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

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Shimmer Redux - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/nov/17/featured-comic-shimmer-redux/

Featured music:
Base Reality https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Base_Reality/, by Stever_Blotto, 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/

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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.

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.

Topics and shownotes

Links

How people become dumber through the use of Ai - https://bsky.app/profile/cozmicsoulfire.bsky.social/post/3lzkwart27k2z

Featured comic:
Trip And Tessa - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/nov/12/featured-comic-trip-and-tessa/

Featured music:
Awfully decent fellows - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Awfully_Decent_Fellows/ - by Ironscraf, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

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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.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Forum inspiration: Things Undrawn https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/180148/

Featured comic:
Base Reality - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/nov/04/featured-comic-base-reality/

Featured music:
Alienated - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Alienated/, by Road Runt, 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