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!
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We chat about how your characters evolve over the years. Webcomics are typically projects that extend over many years or even decades, slowly evolving as they go. Your characters change over that time due to all sorts of factors: you forget how to draw them between pages (I've done that so many times), you want to try out new things or popular styles, you use the wrong references, you change how you feel about certain things, or you change how you write them for various reasons.
For me I've been drawing my character Pinky since the late 90s, Pinky has been going for 27 years now in various forms and the characters in Bottomless Waitress have been around for over 10 years. In those comics I now take months between drawing new pages so it's easy to forget how I'm suppose to draw them, I have to look up the last 4 pages every time and research how they're supposed to look, I remember most of it but it's easy to get details wrong. Because of that the characters evolve over time when I make little mistakes that become embedded and then reiterated.
Other changes happen when I just decide I don't like older styles and want to try new things: less cartoony, more cartoony, more realistic, more manga influenced, more painterly etc. Pinky and the rest of the characters in her comic have gone through so many changes over the years and I'm grateful that the webcomic format allows me to have that freedom. Bottomless Waitress is a collaboration with Banes so I don't change the writing of the characters, but I change the look of them just as much and experiment with new styles. I do not understand how ANY of their hairstyles work so those change slightly all the time because of that.
Character bibles would help but who has time for that crap? haha! How have your characters changed and why?
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Base Reality - A demonic game of Pac-man that gets more and more intense till reality is destroyed, we head on up into the afterlife, then float around in purgatory for a while before becoming reborn into Pac-man! An intense electronic journey into metaphysics!
Next week we'll be talking about Avatars and selfies self images. Week after: Blending improvisation with solid story plotting/structure as you carry on drawing a comic
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Quackcast 766 - The importance of drawing earnest-ly
Season 1 · Episode 766
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 • Duration 47:39
This cast is about supporting the individual and interesting creator in the face of crappy, generic Ai produced slop. Because individuality, human mistakes, and human weirdness are so much more interesting than averaged out, smoothed down, generic pablum that's produced by "generative" Ai. I must apologise though because I slept through the usual Quackcast time (I was sick), and it took my brave, loyal and helpful cat almost 2 hours to finally wake me up and get me ready for the cast! So my brain wasn't fully awake and I was a dopey ditz for most of the cast.
Gunwallace joined our crew for this cast. He's always a welcome member to the team.
These big Ai models work by stealing text and images from all over the place and giving us averaged out versions of them. The text and images they churn out are typically bland and often wrong because they are an average of both bad and good information that are delivered in an entirely overconfident manner. AI is a great real-time example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action. The blandness is key though- this is why as a creator you shouldn't feel disheartened, the novelty and creativity of you work is still wake makes it interesting in the face of all this generic glurge.
As Ai use increases, genuine creatives will adapt to it and make it their own as just another of their tools. The people who think they can replace creatives will be disabused of that fantasy just like they were with things like photography and synthesisers: Photography didn't replace the artist like people feared, good photos still take a lot of skill, experience, talent, and training to produce. Synthesisers didn't replace musicians, you still needed to know what you're doing to make music with them. Ai is much the same in that the generic images and text produced by inane "prompts" are generic garbage based on stolen content and the more they're produced the more generic people will see them to be, unless true creatives come along who know how to manipulate them to produce interesting things instead of simply simulacra of interesting things.
It is already starting with people who forgo Ai trained with stolen IP and instead use their own work for the training models. And to a much lessor extent for people who use prompted Ai creations as the basis for further creative work of their own. In the mean time though fully creator produced work will always have value.
Quackcast 765 - Things Undrawn
Season 1 · Episode 765
Tuesday, November 11, 2025 • Duration 56:19
In the immortal words of Banes: "I don't draw blood unless I have to!" Takoyama came up with a great idea that he posted in the DD forums about the things that just don't tend to be drawn in your comics. Whether you avoid them because you can't draw them, they don't fit with your vibe, they don't belong with your comic rating, you want to avoid them because of cultural or political reasons, or you just can't be bothered with them and they're too out of scope anyway, there are many things you avoid drawing! This Quackcast is about that.
Takoyama is the creator of the comic Thrudd Goddess of Thunder, which the Quackcast theme song by Gunwallace is based on.
In my own main comic, Pinky TA, originally my thoughts were that there would be nothing that was off-limits. If I wanted to draw it I would, if the story called for it I would… No matter how bad, no matter how unfamiliar I was with the subject, no matter how hard it was to draw or how long it took or how much I didn't like doing it: fight scenes, complicated architecture, weird cameos, complex costumes, complex mecha, using a toilet, sex, eating, sitting around a meeting table, animals etc. I've since moderated my feelings about that after many years. Staying within ratings has benefits and taking extra time drawing hard or boring things isn't fun.
One of the things I've always avoided in my comic work is Manga style and chibi figures because I have no confidence in my abilities for those, I have tried and the best I can do is an uncanny valley version that looks extra bad. What features in the current skyscraper ad was a version of Sailor Moon in my own style (which was part of a meme at the time) I'll make that the cover image- that's not really me doing manga, it's me doing my interpretation of it because I can't do it.
What are some of the things you avoid drawing? Stuff about Trump, religion? Toilet use, bands singing on stage, people sitting around a meeting table, heavy gore scenes, people eating, cameos, chibi, manga, your OWN face?
This week it's another best-off Gunwallace's musical themes and I decided to choose - Alienated - This is as if Joni Mitchell wrote a classical adventure anthem. This tune urges you on into the vastness and glory of nature. You are Caspar David Friedrich, A Wanderer Over A sea Of Fog, with the world in all its awesomeness spread out far below you. - Originally appeared in Quackcast 372, 30th April 2018.
Quackcast 764 - The problem with simplification
Season 1 · Episode 764
Tuesday, November 4, 2025 • Duration 01:01:38
Imagine a spherical cow… That's an old physics joke about how perfect mathematical models often don't fit with reality. You have to simplify and abstract things. People wrongly imagine that the universe is built out of maths and think that natural phenomena follow the laws of physics in an elegant way… this is not quite true, mathematical models and physical laws are abstractions and simplified models that sort of match with reality but never completely because the macro scale reality we experience is ultimately the result of what happens on the quantum level and the relationship between those two is very hard to figure out.
We HAVE to simplify concepts in order to communicate about them, the trouble is that this leads to errors and stupid ideas because people base their reasoning on those simplified versions of concepts. You get a lot of dumb ideas that are based on a kernel of truth but aren't really true and become more false the more you try and use them in the real world, like: you get tetanus from rust, heat rises, you can get a cold from going to bed with wet hair or standing in the rain, gender is simply male or female, comics and cartoons are just for kids etc.
This has always interested me because we have a lot of idiotic ideas that are common in culture and I've always wondered where they come from and why they hang around- it's not because people are stupid, it's because communication requires us to shorten things down. The trouble comes when we don't allow for that and just take those simple versions as if that's all there is to it. Like people who get tetanus vaccinations whenever they get scratched with something rusty for example- Tetanus is horrible and can kill you but rust doesn't cause it; rather it's a bacteria that lives in soil, usually around animal dung, so places like farms. The reason people think rust is a source is because rusty nails that have been in the ground on a farm will cut you and will most likely give you tetanus, but so will a stick, a bit of bone, or even a cut caused by ANYTHING at all that you happen to get dirt in. You will probably never get tetanus from scratch from anything rusty in an old workshop, on the road, at the beach and so on.
Most people's ideas about evolution are wrong: it's not about "survival of the fittest" or simple things to complex things or about progress towards a goal or perfection, there's no such thing a "the next strep in evolution" or something that is "more evolved" than something else. Evolution is the process of change over time driven by circumstance- that is a simplified explanation but more accurate than some others. Changes that work better in certain situations can hang around and influence further change. They're not part of a positive progression, in fact they can lead to extinction for many reasons.
Quackcast 763 - HalloweenCast
Season 1 · Episode 763
Tuesday, October 28, 2025 • Duration 58:52
Happy Halloween! This North American tradition of dressing up for October has spread around the world and we on the Quackcast acknowledge that by dressing up and joining in with the fun! Us in costume will be in a freely viewable video to anyone that looks at our Patreon this week, you don't have to be paid subscribers. I am a skull-faced Mariachi because I have a great skull mask and a pretty awesome authentic tailored charro suit and wide sombrero, Tantz is a magical steampunk vampire in fantastic makeup, a vintage hat and gothic coat, and Banes is a creepy Pennywise screencap haha!
When I was a little kid growing up in Australia back in the day Halloween was this strange thing you ONLY saw on American TV shows, usually part of the storyline for seasonal episodes. When it started coming here I, like a lot of people, resisted it because it seemed like obnoxious cultural imperialism… but I've accepted it since because the dressing up part is obviously fun.
In the Quackcast we chat about dressing up and some horror stuff. I watched both Scary Movie 1 and Scary Movie 2 for the cast to get into the feel of things. I had never seen them before! Despite being parody comedy movies I still found the killings in the first movie pretty disturbing most of the time and it just seemed like a normal horror movie in a lot of ways but with brighter lighting and dumber jokes (I actually found Heredity much funnier and less horrific). The second film was a much broader comedy, which was pretty silly in many ways but the jokes were also better done, especially the reconstructed skeleton scene.
What are your fave horror comedies? And what will you dress up as for Halloween?
This week Gunwallace has given us the musical theme to - Le French Ninja - This strikes me as saucy French take on the videogame inspired theme to Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. It has the sidescroller beat-em-up 8 bit feel, but it's cooler somehow, wearing a beret and a black turtleneck.
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Quackcast 762 - Handling conflict
Season 1 · Episode 762
Tuesday, October 21, 2025 • Duration 01:01:32
We start off with a bit of a satirical interview where Banes and Tantz attempt to interrogate me over the slowness of the updates to the site. Banes asks the easy questions and Tantz hits me with a far more adversarial approach, I counter with all sorts of deflections like an annoying modern politician in order to show how people handle conflict.
Here's Banes' explanation for his idea for the topic: I'll just say that the original idea was more standard conversation about how characters handle issues and how it shows their personalities and their nature - It would also go into how the way they handle conflict or problems changes in some stories as characters develop (if they develop), or as their hidden selves come out. American Beauty is all about that, with every character putting up a false front or performance to get through life, before all that stuff underneath comes out. Cast Away has a more subtle thing to it, where Tom Hanks can't handle his discomfort about his coworker's sick wife at the beginning, and is kind but sort of guarded – but at the end of the movie, he is able to connect and be more open with the guy.
We also use our own comic characters to explore the idea and examine how THEY cope with conflict. How do your characters cope with conflict?
This week Gunwallace has given us a featured theme to - Lavender - A chill, reflective, and somewhat triumphant piano heavy tune that slowly builds up and up into a positive resolve, like an explosion of water in a beautiful fountain.
In this Quackcast we're chatting about the massively overblown impression that forensic science has in modern pop-culture media and how that can even affect reality when unscrupulous prosecutors use the public's misguided faith in "expert witnesses" and TV influenced ideas of the infallibility of forensic science to influence and sway juries when they shouldn't. Our perspectives (the Quackcasters), on this are fallible and limited because none of us are legal experts or forensic scientists of course, so we tried to focus on the pop culture stuff rather than real world examples too much.
Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes was really responsible for massively popularising the importance of forensic science in popular culture. The search icon that is EVERYWHERE is the magnifying glass which has zero to do with "searching", it's only in use because it comes from the image of Sherlock Holmes and his use of that device to look for forensic evidence in the form of fingerprints among other things. These days there are so many shows where forensic science is the main driving factor in all criminal investigations: Handwriting examination, bullet striations, DNA, Blood splatter patterns, wound examination, bone injuries, facial reconstruction of skulls, voice pattern recognition, polygraph tests, fingerprints, blood type, body language and facial expression examination, traces of hair and fibres, and so on and so on.
What they don't tell you is that many of those things have a massive failure rate, some are completely unreliable, and some don't even work at all, but according to popular media all of them are absolutely infallible. In reality not even eye witnesses are completely reliable and all these methods (the ones that actually work), are only used in conjunction with many others as prompts to further investigation, NOT to prove guilt on their own as they're often shown in pop-culture. They don't really even build a case, they just tell you where you should probably look so you can put together a timeline, establish where a person was, discover new people to talk to and establish the veracity of their story.
Do you know any examples of silly, overblown use of forensic science in pop-culture? Or examples in the real world even? I remember when I went back to university to do post grad studies in the early 2000s, forensic science was ALL the rage because of its profile in so many popular TV shows that many people, mainly women, were getting degrees in it, because the degree had recently been created to cash in on that popularity. I had to wonder how many of them thought they'd really be able to get jobs on that field since Perth (where I am) didn't need hundreds of new forensic pathologists and Australia in general didn't really either…?
Quackcast 760 - what's up with horror?
Season 1 · Episode 760
Tuesday, October 7, 2025 • Duration 52:59
It's October and so it's time to talk about horror again! Not may fave genre but there are decent things that make it up and Banes, Tantz and I chat about some of them. Recently I enjoyed the anime DanDaDan and the American adult animated show Haunted Hotel, both on Netflix. They're both horror themed silly comedies that have a bit of parody of the genre and I really appreciate that. The horror comic I most recently enjoyed was DemiMon Hollow Town Syndrome, which I also recently featured.
We brought up a lot of different horror themed work on DD and you can check that out in our links bellow. What are your fave horror themed things that you've seen recently? Fave horror comics on DD?
This week another special from Gunwallace - Pestilent - thoughtful, haunting, reminds me a little of a classic horror film soundtrack. Pretty scary! - Originally from Quackcast 285, 22nd of August 2016.
Police themed stuff is a popular genre! It's full of tropes and stylised aspects and generally very different from the reality, both from the actual police perspective and the perspective of those that deal with them, and I think I prefer it that way because the reality is usually pretty sad and ugly for all involved. So today we're talking about police theme things, set in the present, past, and future!
One of the tropes we covered is the savant cop. It's a character that's based on Sherlock homes, they're not always officially police, in fact like him they're often private detectives or "consultants" is the popular thing these days. Sherlock Holmes was basically just a super genius but these days it's fashionable to make the expertise pathological, even stuff that's based directly ON Sherlock. They often NEED to be neurodivergent, from Monk, to High Potential, to Patience, The Finder, Bones etc, Though not always, like The Mentalist and White Collar.
Then there's Law and order (and it's spin-offs). This highly venerable show made its mark by doing what most cop shows never do: showing what happens AFTER an investigation. You actually always got too see the trial. Other shows sometimes did that but for Law and Order it was solidly part of the format and that was pretty cool. It's not realistic because everything happens way too fast and orderly but it was good to see anyway.
My fave manga/Anime cop themed stuff is Dominion Tank Police and Ghost in the Shell. They cover things from the police perspective and they're amazing. They envisage how police would work in a future world, one with tanks that can tackle even the most severe aspects of crime in an exaggerated and comical way, and one that has expertise hacking and taking a more black-ops, specialised military approach to their work. Patlabor is like Tank Police in that they use heavy vehicles but in their case it's mecha instead of tanks and the approach isn't comical. There are good sci-fi approaches in Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, and even Galaxy Rangers.
Stuff set in the past is fun too, we have the Sherif of Nottingham in Robinhood as a very bad fellow, there's The Name of The Rose and Cadfael with actual monks acting as investigative policemen during the time of the crusades, then Tombstone and a host of other cowboy shows and movies that cover all aspects of the law in the late 19th century American West. Rush was one of my faves, it was about a policeman in Australia during the gold Rush in the mid 19th century, that was a very unique view and a great theme song! Almost as good as the theme song for the original 1970s version of Van Der Valk, a British show about a Dutch police investigator in the Netherlands.
Quackcast 758 - Confidence is Key
Season 1 · Episode 758
Tuesday, September 23, 2025 • Duration 59:42
Confidence is key! Confidence can make very attractive protagonists and villains and it can make almost any character sexy because confidence is compelling. Main characters and villains never have to be confident, but if you want your audience to be drawn to them it's a great technique. To make a sexy, compelling character confidence works was better than skin tight clothes, lingerie, big muscles or bouncing boobies.
What is confidence? It's self possession, being comfortable in yourself, being sure of yourself and your decisions, positivity, an air of competence, command, and even control. All these things can work together to become confidence. But there are ways of faking it too: Being arch, arrogant, superior, being an arsehole, entitled, bossing people about, relying on a higher rank or superior job title etc. these things are easy to mistake for confidence and many people tend to imitate or strive for these traits thinking it will make them attractive and popular, but it never quite works.
A character doesn't have to start out with confidence or be confident all the time. Many achieve it on their journey over the course of a story. For some it's only in specific contexts, like when they're experts at something. Some start out confident and lose it in the story in order for them to be rebuilt. The mousey girl with glasses and the ponytail doesn't suddenly become sexy because she takes off the glasses and lets down her hair, rather it's because she becomes more confident and those things are symbols of that.
Who're some of your fave confident characters in fiction? For me: The Dread Pirate Roberts is a great example, Lord Blackadder in Blackadder 2, lord Flashheart and Captain Flashheart from Blackadder 2 and 4 respectively is a massively confident and attractive character, Elvira Mistress of the Dark is a woman with so much confidence she's a sex-symbol for the ages, Gomez Adams as played by John Astin is supremely confident, Alan Rickman's Sherif of Nottingham stole the whole movie because of the character's confidence.
This week Gunwallace was is back an in perfect form, he gave us a second take on a theme to Curse of the Office Werewoman - Creepy, driving, compelling, official… HR is sending you directives you simply CANNOT ignore! Get to it, obey like a good office drone and shake dat ass on the dance-floor! The first version was live in Quackcast 683 - 16th of April 2024.
This week we have a best-off Gunwallace - Awfully decent fellows - JAMES FREAKIN' BOND. That's all I originally wrote. This is one of my faves that I often listen to. Originally from Quackcast 195 14th of December 2014.
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In the Quackcast we try and take this topic back to fiction, covering ideas like "cartoons are just for kids". This idea probably stems from the success of Disney and how strongly that was tied to cartons, comics and children's entertainment with Micky Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White etc. Cartoons and comics were never just for kids in any period, there have always been comics addressing adult concepts like political commentary, eroticism, propaganda, military training and proper weapons usage, and just general adult humour. A survey or anything from Warner Bothers Loony Tunes from the 40s and 50s clearly shows that. The trouble comes when unthinking people let kids have access to any cartoon or comic without supervision or oversight. Or when they try and make rules about comics and cartoons based on the idea that they're "just for kids".
Have you been the victim of poor reasoning because someone based their ideas on simplified concepts? Or do you believe them yourself?
This week we have a best-off Gunwallace and this time it's the theme to the music we use for our intro - Thrud Goddess Of Thunder - Big fat beats and an epic sound! This one really brings the thunder! It'd be great as the intro tune to a professional wrestling match. It builds anticipation perfectly and really slams home and delivers on its promises. Epic sounds! Originally from Quackcast 627, 21st of March 2023
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Another best-off from Gunwallace and this week it's - Fox Academy - Mysterious detective music. That's all I had written from when it was first aired! Haha! It's pretty much that though and it fits with our subject this week. Reissue from 218, 10th of May 2015
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I would say my faves are Miami Vice due to the style, The Mentalist due to the cleverness of the main character without resorting to supernatural or neurodivergent abilities as well as having a woman in charge of the team and the way they generally had a non-adversarial relationship with their captain, Dominion Tank Police, Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, and The Bill- but only the early seasons of it before it turned into a ridiculous soap opera- It began as a very procedural cop show showing every aspect of policing from the most minor crimes to more serious stuff in a very realistic way without flashy fights and car chases or constant gristly murders, nothing else did that.
So what are your faves? Do you like copshows? Would you prefer them to be more realistic? Do you like the fantasy/historical/Sci-Fi stuff or do you prefer them to be set in the present day?
Another best-off from Gunwallace and this week it's - Grey Sky Blue Moon - I'm tempted to write a bad early 80s rap for this, but I won't torture people that way. This tune is remarkably 1980s in style: rap, dance style music, exactly like you'd get from a big budget movie from 1984 or '85. Think Beverly Hills Cop or Police Academy. It's perfect! It's a great match for the crazy light night hi-jinks that the girls of Grey Sky Blue Moon get up too! Originally Quackcast 462 4th January 2020 - the start of Covid!
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