Up Up Down Down

Left Right … if you know the rest, this comic / webcomic is for you


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More Podcasts

by 2D on April 2, 2011 at 4:01 am
Posted In: Posts

Most comedy-related sites play pranks on on April Fools. But I can’t do it to you friends, I love you too damn much.

But I will gladly cram more funny down your throat. Not my funny, but funny nonetheless. You might remember this topic from such posts such as “Try a Podcast.” The central figure behind my Joystiq recommendation in that post – Justin McElroy – has another podcast he does with his younger brothers Travis and Griffin.

Their show My Brother My Brother and Me is an advice show. They mostly answer reader questions and e-mails, but they also explore things like questions from Yahoo Answers. Let me get my cheese slicer and get you some of that cheddar (as they would say):

Yahoo Answers User: There are some nights where I take the Algebra book back into my room, and jack off to the numbers. Number 3 is my favourite because it’s so sexy

The Brothers get into the discussion:

Justin: What is the sexiest number everybody?

Griffin: See listen, listen we’re not ready for that conversation yet, we’ll get to that. But I think we need to come up with some rules first. Are we talking about fucking the idea of a number –

Travis: The important thing is to not fuck anything under sixteen.

Joystiq is still my number two guy, but MBMBaM?

Once my Joystiq and MBMBaM is finished I go right to my Dean Blundell Show. They have this new bit where they make a young man named Adrian read the weather. He might have genuine mental problems, but the best I can describe him is someone who has a child’s concept of what is funny, but a man’s rage. As a kid you don’t understand when things are funny or not, you immitate what you hear people laugh at as best you can and everything is trial and error. A lot of your humour is awkward or horrifically unfunny. But sometimes, just sometimes, like Mar. 21st’s episode with about 36:30 to go, children stumble upon a unique, and unpredictable humour-mine.

└ Tags: dean blundell show, mbmbam, podcasts
1 Comment

Toronto Comic Con Experience

by 2D on March 25, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Posted In: Posts

It’s been five days, and I can still smell the freshly swept convention floor. The tables had been used many times. The chairs had been sat in. Toronto Comic Con was called the Con of Dreams, and it was. It really was.

Toronto Comic Con had a decent set-up, with big stars like Nicholas Brendan, Ray Park, and Jake Lloyd on the East wall, while it showcased vendors, Sucker Punch, and a big Halo car at the entrance. I may have squeed as I passed Clare Kramer and Mercedes McNab.

Here is a pic of FanExpo for comparison

Our friend Gav is correct, we are sitting in the wrong order to the table display names

As you can see from the photos Toronto Comic Con lacks the sheen and warmth of FanExpo. At FanExpo they have red carpet everywhere and it is well lit large windows that let in natural light. I don’t believe Exhibit Hall D in the Direct Energy Centre has any windows. Just cold vents.

As we were setting up on Friday night I looked next to us and saw The Captain’s outfit from Romantically Apocalyptic. If you are already a fan of the comic or artist (Vitaly S Alexius) that is to your credit. His comic’s art is a combination of photography and digital painting, and the comic’s premise is unique. The story mostly follows the oddball character “The Captain” in a post nuclear holocaust world. I’ve admired their product for a long time so it was a pleasure to meet them.

Some of Sopes’s former artists were also there. They have a brand called Heroes of the World which posits one hero unique to a country in the world. Their site says the project “emphasizes the importance of unity through diversity in their artwork.” They also have a comic now and some kick-ass merchandise, in addition to being warmly authentic gentlemen.

I remember the first person that came to our booth before the doors opened. She was a guest of one of the other vendors and was taking an opportunity to take a peek around. I’d say she was around eleventeen. She asked us, “So what are you guys selling?” We showed her some prints and mentioned our T-Shirt contest, then Sopes said, “We’re also selling ourselves actually.” I’m fairly sure he was talking about selling us as a brand, but I can’t be certain; she moved on to the next table.

Our table’s promotion changed over time. On Friday we harnessed the power of the carnie, and learned that Sopes has a natural carnie ability. “Hey, you wanna win a T-Shirt?” became his call. Then people would come in and learn more about the comic and take a business card.

On Saturday people were walking a lot faster. They came to comic con with a purpose: to buy some shit and to see it all. So automatan suggested we make it our mission to give out all our business cards, and give away prints of the comic for free. This shocked a lot of people, because other tables charged at least charged $2 for a doodle. One couple told us, “You guys are cool, every table should be like yours!” I wouldn’t recommend our financially-averse model, but pitching a comedic webcomic is tough because people have to stop and read an entire strip in order to be sold. In some cases when we told people they could take a print for free they panicked because they were forced into a decision AND had to read too. This lead to snap judgements based on over-arching content: “Oh cool, Street Fighter. Thanks guys!” or “Hey Mega Man, all right!” But lots of people would read several comics before they picked one, often laughing out loud or chuckling. Several people asked us to sign the prints as well.

The Sunday the crowds were a mix; more people had the slow saunter of Friday’s crowd, but there weren’t as many as Saturday’s crowd. We modded the carnie call yet again to “Hey, do you like funny?” Sopes was our carnie champion, and got good at practicing a pitch “We’re a webcomic by gamers for gamers.” Some people would shake their heads and say “no” to indicate they did not like funny, but they lied because they smiled as they did it.

Reaction to the comic and our carnie calling was very positive. But don’t take our word for it, see what Dean said about us.

There are a lot of mini stories about comic con worth sharing, I will make a small list of them for you:

  • One little girl who could barely see over the table looked at the Street Fighter comic that used the term “hyper-dick-report” and asked how much it was. I told her and her Mother they were not for sale.
  • A gentleman next to me in the men’s washroom got gun shy and decided the cure was to wave his penis around like a lightsaber. He was a fair distance from the urinal, so I’m not sure why you would do that. No pee came forth.
  • The artist across from us, Dave Ross, had an unknown allure. He charmed people everyone in his vicinity for long periods of time. I would like to drink of his power.
  • The Max the Mutt Animation School was near us. Please click on the link. She had a lovely booth that should have gotten more attention.
  • I did an interview with Geek Hard Sunday morning before Sopes arrived. I was sad to be alone, but I got the impression they had a lot to do. It was very short so it may never appear online, but I will be listening to their show tonight at 7:00 PM EDT to see if we get a quick mention.
  • automaton met Jake Lloyd outside the con. Lloyd was alone so automaton went up and introduced himself, and they chatted about about his life and what he’s been doing since Star Wars. He was a cool guy.
  • I had a competition with one of the guys over at Quiver St. about who could put more business cards in the mens washroom. I have this to say to them: Recognize.
  • Most of us missed when an Up Up Down Down reader came by, but I heard he was cool, and brought his friends over and asked for autographed prints

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our table. A big thank you to those who took prints and stopped to chat for awhile. Much love to our friends who came to the con just to see us, or supported us vicariously. And to you people who took a card or print and came back to the site (and judging by our analytics, there were a lot of you), you’re awesome. Welcome to the Up Up Down Down family.

└ Tags: heroes of the world, romantically apocalyptic, toronto comic con
3 Comments

Up Up Down Down is Going to Comic Con

by 2D on March 11, 2011 at 4:18 pm
Posted In: Posts

Up Up Down Down is going to Toronto Comic Con! Our info doesn’t seem to be online yet, but that’s because we submitted late, and we are not nearly as important as the DeLorean from Back the Future. I can’t wait to sit inside the belly of that 1.21 gigawatts beast.

I’ve been refreshing the FanExpo page each day waiting for their Artist Alley PDF to show up. As soon as it appeared and we all started getting excited at the prospect of our first con in August, the wonderful Twittermachine told me that Toronto Comic Con was coming – in three weeks.

Fortunately the show organizer is a wonderful lady who is probably accustomed to dealing with last-minute people such as myself. She may have even given us a table before we gave her our dollas.

Back when the comic started I pictured going to a con. Sopes drawing a little doodle for some anime fan … asking him to sign “to Jessica, with all my love.” automaton making a flippant remark to someone being stupid. Now it’s happening.

If you are in the Toronto area, or are going to the con anyway, we invite you to come out and see us, fans. I know several thousand people from Canada have visited our site, and there is no Canada I can imagine that “isn’t close enough” to attend. Remember, it’s not just us friends, it’s little Annie Skywalker from Episode I, The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase, Chewbacca, Lando, Jay Bauman (the guy behind Red Letter Media those amazing Episode I reviews on YouTube), Kate Vernon from BSG, Screech, and a slew of artists like the guy who drew for Gargoyles.

We’ll be selling prints of our most popular comics as well as a few of our personal picks, and for those outside of Canada we hope to get our online store up by that time as well.

So stop by our booth, and remove that barrier that exists between faceless comic creators and faceless readers who look at an average of 2.5 pages every day and stay on our site for 35 seconds. We’ll be there.

└ Tags: toronto comic con
8 Comments

Royale

by automaton on March 9, 2011 at 5:49 am
Posted In: Posts

I realize the title of this post may bring a flashback to “royale with cheese”, but rest assured, I’m not talking about a burger. Well, not a burger here, anyways.

Someone much smarter than me once asked me why anyone would buy the toilet paper brand in Canada called “Royale.” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it looks like this:

royale toilet paper image

What the fuck?

Ok, I’ll admit, for the first 20-or-so odd years of my life, I just accepted that this was another brand of toilet paper. I didn’t question their slogan, “kitten soft.” This is probably because when you’re shopping you don’t really pay attention to what you’re doing. “Oo kitten paper is on sale. Now even more kitten-like? Wow that’s gonna be so soft, when I use it.” Isn’t that a little odd? Do people really dream about wiping their ass with a kitten? Is that really a feature that helps you sell your particular brand of shit removal paper? And how much softer can it really get, until they just start shipping an actual kitten, in the bag.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for recycling, and hell, kittens look pretty soft. They even clean themselves, meaning you don’t have to put anything in the toilet when you’re done; you just let nature take its course. But it just, I don’t know. This isn’t right. When you’re in the bathroom, and you gotta clean your mess up, is a kitten really what’s romping around in your head?

cute kitten

You pet me, but not with your ass.

I don’t know how this ad campaign got out, how it’s on TV commercials, and how most of all, nobody else seems to find it retarded. I guess it’s just a normal desire, wanting to wipe your ass with small animals. Hell, human babies have some hair. Why don’t we make some “baby soft” toilet paper and start using that; I mean, are babies softer than kittens? There’s really only one way to find out.

└ Tags: kittens, royale, toilet paper
10 Comments

Writing

by 2D on March 4, 2011 at 4:59 pm
Posted In: Posts

This week I got to return to writing. Not reviews, comics, tweets, or autofilmbiography posts, straight up fiction. A friend of mine needed a small passage written for his D & D game. The characters in his campaign had just finished their first act, and I had to write something that would help set the mood. They had just killed a God, lost a party member, and were fleeing an exploding volcano. “Make them feel it all,” he said.

It was a complicated to weave all those emotions together. I’ve always had an easier time writing when listening to something that helps inspire me. I re-watched a few scenes like Aeris’s death, both of Vegeta’s deaths, and of course, Gandalf’s death. I eventually decided to go with this music over Gary Jules’s Mad World

I saw someone post a question on a Facebook page the other day asking what game made you cry. I’m pretty sure this has never happened to (except for a very emotional game against the Minnesota North Stars in Blades of Steel). So it didn’t help me to rewatch Aeris’s death as much as I thought it would. Has a video game ever made you cry?

Only Vegeta’s second sacrifice had the poignancy for me. But more than that it helped with some basic imagery and concepts, like one voice (Vegeta’s) representing an entire planet’s, which is one way to read all that screaming in Dragonball Z.

I hope my friend’s D & D campaign went well. Regardless, it felt good to return to that kind of writing. Perhaps I should keep it up as a way to strengthen other writing, and not risk losing those skills completely.

└ Tags: aeris, d & d, dragonball z, mad world, vegeta
3 Comments
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