Episode 12 - With special guest Dino Andrade [95:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

At just over 1 hour 35 minutes, this is our longest PodWarp 1999 to date. With that in mind, we’ve prepared something special: some show notes.

• Introducting our special guest, Dino Andrade - voice actor and founder of SoulGeek.
• We discuss with Dino the origins of SoulGeek, and the future of the site including the planned Webcomic portal.
• Dino talks briefly about auditioning for the voice of Skull in PVP: The Series.
• It’s my turn to have a new one torn: We discuss Jump Leads, and I die a little inside. Also, I get very defensive.
• How you guys do your star fields. Tyson Sukeforth and Jacob Stockton separately suggested this Tutorial by Greg Martin. Steve Troop’s tutorial, which we discuss in the podcast itself, is below the show notes.
• Story-driven scifi comics Vs. Gag-a-Day scifi comics.
• Briefly: Starlog Magazine, and their “Scifi Movie of the Year” list, from which the “Scifi Vs. Fantasy” debate sparks up again.

And now Steve Troop’s star field Tutorial:

1. use a sharpie to black in all the backgrounds.
2. Wet a toothbrush under the faucet (I don’t recommend using your daily toothbrush for this — a new one used expressly for this purpose or an old one you no longer use on your teeth).
3. Shake a bottle of Pro-White (Professional White Out) and open it. Some of the Pro-White will stick to the cap. Rub the wet toothbrush in the cap so that a thinned-out layer of Pro-White is on the bristles.
4. Put the toothbrush near the surface of the blacked-out starfield. Run your thumb from the tip of the brush towards you, so that the bristles will spring back towards the paper and deposit little specks of white all over the drawing (you can mask out other artwork by covering it with scrap pieces of paper, but usually people won’t notice the extra speck on mostly-white artwork).
5. Wait for it to dry. You can go back over some areas with a pen to make parts less dense. Or you can add a star or two with a fine brush. The nice things about doing it this way are that the stars appear on your artwork (in case you sell originals) and the stars are completely random.

Hope this helps!

Thanks Steve!

 

 Episode 11 - So Long, And Thanks For All The Ship (a.k.a. Webcomics Weakly) [70:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

My notes, let me show you them.

• This is Tauhid’s last PodWarp 1999 as a regular, and he will explain why.
• Samuel L Jackson eats a shark.
• We discuss Good Ship Chronicles, ensuring Tauhid leaves the show with permanent scars and possibly third-degree burns.
• We briefly mention Your Webcomic Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad and Webcomics Weekly, and discuss a question Tauhid submitted to the Webcomics Weekly team concerning critique.
• Marketing!
• The changing face of the webcomics community.
• “Suddenly Tauhid realised he was the blind date.”

This, of course, isn’t the last we’ll hear of Tauhid. He will no doubt make future appearances as a guest. In the meantime you can still read his webcomic, Good Ship Chronicles, which despite jokes earlier in the podcast is 100% gold. This is also not the only episode that’s going up this week - come back tomorrow for Episode 12. Oh, and I will get that “Extra” from Kris Straub’s recording up eventually, it’s just been a busy couple of weeks for me.

 

 PodWarp 1999 Episode 10 [73:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Buh-da-dah, da-dah, da-dah, dah… SHOW NOTES!

• Unfortunately Tauhid isn’t with us this week. He will be with us for Episode 11.
• Kane Volfram, Scourge of the Universe, asks us to discuss “Eating, food, and dietary concerns in hard Sci-Fi”.
• Science-fiction futures.
• “Is this a G-rated podcast?”
• What is to come - the future of Science Fact.
• Scifi Continuity.
• How do we - and you - draw starfields?

That last point is going to be a focus of discussion in Episode 12, so if you have any insights into drawing funky starfields please drop us an email.

 

 PodWarp 1999 Episode 9 - with special guest Kris Straub [84:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Apologies for the delays, but for as a thanks for your patience I’ve prepared some show notes for you. We like to go that extra mile when we’ve kept you waiting. Oh, and it’s longer than usual, too. Also we have another guy with us, you might know him.

• Introducing our special guest, Kris Straub of Starslip Crisis and Chainsaw Suit. In the excitement, I completely forget to introduce myself.
• We savagely pick apart Mark Mekkes’ webcomic, Zortic.
• Webcomic crossovers.
• We discuss the impending Zortic reboot.
• We respond to an email sent by Dan Harrison asking us to discuss “energy versus projectile weapons”.
• Joshua Jericho asks, “Is the Sci-Fi webcomic market saturated? And, can I write sci-fi humor without being addicted to Sci-Fi?” and we even drag him into the conversation to discuss this directly with him.
  • As an aside, Joshua did eventually give us the URL to his current non-scifi webcomic during the recording, but he has asked me to remove all references from the recording, which explains why his speech is bleeped out on a couple of occasions.
• The Moral Of The Story.

There was a lengthy post-show discussion in which we discussed a few trivial bits and pieces but also discussed a more general, non scifi-specific webcomic topic. This’ll probably get uploaded tomorrow as a “PodWarp Extra”. We also have a couple of other guests lined up for the future, so keep an eye out for those.

(Also! That obviously wasn’t Kris saying “You’re welcome” when I thanked him for joining us at the end - we recorded the sign-off long after we finished and by that point Kris had unfortunately dropped due to weather problems in Dallas. Or possibly boredom.)

Not all of us were available to record tonight, so this week’s podcast will be a day or two late. We’ll be recording on Tuesday Wednesday and I’ll aim to have the ‘cast itself up on Wednesday Thursday.

Apologies for the delay.

You can now subscribe to our merry little podcast via iTunes, if you’re so inclined.

 

 PodWarp 1999 Episode 8 [63:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

You want some show-notes with that?

• Everyone’s back! Huzzah!
• We discuss Outsider, and potentially ruin Jim’s life.
• Website design - ad placement.
• What with us running out of steam, we talk about Red Dwarf and Doctor Who. Again. Jim expresses dissatisfaction with the revived series.
• Hats.
• A brief, poorly thought-out review of Scott Kurtz’ Truth, Justin, and the American Way.
• We briefly discuss old 70s TV shows. Then we run out of steam completely.

Next week we’ll be picking apart Mark webcomic, Zortic. We’ve received some listener feedback since this episode was recorded too, so we’ll likely respond to some of that as well. Remember, if you want to drop us a line to let us know how rubbish this week’s episode is you’re more than welcome to leave a comment or drop us an email.

 

 PodWarp 1999 Episode 7 [63:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

What, you want show notes too? *grumble grumble*

• Mark Mekkes is out this week due to illness. We all hope he gets better soon.
• We respond to Adam Y’s comment concerning Technobabble.
• Things we hate about our comics.
• People who believe stuff that isn’t actually stuff.
• We talk a little more about the Good Ship Chronicles reboot.
• More things we hate about our comics.
• Fan feedback.

If you have any feedback to the Podcast you can leave a comment or alternatively you can now email us using this handy email address. Just be sure to remove the obviously fake bit first.

 

 PodWarp 1999 Episode 6 [64:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

And I know we don’t usually do this sort of thing, but here are some show notes just to keep you on your toes:

• I’m ill, so I sound husky and quiet and try to avoid talking. I fail miserably.
• Tauhid is once again absent, most likely due to our irregular recording time this week.
• I go over my experiences of the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing, which I attended on the 22nd.
• Scifi sub-genres.
• The deus ex machina: Does it exist? And are any of us capable of pronouncing it properly?
• The fine line between parody, homage and plagiarism.
• Keeping track of your comic’s continuity.
• Talking about Tauhid behind his back.

 

 PodWarp 1999 Episode 5 [56:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I suppose you’ll be wanting some notes to go with that:

• Our creative processes - how ideas get from our brains to our websites.
• Good Ship Chronicles‘ impending reboot.
• JjAR is awesome.
• I hate my first webcomic so Glod-damned much.
• Garfield.
• The differences between a webcomic reboot and a printed comic or motion picture franchise reboot.

Tomorrow I’ll be flying back to England for a couple of weeks. I’ll be spending Saturday March 22nd at the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing. Despite being in another country, however, we still plan for all five of us to record Episode 6 next Saturday Sunday.