Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (00:12):
Welcome

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (00:12):
To the Oz Comic Show. It’s another Wednesday night, another night for Sizzle and Morgan to talk to our special guest. And this week our guest is Logan French. He has a Kickstarter going on at the moment, so we will probably talk about that a little bit. So let’s get on with the show.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (00:29):
Yay. Hey,

Logan French (00:53):
How are you? Are we I’m well, well tired, busy. Awesome, but well

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (00:59):
Tired, busy and Well, that’s a good title for a memoir. Tired and busy, but Well, yes. Or if it’s sizzle night, it’s just

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:08):
Questionnaire. The beard has gone in the picture at the front.

Logan French (01:14):
Oh, yes. Yeah. I need to get a haircut too. When you buckle down and you start a project, you forget about that stuff. You just, all forms of self-representation just disappear and you just go about your business. Yeah.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (01:35):
The same set of marriage

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:37):
At the moment.

Logan French (01:39):
Yeah. Yes.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (01:41):
Sorry, we just jumped. Right. That’s the first time we’ve done thats, we haven’t done that

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:44):
Before. It’s the first time. It’s

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (01:46):
The first time you got the first one where we just jumped right in over each other and just completely muddled it all up. Apologies. Logan. Welcome. Nope, that’s

Logan French (01:54):
All right.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (01:54):
You won’t understand a word we say. Do you want to go sizzle or do you want me to go? You go. Alright, well, we’re on, then the show begins. So we’re going to get to a Kickstarter that you’re running at the moment, which is called Amphibian Noir. No, that’s correct. Yes, I can read. Alright, so we’re going to get to that project. There are a couple of other earlier projects I wouldn’t mind talking about because there’s a really cool style that you’ve got and some really cool ideas that I wouldn’t mind exploring. But why don’t we start with what got you into illustration, drawing comics, any of that sort of stuff. What was your introduction to the world of arts and such?

Logan French (02:41):
Okay. Well, for starters, growing up, my mum was an artist or still is an artist. So naturally I did steer towards it quite a lot. And I had two older brothers who were always bringing back comic books. And my mom, she was right on top of comic books. She also collected back when she was younger as well. So it was just a native progression for us to start reading and start looking at comic books in my local town. When I was growing up, Maryborough, we actually lived across the road from a printers that would print all of the local stuff for Marvel in dc.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (03:27):
Wow.

Logan French (03:27):
So we would see the odd runoff here and there that we could nab a few copies of and have a read. So it was really good in that sense. I mean, the quality of the print was, it was that sort of late eighties sort of period where the print was so-so, but comic books are comic books and when you’re living in a small country town, you take whatever you can get. You really do.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (03:55):
Yeah. So you were into comics fairly early? Yeah,

Logan French (04:03):
Yeah, way early. So 10.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (04:06):
10. Okay, cool. Which is a great time to get into comics. Yeah, that is.

Logan French (04:11):
Did you?

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (04:12):
Oh, you go, you go.

Logan French (04:13):
Well, I was going to say we shifted from the small town to a slightly larger city, and it was where you actually had a comic shop. So that’s where things changed. I started collecting a lot more, started reading a lot more, and of course started to progress towards wanting to do things myself.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (04:33):
Awesome. Very cool. That was going to be my next question. When did you start picking up the pencil or the charcoal or the

Logan French (04:41):
Stick whenever you started? Yeah,

(04:45)
Look, I would say I was pushed in that direction relatively heavily by most people around me. Saw that 9, 10, 11 age, I was definitely holding pencils and sketching landscapes and all that sort of stuff. Having someone to teach me at home is quite handy as well. So the whole progress was definitely sort of just pushing that direction. So technically, classically trained in the sense of art. So I can pick up acrylics or oils or watercolours or inks. I can sculpt something for you, I can screen print, I can block print, I can do all sorts of things. So it’s definitely just another avenue that I’ve explored. And some of my older stuff I’ve explored the more tactile sort of environment, a lot more than my current work, which is all digital.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (05:51):
Okay, right. Okay. So the progression then from, by the way, I mean if you are sculpting, what about this business? Anyway, we can talk about that later. So yeah, the progression then, or moving towards writing your own comics, illustrating your own comics, sequential art, that whole sort of thing. Has that just been part of the, as an artist you want to explore something a bit different or you want a product that you can kind of sell out there and get moving? What was the draw? Or was it just more of a love of the medium from when you were younger? What kind of drew you into comics?

Logan French (06:37):
It was the exploration of telling a story. So as far as I’m concerned, comic books are the only medium where you can tell a story both visually and verbally at the same time and make it as long as you want or as short as you want. There’s no sort of requirement as to how you display it or how you word it or how you pace it. That is all up to you. It’s the most versatile medium that’s floating around as far as I’m concerned for conveying a story. And anybody in literature that wants to argue with me, they’re more than welcome to do so. Especially schools. Schools. So I just progressed in that direction because it was everything I wanted it to be. I just wanted to be able to convey a story, not just in one image, but multiple images.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (07:41):
Alright. And there’s less, I suppose, more freedom to explore. You’re not, as you say, hemmed in by this is one way of doing it and you have to do it this way, and there’s a 10 minute time limit or a six page or 10 or 50 or whatever

Logan French (07:55):
You can pretty much do. That’s right

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (07:57):
What

Logan French (07:57):
You want. It’s all freedom. It’s freedom. And look, art in a general sense is very much like that, but when you pour yourself into just one singular image, sorry Nick, it’s exhausting. It’s truly exhausting pushing it in. And I’m not going to say comics aren’t exhausting because they are, but at least you can progress that exhaustion over a period of time, and it’s not quite as hectic as trying to convey that message into a single piece. So yeah, it just kept pushing and pushing in that direction. And once again, coming in from a small town, you don’t have any options for comic book illustration. You don’t have any options for producing your own media in that sense because it’s just not there. The schools don’t support it, the businesses don’t support it, the people don’t support it. It’s quite the struggle to push in that direction. But I’m seeing more and more people my age sort of cropping up that have been wanting to do this for so long, and it’s booming right now. It’s really going well. It’s a good time. Who do you think I’m named after?

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (09:25):
And especially, which brings us to crowdfunding, Kickstarter, those sorts of things as a new mechanism to reach new audiences and put a project together and get people behind it and not having to be restricted by traditional publishing through Diamond or anything like that. So tell us about, we’ll go, we’ll start now and then we’ll go back because I’m really interested in a couple of figures from earlier work. But let’s start with Amphibia and the idea behind the story, where that came from. Obviously the second part of the title gives a fair bit away the noir aspect, and I can see some art behind you in the wall of a froggish nature you might say, which is part of that. So why don’t you just give it a bit of a description on what the idea was, what appealed to you about the whole idea and all that

Logan French (10:19):
Sort of stuff? So this came from a bit of an odd idea. So I, I’m a big fan of noir film. I love old noir, neo noir. I love anything that has any form of gritty drunken main character that stumbles his way through an environment full of violence and mayhem. I just love that sort of stuff. And visually it’s always so appealing. Beautiful lighting work and always well paced is another thing. Noir stuff is always so well paced. So it drew me in really, really well. So early on I was watching Chin Big fan of Blade Runner. That was a big hit for me in the introduction to noir or neo noir in that sense. But old films like the Maltese Falcon and the Chinatown and stuff like that, which was just great stories. They really are just beautiful character pieces that just draw you in with pace of storytelling and characters that make you want to keep coming back and viewing and trying to extract more information from them. So Noir was a great platform for me to drive a more character-based story forwards. So I leaned very heavily towards expression of characters and how they do things, not so much about what they’re doing, I guess, about more why they’re doing it.

(12:07)
So it was just a good genre, if you will, because in the end, it’s not the genre, it’s the styling noir, but the story itself is more of a thriller, I guess you could say, but not in a fast paced spy kind of way. More of a slow paced detective kind of way. Yeah. So it is a lot of, I’m not going to say espionage, but there is a lot of political stuff going on in the background that the characters have to deal with along with their own problems and the reasons that they drive forwards and keep pushing with the story as well. So basically it’s about a group of characters, three characters who get caught up in a kidnapping essentially, and they have to find a way out of it. And that’s essentially me opening the door and there’s about four doors that are open in this first chapter that will lead to arcs further down the story, but it’s really going to be more about introducing the characters, making you understand where they are, how they are mentally, and give you a feel of what the story is going to be like in the near future.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (13:51):
Very cool. Sizzle, do you want to bring up some of the pages? Yeah, bring up, these are some pages from the Kickstarter campaign. Yeah, hopefully I’ve got in order.

Logan French (14:04):
Yes. So opening with a mum joke. Yeah.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (14:09):
Yeah, I did like that. Notice that, yeah,

Logan French (14:13):
That’s actually a two bladed joke, that one, because mums aren’t a common thing in this world that I’m creating. It’s actually an insult in itself, which gets explained a little bit further down the track, which has to do with colon and a few other things.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (14:34):
Oh, okay. So we did, oh, actually yeah, you can explain as we go and I’ll ask questions in a bit.

Logan French (14:43):
So you’ll notice that the colours are pretty, so what I’ve done is I’ve gone with a very eighties sort of feel about the decor and the environment. The clothes that they wear are going to be relatively brightly coloured, which are actually more of a representation of their more primal environment where colours in nature often represented how dangerous an item is or an object is, and the more colourful their skin is or the more colourful their clothing is, they tend to portray a more outward aggressive appearance. That’s really cool. It was a way of me incorporating, because the colours came in kind of late. I actually only started the colours a few weeks back. We’ll see your face for a bit, and I, I’ve actually put a tonne of thought into it now that I’ve sort of pushed along and gone with it and the colours have really bought the whole world to life a lot more. So, Hey Darren.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (16:02):
So what does that say about the protagonist character then that by the looks of it, has fairly drab or fairly plain? Yeah,

Logan French (16:13):
That’s right. He keeps a really, really low profile sort of personality. But as you would know from all protagonists, you’d never know what’s coming around the corner with those guys or where they’ve been or what they’ve done. And he has a big story and a big part to play on, not just on the general character scale, but also on the political scale as well. I can’t say anything else about it because it gives away, this is the problem with the story. I can’t talk too much about it otherwise it gives away too much. But the fact is he dresses in that way for a particular reason, and one of them is to sort of throw people off. Do you have the wrong idea? Make them think. He is nothing essentially. So he tries to keep it as quiet. His characters that he travels with. On the other hand. Thanks Darren. Often brightly dressed so dim, which is the other character that he travels with, is always wearing something elaborate and colourful and really over the top. So they’ve been a lot of fun.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (17:45):
Cool, cool, cool. So we’re going to do something new that Sizzle doesn’t know about yet. It’s a segment I like to call Shameless promotion because one of the hardest things as an artist and a creator and all that sort of stuff is the self-promotion. A lot of us find that very, very hard. Some of us not so much. So we’re going to do it for you a little bit now. So both Sizzle and I on the day that you sent through the link and we had a look, both backed it and I think Sizzle. Did you get in just before I did, or were you

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (18:15):
Just I think so, yeah, I’m not sure. I’m not sure. But I got it as soon as I got that notification that it was starting, I was in there.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (18:21):
Yeah, it’s an amazing looking campaign. The artwork is fantastic. I love the noir, the genre and the feel, and just something we started speaking about off air that we will bring in now was this anyway, so getting back to the plug, get in, support it. It’s fantastic. It looks amazing. Amphibian Noir, get into Kickstarter and support the campaign. We both did. We

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (18:47):
Love to, I havet a link directly to it, but if you go there, that’ll take you to all the latest Kickstarters. And I believe Amphibian you are is the third one across, if I remember correctly. So that makes it nice and easy to get to because I haven’t got a direct link. Sorry.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (19:04):
That’s no worries. So yes, so get in and support. It’s amazing. One thing we set off air beforehand was this tendency, and there’s a couple of gentlemen in the chat that are probably in the same boat. There’s this tendency to do sort of noir or dark or gritty kind of stories, serious esque kind of stories, but with characters that are animal or that don’t have human face or there’s something they’re not just people interacting with people. There’s always, there’s typically, and it seems to be a characteristic, particularly with Australian comics, a lot of comics we’ve noticed recently. So maybe tell us a little bit about the decision to go with amphibians rather than just standard humans and maybe some of your other work that has a similar kind of,

Logan French (19:58):
I find people boring. Is that, I’m sorry. No, just in the visual aspect, we look at them all day. We see them on films, we see them in magazines and books, and we see people’s faces everywhere. When I want to get reading or when I want to get involved with a story, I want to get lost. I don’t want to be on this planet. I don’t want to be talking to the guy I can talk to next door. I want to be talking to an alien or an amphibious walking creature from another dimension. Who knows? A lot of my artwork from a long time ago has always involved some sort of way of manipulating the way humans look as much as possible. And this is, as a kid, you grow up, you watch Baba, you watch the Muppets, you watch, you watch so much content that isn’t human that it just surprises me that there isn’t more anamorphic kind of environments floating around. And it doesn’t surprise me so much that Australia is starting to sort of push that a lot more because culturally we love animals. It’s a big part of our nature. It’s a big part of how we do things here in Australia as well. We respect them, we look after them, we do all the animal stuff that we love. So it was a stylistic choice. I love frogs. I do. They’re great animals.

(21:50)
They’re both dangerous and carnivorous, but also so freaking cute. Hey Dave. So I didn’t want to steer in this direction, but I’m also a big fan of Kerm at the Frog, which is such, I get, it’s such a stylistic, you can see him there, but I didn’t want him to be kerm at the Frog. So his eyes are different, his stature and the way he carries himself is very different as well. But I loved Kermit’s ability to lead people, bring people together. He was never one of those characters that had special skills in any ability. He didn’t do much more than sing really. But when it came to organising the proper people to be in the right place, that was his skillset. And I thought, that’s a character right there.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (23:03):
It’s a clever move. If I may throw some flattery your way, it’s a clever move as well because so many of us have that image in our mind that, so when I see the main character from this story, my immediate thought is, yeah, there are some similarities there, which makes me think this guy is a bit warmer and cuddly and nicer than maybe he, it’s already giving me a false impression of what the protagonist is potentially going to be, which is kind of smart because then I’m like, yeah, but he’s okay. A Kermit doesn’t smart. Oh, he read that. So yeah, I think it’s a really, really clever move.

Logan French (23:46):
Yes, that is a picture of power behind me by myself. I did that. Yeah, look, it was a subconscious move. It was not a decision, it’s just something that evolved in that direction. And the original 12 page comic that I did for Amphibian Noir was visually a lot darker as well. So the shadows were a lot heavier. It was a lot more Frank Miller risk in its

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (24:22):
Visuals

Logan French (24:24):
And answering Darren’s question that he asked earlier. Oh, okay, I’ll bring that

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (24:28):
Up.

Logan French (24:28):
Sorry,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (24:29):
I was waiting for a spot.

Logan French (24:31):
Yeah, he’s not wrong. I have done a lot of detailed work and looking at these pieces behind me, they’re quite heavily detailed as well. You’re not wrong. Timeframe does become an issue. But at the same time, I also wanted to create a visual style that was different to most of my visual styles have been very influenced by other artists. And people would go, oh yeah, that looks a lot like this, or that looks like this. What I was going for here was something that people look at and go not quite sure what that is. And it’s like, it’s this push between looking for that cartoon outline kind of environment, but with all the, it’s like they’ve done a Loony Tunes picture, but left all the pencils in they’ve, there’s dirtiness to it, there’s grittiness to it, there’s weight in certain lines. The way the simplicity is both easier to do and also a lot more difficult to do because you see every mistake stand out from a mile away. It’s also a lot better for action, man. It is just so much easier to do for action.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (26:01):
Yeah, compliment there for Logan.

Logan French (26:04):
Thank you for sloppy tunes.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (26:08):
There is also, and you mentioned that the kind of eighties aesthetic or the furnishings in the background and all that sort of stuff there is that. So I’m still fairly new to comics, so I dunno what to call it, but that dotted papery kind of

Logan French (26:24):
The half,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (26:25):
Yeah, yeah. Hence half tone productions. Yeah, I’m getting it very slowly. Yeah, there’s that kind of star, almost like you expect every second or third page to be slightly misprinted a little bit or I dunno, it feels like it’s that kind of,

Logan French (26:43):
And I like that. I like that tactile. I like when colours are misaligned and they’re not printed quite correctly. I like it when you can see something slightly off or not quite perfect. I love handmade. I really do. I love it when things are done with hands and when things come out perfect. I mean, they’re also great, don’t get me wrong, but there’s something about that sense of tactile nature, that essence behind it that we are drawn to Risso printing that they do for band posters and stuff like that. Oh man, that stuff always gets me. So I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the Risso printing. Risso printing, it’s like photocopying, but they use a screen printing technology inside. So each colour is printed separately. So as the paper through paper runs through, it gets printed by a screen, a screen print.

(27:50)
So the colour that comes through is really solid. It’s really blocks solid, but it’s not, it’s just one colour. So if you want to do multiple colours, you have to run the same bit through. So when you do that, they slightly misalign or they slightly don’t sit in the right spot. The colours overlap and because the colours are slightly transparent, you get all these layers that happen through them as well. It’s a beautiful, beautiful printing process and not often enough used mainly because of that imperfection, because of that slightly off centre environment. Right. There you

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (28:30):
Go. I’m getting Ed duplicated with stuff. It’s awesome. Yes, this is good. I dunno this stuff. So let’s talk a little bit about villains. What do you enjoy exploring on the villain side of things or the antagonist side of things? I

Logan French (28:51):
Love antagonists that aren’t cut and dry. There’s too many out there where you walk in and the antagonist is like, I want to take over the world, or I want to kill this person. Or there’s just so little depth in what they’re doing. And to me, an antagonist is just another character with a different point of view.

(29:21)
They’re just coming from a different angle or have a different idea. In this story, there isn’t technically an antagonist. The story itself is the antagonist. It’s the part that just keeps driving forwards and each decisions that they make drives them into a corner or into an open space, or it’s not just one character or one person doing something. It’s a group of decisions and a group of ideas and ideals that push the story forwards. So as far as antagonists go, there’s not cut and dry in this particular story or, well, any of my stories really. I often don’t sort of point out a single person to hate. If you get where I’m at, there’s a sympathetic value in everything. I mean, DC and Marvel just, I dunno if they explore their villains as much as they should. I’m not actually a big reader of that side of things, but I believe that even their villains have an ideal, they have a belief, they have a system that’s in place that tells them that this is the right thing to do for what reason? You don’t wake up one day and go, I’m just going to be a bad guy, I’m just going to go out and rob a bank. No, there’s always circumstances. There’s always something that drove you to that point. And every antagonist has that.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (31:02):
Thanos is an environmentalist that’s trying to, there’s too much strain on resources, so kill half the population and then yeah, you’re saving the rest.

Logan French (31:12):
Yeah, it makes sense to all those starving people out there, to them, he is a hero to them. This guy is a God, all the good guys are the bad guys because they’re trying to reinstate this environment that is killing all these people, all these worlds instead of helping them. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (31:42):
And I like that depth. You say that it’s easy to write a villain that’s just a bad guy because I hate everything and I hate the world, but that’s not interesting and hasn’t been for a while. So question then as a creator, writer, artist, have you got an idea you could share with us or something that you’ve come up with that you, it’s your white whale or you haven’t done it yet or you’re too scared to do it, or it’s just too big or too much, or the world isn’t ready for it. Something that you’re willing to share that you think I’d like to but I just haven’t or I won’t because of reasons or other.

Logan French (32:29):
So I’ve already started tackling my white whale, which you guys may have read, part of which is actually fu I was going to ask you about

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (32:38):
That. All right, cool. Let’s go

Logan French (32:42):
Segue. Yeah, so I haven’t actually finished that story yet and there are reasons for that, but we’ll get to that as we push along.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (32:56):
Right. So tofu, yeah, explain a little bit about, so I’ve only seen a little bit and I’ve obviously seen the image on the front cover image and immediately my immediate thought is whatever this is, I want this and I need this in my life because it’s that kind of image that’s just, yeah, I don’t even know how to describe it, but it’s just the right amount of weird for me. Yeah. Is there anything you’d like to explain about that or the project or,

Logan French (33:32):
Oh look, you nailed it right on the head. It’s the right kind of weird. So it’s a story that takes place in an environment that’s hostile but not with a character that can’t remember anything but wants to destroy everything. So it just hits the ground and it’s just from zero to a hundred and just goes. And this is one of those stories that when I started doing it, so the whole thing is done by hand. I can’t remember how many pages it is.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (34:22):
40 something for each

Logan French (34:24):
One. Yeah, so 120 ish so far, and there’s like one or two books after that I’ve got to get sorted.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (34:37):
So I’ve read them both and I’m hanging out for the

Logan French (34:39):
Next one. Now the third one’s there. I can send that through to you, but it is a part of the Kickstarter as well. I, it’s part of the bundle. So yeah, you’ll be able to read those three books on the digital bundle there. It was a real passion project. So when I started comic books, I did a lot of little stuff. I did all those little 12 page comics, maybe 24 here and there just to get myself pushing forwards. And then I sat down and I was scribbling away and this guy just popped out of my head and I’m just like, that’s me. It was kind of like a self-portrait of me at the time.

(35:28)
And I just like the story itself. I just hit the ground running and I just worked and worked and worked on this thing and nothing else mattered at the time. I just was heads down and there was no plan. There was no script. I didn’t know what was happening from page to page straight out. It was very Stephen, king of me. It just went. Yeah. That’s amazing when that happens though. Yeah. When you just hit something that agrees with you on so many levels and it’s quite a personal little journey for me as well. So yeah, it’s an interesting insight into myself I guess.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (36:20):
There you go. And obvious just be ongoing.

Logan French (36:24):
Yeah, look, I will get to finish in it. I promise that I definitely want to do that. And the fourth book is here. It’s already here, and I did start it at one point. The pages are floating around here somewhere, but it just went to the wayside as I started pushing on a more, you know what? I got busy with life at that point. That happens. When I did those first few issues of Tfu, I was young, my kids were one and three, I had, well, I had a bit more time on my hands I guess when the kids were younger. But as they grew up, it just got more and more difficult to progress and take on those bigger projects and find the time to sit down and pour four hours into a page, which is just what you do. You lose the world and you just pour yourself into it, which is what I’ve been doing with Amphibian Alliance. I’ve taken two weeks off from work to just sit down and work from nine o’clock in the morning to five in the afternoon, just colours

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (37:50):
Sweet.

Logan French (37:53):
And it’s showing I’m really loving the work and seeing what’s coming out of it. So hopefully I will get that same rhythm for FU again, so I can push through those last couple of books and get them out in the world. I dunno if I want to release those first two as they are. I might do a little bit of tweaking

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:21):
Just being asked for a cover. This is, oh sorry, this is the cover that got Morgan, so if I can actually go on the right page. We’ve just been asked for the cover, so I just thought I’d bring it up.

Logan French (38:32):
Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:34):
Right. Kind of weird.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (38:36):
There’s so much that I want to know straight away. I love every bit of it. Just the little creature thing. Bean baggy thing. It’s so good. Yeah, I loved it. Absolutely loved it. Just such a good, without saying a word, just such a good draw to the story and yeah, that was really it. You may see how much I loved it when we get to the gift portion of the night, but we’ll, we’ll see how we go. So I’m not going to give any preamble sizzle your question, my question. Oh, he’s written something down. He’s written something down. I knew you wouldn’t ask.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (39:23):
I just thought I’d give you a bit of a plug. Read this way. Tell us about it. Oh,

Logan French (39:28):
Thanks. Read This Way is a fortnightly podcast I do with Bradley Aiden, who is the creator and writer for super RBA or Super Ready battle Armour, and we talk about manga and anime from fortnightly releases. So we read a lot and consume a lot of anime and manga and we talk about it a lot. So we decided to turn it into a podcast or video stream so we can discuss with other people and convey our ideas and concepts behind it, which apparently a little bit beyond what the average reader looks into when it comes to stuff. We also tend to head off on tangents where we will look into what previous works the artists have done or the animators or directors, and we discuss all sorts of things, so Sounds cool. Yeah, definitely.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (40:26):
How do we find it

Logan French (40:28):
On YouTube? You’ll find us in the halftime Productions channel tab there. Channel. Channel. Sweet. We also crop up on Facebook and stuff like that. We’re on, what else are we on? What’s the other streaming service? Twitch. Twitch, that’s the one. It is Twich. Sorry. Yeah, you can tell I’m up with the times. Yeah, so Twitch, YouTube and Facebook we stream to Sweet. Yeah, but that’s been a blast. Just hanging out and chatting about that stuff has been a tonne of fun. So if you are interested in any anime or manga or you just want to get involved, you just want to hear more about it and the ideas behind it and yeah, drop on by, have a Listen, we’ve got five episodes I

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (41:22):
Think. Oh,

Logan French (41:22):
Sweet. Up there now. Yeah. So it’s still pretty young, but we will get a library happening eventually. That’s right

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (41:31):
Back to you Morgan.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (41:35):
Thank you for that question. Okay, so one the ones of the staples that we ask here at the show, but I’m going to change it up a little bit. I feel like I shut up my game a little bit this time. So it’s essentially going to be the same question but slightly differently. So the protagonist from any of your books that could be amphibian on Kickstarter now back or anything going through the KFC drive through, they’re in the back, you’re in the front, what are they going to order?

Logan French (42:19):
What are they going to order?

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (42:22):
Can a frog eat a chicken? I don’t even know. Yeah,

Logan French (42:25):
Yeah, they carnivorous. They have teeth. How weird is that? Did you know frogs have teeth?

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (42:30):
That is weird. I didn’t know

Logan French (42:31):
That. Yeah, because they eat insects and wizards and all sorts of things.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (42:36):
That makes sense. Yeah.

Logan French (42:39):
Look, the characters, I know for a fact that the main character, main protagonist in am fir doesn’t eat a lot, so he’s probably just going to grab some nuggets, I would say just because he drinks and smokes more than he eats. I

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (42:58):
Was going to say, does he have a liquid diet? Is that what it’s

Logan French (43:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other two characters, on the other hand, DM definitely they’ll be down for a couple of box meals. They’re young, they eat a lot, they’re very active and they’re always training and pushing themselves forward. So that’s definitely going to be an environment where you’ll get a lot of food happening in the car. Kle who’s our resident sniper in the group is a lot more refined. He would probably decline KFC regardless of our hungry. He is is simply on the basis that he didn’t want to put that in his mouth.

(43:51)
All these characters represent me in different moods. You could find me in that situation any given day, regardless of or considering where I’m at at the point. But those three are quite different in personality. So they’re going to order very different things now if we shift across over to say Blackstar century, which is a one we haven’t talked about yet. Nice. Our two main protagonists there would eat anything you throw at them. Generally they’re pretty crazy. They have as much a liquid diet as they do a food diet, but theirs tends to steer more towards desserts. And since K Ffc doesn’t have a lot of desserts there, it’s probably not going to be their first choice.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (44:50):
No, because gravy’s not a dessert, is it? I suppose it depends how you do it, but yeah, not really. Alright, there we go. Very good. Very, very good. The KFC, I thought it might throw you, but the K ffc didn’t throw you at all. That’s good. No.

Logan French (45:07):
Wow. It’s really weird. So when I was younger, I read quite a bit of Conan books, your old paperback novels and stuff like that, and came quite obsessed with the author and his process, which I dunno if you guys are familiar with, but he may have been slightly schizophrenic. And how he wrote his stories was in his wood, she around a fire talking to Conan as Conan gave him the stories.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (45:48):
Wow, interesting.

Logan French (45:51):
So his stories were rewritten from a character that he produced, but that character was in front of him. And I took this to heart, I thought, why wouldn’t you write a character like this? Why wouldn’t you try and understand who they are? So now when I write characters, I will start the story with, this is the circumstance. So this first issue, you dropped in the middle of something, something’s happening right there. And it’s all about what decisions they make and how they make them is what pushes the story forwards. So when I started writing it, I didn’t know what the end was. Hey

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (46:35):
Peter,

Logan French (46:36):
I didn’t know what the end was. I was waiting for the characters to tell me what the end was.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (46:42):
Oh, cool.

Logan French (46:43):
Which sounds a little bit crazy, but it’s how I work. I think about having a conversation with these characters and understanding them or seeing what they would say or how they would say it, how much they would say versus what they know and all sorts of other things. So as I push the story forwards, like I said, it becomes a character piece. It becomes a view from their perspective that they personally pick. Not that I write it is from the decisions that they make.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (47:22):
Yeah, I love that.

Logan French (47:25):
Love that idea. Those sort of questions don’t stump me so much because that’s just who they are

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (47:33):
And you know them. And then yeah, as soon as they’re, well maybe before they’re written, but as soon as they’re written and they’re there, they’re alive and they kind of speak for themselves. Yeah. Which great, because it means as the situation gets complicated, all you have to do is essentially ask them, well how are you going to get out of this? Instead of thinking, oh, what do I do? It’s like, well no, they’re their character. What would they do in that situation? There’s your answer.

Logan French (48:00):
That’s right. Which means what you’ll see is less elaborate, fancy scenarios that are well thought out and well-planned versus scenarios that just happen because they’ve made the wrong decision or they’ve gone the wrong direction or they’ve made the right decision and it’s headed in this direction. It just gives a more grounded sense of reality for me as I’m right in it.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (48:34):
Nice. Cool. Alright, we’re up to the ultimate question for the night. The ultimate

Logan French (48:41):
Question for the next.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (48:42):
This is for you as an individual favourite food eating favourite movie. What would that combination look like for you, just at the moment? Not for all time, just moment.

Logan French (48:54):
Just at the moment. You know what, I’ve been eating a lot of salad and vegetables lately. So I would say roast pumpkin salad with mushrooms and blue van cheese, a nice glass of Pinot noir, preferably from the New Zealand Central Ortego sort of area. And movies. I say movies. So yeah, movie buff. I have a lot of favourite movies in all sorts of directions and there are movies I religiously watch at least once a year. So you will at any point in the year, watch me catch in Blade Runner. You’ll see me watching Alien. You’ll see me watching Akira Ghost in the shell. You’ll see me watching now that you got me on the spot. History of Violence I, I’ve got this collection, this little set of collection of DVDs and Blu-rays that when I look at Netflix or something like that, I’m just like, don’t feel like any of this. I’ll go back to that section and I’ll just shut my eyes and pull one out because I’m guaranteed to enjoy it regardless of

(50:38)
The environment. And I’m real picky when it comes to not just story and characters, but the way the light’s working in the film or the way the colours are laid out or the way the camera’s moving, or the lens they chose or the way they cut the film together. Editing is such a big part of that and it’s such a similar process to Comic Bookmaking. I often associate the two together because they’re very similar in nature and this is why comic books and films transcribe so well the way you can take almost as panel by panel comic books and you can convert them to film without a hitch because they’re designed that way. They’re designed to deliver a sentence of dialogue in a cut scene and that’s just works. They transfer really well. So that’s why I love those two mediums so, so much. And so when you say pick a favourite movie, I can’t,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (51:49):
I’m sorry. I thought you were going to go Muppet’s Christmas Carol, but that’s okay. That’s all right. Did you see the lighting in that? That was up shelf. Fantastic.

Logan French (52:02):
The top tier production, that one

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (52:04):
Top tier. Very good. Well, thank you very much, Logan. That was amazing. We got into some really cool deep water there, which is great. We are now up to the gifting portion where we give back

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (52:20):
To you. Oh, gifting.

Logan French (52:22):
I forgot the gift. I didn’t bring a gift.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (52:25):
It’s okay. It’s from us to you.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (52:27):
It’s from us to you. Yes. So yeah. Have you got them ready, sizzle

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (52:32):
Or I’ve got them ready. I’ve got them ready.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (52:34):
Ready.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (52:35):
Who should I go first?

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (52:36):
We’ll go you first. I usually go first. Me first. Okay. You can go first. Yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (52:41):
I’m just going to say right up. I Did

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (52:44):
You cheat again? Did you get someone

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (52:45):
Else didn’t cheat? I didn’t cheat. I didn’t cheat. I did. I did it this time. But what I did was the boss, as I saw he was called on the Kickstarter, he just reminded me of Kermit too much, so I couldn’t help myself.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (53:04):
They rain by connection. Very cool.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (53:07):
And that’s meant to be a bandaid on his face, but it doesn’t show up very well.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (53:11):
It looks like a grub, but that’s all right. It does.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (53:13):
It looks like a grub. Oh, well

Logan French (53:15):
There’s a lot of references to mealworms and grubs.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (53:19):
There you go. It’s almost like you could see the fingers go up to a finger puppet kind of thing with

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (53:28):
That’s what i’s meant to be doing.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (53:30):
There you go. Awesome. Nice one. Sizzle.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (53:35):
And then we’ve got Morgans.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (53:40):
I just couldn’t

Logan French (53:41):
Love. I love

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (53:42):
So much it doesn’t do it justice, but I loved it so much. So cool.

Logan French (53:49):
Looks great, man. Hands are tricky.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (53:55):
Yeah, lovely.

Logan French (53:56):
Always finds that hands are best If Overexaggerated.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:00):
Oh, okay, cool. I have to

Logan French (54:01):
Remember that you can do realistic hands, but they’re just no fun. So a lot of the times you’ll see my hands in some kind of crazy expression. They’re never just like that. They’re always doing something. Or in some way, once you nut down the basics for them, you get used to it.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (54:29):
It says the what Artist that’s been doing this for 30 odd years.

Logan French (54:35):
Yeah. About that.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (54:39):
Cool. All right. Well thank you again. This has been amazing fun. Great to dig into some stuff. Just a reminder, everyone get in Amphibian Noir, get in and support it. Amazing looking campaign. Great Australian stuff there to get into. So find it, support it,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:00):
Throw it there at the top, throw it at the top of the latest Australian Kickstarters. That’s where that link takes you.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (55:05):
Yeah. Or just get in and search. Find it back it. Amazing. Cool. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you.

Logan French (55:14):
Thank you for having me on to chat.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:18):
Absolute pleasure.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (55:20):
Absolute pleasure. All

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:22):
Right. Zach’s looking at it now. Support it, Zach. Support it.

Logan French (55:27):
Yay. Cool.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:30):
So I guess it’s the next section of the show, which I’m not ready for. Yeah, we go. So many pictures there to go through.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (55:38):
Thank

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:38):
You very much, Logan. You have a great night and you too. It’s now for the next section of the show where we are meant to review a book or at least talk about something. Yeah,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (55:49):
But we don’t always have to do that. We

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:50):
Don’t always have to do that. Of course. We’re not

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (55:51):
Restricted by that.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:53):
We can open a box. That’s what I did once nearly cut myself.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (55:57):
Yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:58):
Cool. See you Logan. Have a good one. Cheers,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (56:01):
Logan. Thanks dude.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (56:12):
Now before, I’m just going to interrupt.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (56:15):
Yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (56:17):
This Friday everyone, Logan is back to talk to the guys over at Friday nights, drink and draw.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (56:24):
Hey, check that

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (56:25):
Out. Some artists will be drawing his characters from Amphibia Noir and they’ll have a bit of fun over there. So yeah, don’t forget to tune in on Friday night. Now. I’ll let you unbox while I find my comic Found it already. Head on. Tom,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (56:44):
You go first if you want you go first. It’s

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (56:45):
Up to you. Okay. Now I’m not sure I remember talking about this to someone and I don’t remember if it was on the show or to someone else. So if I have repeating a book, I apologise. I did read it again today. These are from, hang on, I’ll boost myself up

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (57:02):
All bad, Harvey. Yeah, yeah. I

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (57:04):
Think I talked about the other bad Harvey that I got a week or so ago. And this is the other one that I got at the same time. Another double feature.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (57:12):
It’s a comedy Yes. For

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (57:14):
Kids. No, no, no comedy. It’s another horror. It’s great. Oh good. The first one is about giant type pants. I think it’s,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (57:24):
Yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (57:26):
And it has a great ending because it’s not happy. No, it’s just no,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (57:32):
No one gets out.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (57:34):
No one gets out. Which is a lot of fun. And then the other one’s about a hunting trip that goes wrong and a bit of a strange creature is created from that mistake and it doesn’t end very happy for everyone involved. That’s the whole story. And it’s great, great art. I always forget who the artist is. Adrian Doman and the inking is Chris Wood. Awesome Art. I think they’re the two artists from the last book I reviewed. And it’s written again by Aaron Harvey. So yeah, great. Just like the other, so pick up both if you’re over at Bad Harvey. Awesome books, awesome stories, great fun.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (58:24):
Over to you. Very good, bad Harvey, some genius. Put you onto that. I can’t remember who it was, but it was

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (58:29):
Some some absolute

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (58:31):
Legend. Speaking of Legends. Oh, got something in the post delivered to me. I wonder what it is. I do not know, but we shall see and behold.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (58:49):
Oh nice. So you got the Rob and the Duncan. Nice

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (58:53):
Look at that. Just arrived with notes and gifts and cards and stuff.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (59:03):
And in the back there’s postcards. Yeah,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (59:06):
I’m just going to go the noir one first. Oh, packed tight. Like a drum. Here you go. Look at some of that business. This is really hard to do to camera. Yes. Anyway, so that one there and then the colour one. So yeah, I read nothing this way. Well I am running my own campaign, so lay off me, bro. It’s a lot of work doing this Kickstarter stuff. Oh, hello Giraffes and such. Oh, which way am I going this way? Yeah, that’s so cool. Action. So cool Mr. Federico. Okay, cool. So they’re the last presents and then there’s the current presents, which is still on. Sorry, I’ve gone fuzzy. So I’m going to do that. Stop and then it’s going to,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:00:09):
I’ll zoom out so you can’t tell you so fuzzy.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (01:00:11):
I’m still fuzzy. Yeah, so that’s presents volume three of presents is available now on Kickstarter and

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:00:20):
If I was a bit quicker I would be able to put the link up for that.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (01:00:25):
I’m just going to have a look and see where we’re at with that one. Alright, so we’re what, 70%? I don’t know what that percentage is. So we need a few more backers to get that one over the line. Yep. For number three

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:00:44):
We’ve got 351 to go dollars. That is so come on peeps. We want to make these books a reality.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (01:00:55):
Yep. Cool, cool, cool. So awesome stuff. Can’t wait to read them. Haven’t read any of them yet. So I’m looking forward to reading those puppies and looking forward to three when that comes out. And then four and five and the 700 that are going to come after that. Boom. Hell yeah. I will also, again, as is my custom shameless plug for the Shadows daughter campaign that I’m running at the moment. Any Aussie that backs it gets a free comic that hasn’t been released yet. It’s called The Blood Below and it is one of my faves. Well it is my fav and it’s awesome. I’m also running a competition, so anyone that backs the campaign for any amount, so $2 a dollar, whatever or any of the tiers, you have the chance to win your own theme tune. So I’m going to be drawing that on Friday, this Friday I think. So you’ve got a few days to get in if you want. You’ve got the chance to win your own theme song, any sort of genre you want. And I will put it together for you. You can use it for whatever you want. You can use it to sell stuff, dance to, I dunno. But for anyone who’s interested, get in there and you might get your own theme song to you. Go to all your friends with. And that’s me pretty well done.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:02:14):
Awesome

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (01:02:15):
For today.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:02:16):
I guess that’s us done. Thank you everyone for joining us. Thank and have a great night. See you next Wednesday. Same Oz Comic show time. Same comic show. Oh damn it. I did it right last week. Damn it. Almost. You did,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (01:02:34):
You did. We’ll just

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:02:36):
Go you this time next week. Same YouTube channel or Facebook page or whatever seen same place, same time, same place, same time. Yes, that’ll do. I’ll just do that from now on.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (01:02:48):
Same place, same time. That’s it. That’s all. That’s

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:02:51):
All they need. Don’t make it complicated catches. Thanks Morgan.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (01:02:56):
Thanks dude.