Every Button Hurts the Other Guy

Pandamonium

AdminLuke — Sat, 18 May 2013 23:01:00 +0000

As is probably kind of obvious, I’m usually a fighting fan, but recently I’ve been playing Fire Emblem for the Game Boy Advance. It’s a good game, but it’s so hard! I’m really looking forward to playing Awakening on the 3DS, since it has a casual mode. Come to me easy victories! Also, the exam week from Hell is officially over, which is good. I only have one left to go now, so that gives me about a week to relearn a unit pretty much from scratch. Could be worse, right?

~Luke

Please never ask me to give you directions. Even when there are loads of people on the street, people always seem to stop and ask me where everything is (is it my face? Who knows). Of course I’m happy to help people out, but half the time I’ll later realise that I got their destination mixed up with another one. So to all those people I’ve misdirected over the years, I apologise.

~Jake

World Wrocketeering Foundation

AdminLuke — Sat, 11 May 2013 23:01:00 +0000

As you might be able to tell, we’re about to move into one of the odder segments I’ve had to write so far. Jake seems to have really enjoyed writing it. In other news, I’m officially one third of the way through my exam period, with a busy week ahead of me. Don’t worry though; next week’s comic is ready to go and there shouldn’t be any interruption to your weekly scheduled absurdities.

~Luke

After much delay, Persona 4 Arena has finally hit European shores and its every bit as good as I hoped. I’m still getting to grips with the roster though I quite like using Akihiko. I also watched Star Trek: Into Darkness the other night, the film was a lot of fun and its good to see Kirk and Spock on screen again. This year could be a good one for sci-fi what with Pacific Rim and Ender’s Game coming to our screens. What films are you folks looking forward to?

~Jake

And He’s Modest Too

AdminLuke — Sat, 04 May 2013 23:01:00 +0000

We have officially hit 50 pages. I’d offer you all champagne if pouring it all over my monitor actually gave it to people on the other side of the intertubes. Someone needs to invent that technology. Anyway, it’s been quite a ride and hopefully you’ll all still be laughing along with us by the time we hit 100 pages! All aboard the action train!

~Luke

I’m typing this in bed as I’m recovering from a rather heavy night of drinking. I’ve got a serious case of the shakes so I apologise in advance for any spelling errors that I make. Usually when I wake up with a monster hangover I normally resolve to never drink again, but go figure, I’ll probably have another drink again within the space of a month. Since I’ve got the strength of damp newspaper today,I’ve just been watching ‘New Dominion Tank Police’. Its nice to watch something old school once in a while and the tank designs really remind me of SNK’s ‘Metal Slug’ which is cool. Tanks Away!

Cha-La Head Cha-La

AdminLuke — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 23:01:00 +0000

I think we’re officially out of anime references at this point. For now anyway. Having nothing more significant to say, I shall see y’all on the flippety-flip.

~Luke

Gotta say, I’m loving BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend on Vita, being able to play Arc System’s masterpiece on the go is a real plus. The smooth motion of the Vita’s analogue stick makes for a very good fighting experience; a real surprise since I often struggle with fighters on handhelds. Since Chihiro’s fight has wound down I think I’ll mention that I’ve been revisiting a few of the older anime series’ as of late. At the minute I’m watching Studio Bones’ ‘Wolf’s Rain’, a really stunning series which is much more mature than the majority of anime I’ve seen. Its a real shame that it didn’t do very well commercially in Japan as it would be nice to see more shows like this being made. Check it out if you ever get the chance.

~Jake

Winning Love by Daylight

AdminLuke — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 23:01:00 +0000

Hey guys. Things are quiet here in Norwich (to which I have returned if you hadn’t guessed) since lectures are all finished and everybody’s holed up in the library to prepare for exams. This, much to my own chagrin, includes me, but I won’t let it have any effect on Every Button, I promise. In other news, I’d like to encourage anyone who feels like it to leave comments; we’d love to hear peoples’ thoughts on the story, art, characters, whatever.

~Luke

To cap off my short history I’m going to write a bit about ‘ Every Button’. The comic’s conception happened rather spontaneously. Luke and I talked about working on a comic together and the idea for ‘Every Button’ sounded like a fun project to do. We spent a few months designing the characters; we came up with a few names and ideas. Luke did some initial character designs which I then tweaked and adapted to fit my drawing style. We then spent a few months working on a rough story and the jokes we wanted to tell. Once we were satisfied with what we’d made we began the process of writing a script and drawing the pages. I started drawing pages in February of 2012 but we didn’t actually start publishing them until August of the same year. Working together has been fun, we don’t always see eye to eye on every point and there have definitely been a few battles here and there but I think we have created something we’re both proud of and we hope to make it even better in the future. Thanks for reading, from next week I’ll likely resume my usual ramblings. Enjoy.

~Jake

Fighting Evil by Moonlight

AdminLuke — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 23:01:00 +0000

Between scarring all our readers for life (see above) and preparing for exams, I’ve recently finished Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (in the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection), which, it turns out, is amazing. A strong game throughout, but towards the ending I was really blown off my feet. There’s a lot more going on there than most games can claim even now, and since I spend so much of my time with fighters, it’s nice to play something with a much greater emphasis on narrative.

~Luke

I recently tried my hand at another super hero parody comic, although this one focused on a different angle than my previous attempt. The comic was called ‘Lion Man’ and followed the adventures of the aforementioned hero. The story was set in a city which had a number of super heroes, but followed Lion Man, the worst of the bunch. Causing more damage than he prevents he is assigned an adviser by city hall called Felicity. The jokes would have largely revolved around the banter between the two characters, Lion Man would always solve problems with crazy and damaging result and Felicity would always be exasperated by his actions and would have to reign him in. Unlike my previous attempt at this genre, the attention here would have been less on action and more on everyday matters. Next week I’ll discuss ‘Every Button…’ and how it came into being, and with that this brief history will be brought to a close, phew!

Attack of the Cosplay Monster

AdminLuke — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 23:01:00 +0000

I’ve been leaving these posts later and later; only rarely do I have anything in mind to say in them. I do have one piece of exciting news for fighter lovers this week (although if you haven’t heard it yet, you might be officially ‘out-of-the-loop’ as far as fighting game fans are concerned) – the Skullgirls Indiegogo campaign finished at well over $825000, meaning we will be getting not one, not two nor three nor four but five DLC characters over the coming months, each of whom will be free for the first three months. The line up of new characters so far is Squiggly, an undead opera singer bonded with a dragon-like parasite named Leviathan, Big Band, a sort of pneumatic cyborg with a a jazz theme, Robo-Fortune, who is to Ms. Fortune as Robo-Ky is to Ky, and two characters to be selected by fan vote by everyone who contributed to the campaign. So yeah, fun times abound.

~Luke

In recent years I’ve gotten quite into Westerns, and films with Clint Eastwood are particularly good. However before this I actually tried my hand at a Sci-fi Western called ‘One-Armed Bandit’. The story was set on a desert planet ruled by a league of evil casino owners. It followed the tale of Marco, a man who (you guessed it) lost his arm several years prior but now operates as a kind of Robin Hood style bandit. Marco fought with a laser gun styled like an old Smith and Wesson (a good way to get around the problem of how he reloaded the gun quickly) and travelled the desert riding a kind of ostrich-like bird. He was joined by Sunny, a girl who the villains were desperate to capture. This story was to have a number of Sci-Fi tropes including giant robots, psychic powers and even space ships. Phew, I’ve nearly mentioned everything now, just two to go.

~Jake

The Other One with All the Fire

AdminLuke — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 23:59:00 +0000

As I write this, sitting on a bed in the office of my parents’ house in Yorkshire, I can only wonder where the week has gone. It’s good to take a break every now and again.

~Luke

University was a very eye-opening experience for me; it felt like was living in a very different world to the one I was used to. It was during this time that I begun designing a new set of characters, often in the laundrette whilst I was waiting for my clothes to dry. The character designs were based on voodoo/Hawaiian aesthetics and would eventually come together to form ‘Limbo’. This story was very different from my usual work from the outset. I dropped the spacing between panels and used indian ink to paint large black spaces. So much so that I would say its still my most visually striking work today. The rough story was about a young delinquent named Diego who is caught in a traffic accident and whisked to Limbo, a house located in a black void of nothingness. The house is run by Malik, a wizard who runs a jazz club to entertain spirits one last time before they move on to the next life. To save his soul from eternal damnation Diego agrees to work as a waiter there and soon befriends Maliks daughter Azalea, a girl who for some mysterious reason has lost the ability of speech. There’s a good chance I will put this online in the near future. I’d even like to revisit this story sometime in the future as I’m still quite fond of the characters even now.

~Jake

Booth Babe

AdminLuke — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 00:01:00 +0000

I was supposed to head up to my parents’ house in Yorkshire this Friday, but due to heavy snowfall that was put on hold for a little while. With any luck I should be headed up there the day this is posted, but in the meantime I went to an exhibition of Japanese papers that’s on here in Norwich. Jake and I went to a talk on the subject of Japanese paper making on Thursday, and it’s really amazing just how interesting one can make that sort of thing. Fun fact: even some clothes used to be made of paper in Japan, and the same substance was used to waterproof, fireproof and bug-proof such garments.

~Luke

The last comic I wrote before going to university was a ghost story of sorts. It was about a teenage boy who accidentally unleashed a group of malevolent spirits and was tasked with returning them to whence they came. The boy was aided in his quest by a young spirit medium and her ghostly companion. The boy’s look was very urban, wearing a bomber jacket and having a white shock of hair not too dissimilar to the character ‘Black Jack’. The spirit medium was a young woman in very old fashioned robes so it was interesting how the two characters were opposite to one another. I later tried to write a similar story about a man who was being stalked by ghosts due to an ancient book he carried. I must have found the concept of spirits interesting because I would go on to write another story which I will talk about in more detail next week.

-Jake

It’s Morphin’ Time

AdminLuke — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 00:01:00 +0000

It’s been a while since my last downbeat post, but instead of moping I thought this week I’d go for a brief rant instead. In my last blog I sang the praises of Skullgirls for its gorgeous graphics and stellar gameplay, both accolades it deserves, but I have also discovered something that irks me. Due to Microsoft’s update submission policy, Playstation 3 users (i.e.: not me) have an inherently superior version of the game complete with an in-game move list and extra palettes. The version of that update for the XBox 360 remains in ‘bureaucratic Hell’ and I can’t help but think that Microsoft is just shooting itself in the foot in this regard; their policy actively ensures that their competition is offering a better version of the same product. On a more pleasing note, the Indiegogo campaign I mention last week has made excellent strides (the second character, Big Band, is now fully funded, including his own stage and story mode) and the game’s director Mike Z has officially offered to license their engine out to Mane6 (the devteam behind the recently Cease & Desisted My Little Pony: Fighting is Magic, which looked like it was going to be the bomb) for their new project, for which they are working with Lauren Faust, who developed the incarnation of MLP the game was to be based on for television. Needless to say, I am excited.

~Luke

I actually tried my hand at a super hero spoof comic. I’m not sure I ever gave it a title but basically it was about a group of intelligence agents who are forced to pose as a super hero vigilante team. The twist was that they were all named after everyday jobs, Postman, Milkman and Repoman (not sure if our U.S readers ever had milkman – please let me know if you did). Basically their powers revolved around their respective jobs, so Postman threw envelopes like a ninja and Milkman fought with a high pressure milk cannon. Repoman had lots of tools for repossessing his enemies’ weapons etc so it made for some interesting fight scenes. I notice that I incorporated a lot of close ups which would pull away to reveal something else, similar to the episode intros in ‘Rugrats’. On a different note I saw ‘The Room’ at my local cinema last night, I’ve never seen such a heavy barrage of plastic spoons before, it was an awful lot of fun and I recommend seeing it on the big screen if you get the chance, its truly out of this world, Bai-Bai.

~Jake