs!
Jul 15, 2019
We're discussing spin-offs in this one. Why do them? There are many very different reasons for doing a spin-off as opposed to a sequel, prequel or a totally new story:
Topics and Show Notes
- Spin-offs make promotion and marketing of the work easier because it has an existing audience who are invested in its world.
- It gives you as a creator more freedom because you're not as strongly constrained by the existing cannon of the parent stories, unlike sequels etc. and you don't have to do any new world building!
- For big commercial comic publishers it makes it easier to keep their universes fresh and their audiences connected by spinning side characters off into their own stories .
Indeed, because of their long-running nature, the investment involved and the shifting structures of their creative teams there's a VERY strong commercial imperative to keep birthing new stories through spin-offs rather than create totally new ones.
Webcomics have very different pressures so spin-offs are a lot more rare, but they Do happen. Do you know of any webcomic spin-offs?
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to The Great Khan: Happy, fun, jollity! This one bounces through your door with glee and excitement, happy to see you and wanting no more than a snack and a belly rub! A happy little dance number.
Topics and shownotes
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Featured comic:
Android Blues - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/jul/08/featured-comic-android-blues/
Featured music:
The Great Khan - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Great_Khan/, by Gr8k4an , rated E.
LINKS
Tantz Aerine's fantasy novel spin-off from her Art of Veiling series:
Becoming a Healer - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D0UJ8SM/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Spin of story in Pinky TA - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pinky_TA/5044382/
Epic of Blitzov, spin-off from Putrid Meat - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Epic_of_Blitzov/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Episode 434 - Where do your characters exist?
Jul 8, 2019
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.
Episode 430 - Good beginnings!
Jun 10, 2019
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.
Episode 421 - Dreamcast
Apr 8, 2019
Today we're talking about all the ways nightmares can be used in stories. This is based on a newspost by our very own dreamboat Tantz Aerine. Nightmares are great for foreshadowing through premonitions, forcing characters to confront things and change their minds, ratcheting up tension in a story and all sorts of other useful things that you'd never consider.
Episode 418 - Many kinds of love
Mar 18, 2019
There are many kinds love. Love is a great thing to include in your story for all sorts of reasons: it's an easy way to develop characters, give a character something to strive for, it's universally relatable, You can use it for tension, all sorts of things! There are different kinds of relationships you can use as well, not just heterosexual or homosexual relationships and the common trope of showing the beginning of a relationship, you can show crushes, established relationships, platonic relationships, relationships collapsing and exes coming together. For this topic we were loosely inspired by Tantz and Emma's great newsposts about romance and platonic love. We chat about luuuurv and tricks like lurv triangles!
Episode 417 - Can we be better?
Mar 11, 2019
What is Social Marketing? Basically its word-of-mouth and viral marketing smashed together and weaponised: Marketing companies hijack hot-button social issues and hitch their client's brand to them in clever campaigns (“We can be better”, etc). The purpose isn't really to make a brand seem progressive, modern or new, rather it's another way of getting it trending on social media that's guaranteed to work, unlike the legion of hit or miss but mostly failed “Viral” campaigns. Whether people say negative or positive things about this issue is irrelevant to the marketer, as long as people are talking about the brand is all that matters. Free advertising is the goal, but it has a social cost.
Episode 406 - Amateur Vs Pros Merry Christmas DD!
Dec 23, 2018
Merry Christmas one and all! And all that stuff. This year our release date falls exactly on the 25th! It was a busy year for us, lots happened. But in this Quackcast what we chat about is something rather different: the difference between pros and amateurs, specifically when it comes to comics. There's this common misconception that an amateur is a novice that will produce work of a lower quality, while a professional is an experienced person who knows what they're doing and will always produce things of the highest quality… The REAL story is more complex than that.
Episode 405 - Escape from Tumblr!
Dec 16, 2018
On the 18th of December people who post things with nudity on Tumblr will be kicked off the site. That means all the adult bloggers, comicers and things that made that journalling site stand out above the rest of the vast sea of blog sites and image hosts are being screwed out of what they helped build up! The reason of course is to make the site more attractive to advertisers and so it can more easily fit the standards of puritanical companies like Apple and Google who have taken it upon themselves to scrub the world clean of anything that defines us as adult human beings.
