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The QuackCast

The QuackCast

By: Michael Morris
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The QuackCast features Ozoneocean, Banes, Tantz Aerine, and Pitface, talking about writing, movies, webcomics, art, politics, philosophy, sexuality, and everything else! We're the hosts of the oldest webcomic host on the net, Drunkduck.com, aka theduckwebcomics. 20 years this year!WOWIO, Inc. Art
Episodes
  • Quackcast 797 - looksmaxing! Ageing your Characters

    Quackcast 797 - looksmaxing! Ageing your Characters
    Jun 23 2026
    Looksmaxing 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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    59 mins
  • Quackcast 796 - Your process

    Quackcast 796 - Your process
    Jun 16 2026
    What'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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    55 mins
  • Quackcast 795 - getting along in a creative collaborative community

    Quackcast 795 - getting along in a creative collaborative community
    Jun 9 2026

    Drunk 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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    52 mins
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