Merch!

The new CHEW Chog shirt is available NOW for pre-order here. We'll be taking pre-orders through January 1, then orders will ship in mid-January. Take advantage of this pre-order price, as there's a good chance we'll be raising the price to $20 after the Jan. 1 deadline.

Spread the word! The better the response, the more new merch we'll make.

And of course, CHEW #22 and the Omnivore Edition Vol.2 are both in stores TODAY. In fact, both CHEW Hardcovers are on sale today for 45% OFF at Thwipster.com, so you'd be an IDIOT not to pick them up at that price. This sale ends tomorrow, so jump on that!

And as always, there's tons of CHEW Original Art for sale at RobGuilloryStore.com.

Thanks,
Rob

Catching Up.

CHEW #22 will have 2 covers, and will be out on 12/7. Same day as the second Omnivore Edition.

We'll be monthly for the rest of the Major League CHEW arc, then will take a month off to release the trade. We're basically catching up from our lateness in 2011 (due to real life stuff), and we're on track to an on-schedule 2012. Exciting!

Of course, the bad news is that I had to drop out of the London Super Comic-Con in February. The con fell right in the middle of working on an issue, so it was a no go. Like I said, the schedule has priority. Maybe we'll have better luck in 2013.

On the whole, I'm cutting back on con appearances next year, which is kind of a relief/bummer. I love touching base with the fans, but cons are a major energy drain, especially with all the jetsetting. But, whatcha gonna do?

It occurs to me that I've done a bunch of press online that kinda fell by the wayside while I've been taking my hiatus. Here's a bunch of interviews I've done in the last few months.

The Beat: I chatted with Australian mag The Beat before my trek there, regarding social media. Good talk.
NonCanonical Podcast: Interview with Australian podcasters, about success, speculating and that damn TMNT cover.
The Outhousers: Pretty straightforward interview. Nice guy that I kinda scared with my disclaimer: "Ask good questions." Sorry, bud.
The Hourly Planet: Fun, fun interview. There's a Mortal Kombat reference in it. That's a WIN to me.
Image Addiction Podcast: An hour-long discussion about comics and whatever, featuring myself and Morning Glories artist Joe Eisma. Really fun time.

Other stuff:



CW show "Hart of Dixie" made all kinda CHEW references in one of their episodes. Thus earning all kindsa Cool Points.

And Blair Butler gives CHEW some love on Attack of the Show.

I may be forgetting some things, so forgive me. I'm almost halfway done with CHEW 23, so look for that in January. Back to work for me.

Best,
Rob

Re-up.

CHEW 22 is officially in the can. Thank God. Sorry for the delay, folks. Going to Australia and New Zealand was a massive (and possibly once-in-a-lifetime) opportunity that I couldn't pass up.

That said, CHEW 22 will be on stands on 12/7 (same day as the second hardcover). And next year will be dedicated to getting back on schedule. Ten issues a year has always been the goal, but with the new baby and various life changes in 2011, we fell short this year. 2012 will be about getting back to the goal, and I'm very excited about that.

Best,
Rob

NYT and Baseball.

Rough night. That stomach virus I was down with earlier this week landed on my wife last night, so that skewered my workday. She's doing much better, though. Thank God. I'm so done with vomit, man.

I did manage to work on the colors for the CHEW Vol.5 Cover (above), so that's something. Pretty sure I'll be changing and tweaking colors around by the time this sees print in early 2012 (because I always tweak them...), but works for now. I'll be adding the character shots to the top of the cover a little later. Should be pretty cool.

And speaking of trades, CHEW Vol.4 "Flambe" just landed at #3 on the New York Times Best-seller's List. Purty awesome. This is the third CHEW volume of the four to make the list (Volume 3 was the one that didn't make it...WTF???), so that's pretty neat.

Back to it. Long weekend before I fly out to Melbourne.

-Rob

Trade 5 Cover. In Progress.

Workload for the day, cover art for CHEW Vol.5 "Major League CHEW".

-Rob

Crank.

Panel from CHEW #22.

What a crazy-ass week. Gearing up for next Tuesday's trek to Melbourne, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand, and I still have a buttload of work to do. Didn't help that I was bowled over on Tuesday by a nasty stomach virus, but I'm making the best of it.

If you're in Aussie or NZ, stop by the Armaggeddon Expo and say "hey!" I'll be signing books, selling CHEW trades (I'm not bringing many, cuz they're heavy), new printings of the CHEW sketchbook and CHEW original art. And yeah, I'll be taking a few commissions while I'm there. VERY few, as it looks like I'll be running around quite a bit at the con.

And I'll also be doing a Comic Art panel on Sunday, Oct.23 at the Melbourne show with the great Frank Cho, so that should be pretty fun.

Speaking of Original art, RobGuilloryStore.com is up and rolling. Easy one-button art sales for all your impulse buying needs! And we'll be putting new shirts and merch up there for sale soon.

Speaking of cool shit, check out this Chog sculpture made by Sean Viloria. And it's all mine!

Where I been.

Taking a month off Twitter/ Facebook's been good for me. Pencilled 13 pages of CHEW 22 last week (that's the entire in-progress issue above), and inking them this week. Gonna be a good week.

Leaving Oct. 18 for Armageddon Expo in Melbourne and New Zealand. Should be a great trip.

Also, finally got an iPhone after my son destroyed my cell over the weekend. So I may be posting via mobile a bit more. Who knows?

Back to work,
Rob

Back to Basics.

Found these cool 5.5x4.25 inch pane cards in my closet and decided to make some use of them. So I've been screwing around with these fun little shots of some of my favorite characters as a morning warm-up. Below are the initial trials, which I scrapped since wet media didn't work well with the cards at all. Above is today's trial, Goku and Piccolo from DBZ (yeah, I'm a fan from way back). Happier with the DBZ ones, so I think I'll try to keep a daily blog of these for fun. Fingers crossed. I may or may not sell these at www.RobGuilloryStore.com.



Below is a cover for IDW's new TMNT series that made the rounds quite a bit last week. It's a long, exhausting story, so if you wanna hear it, feel free hitting the Google. Very proud of the cover, and it was really a dream come true, as TMNT was a big part of my childhood. Will I ever work on the project again? God only knows. Regardless, the cover is for TMNT #6, which I think comes out in December.


And below is the final cover art for the CHEW Omnivore Edition Vol.2, which also comes out in December. Tons of extras and goodies.



And that's kind of it. I'm taking a bit of a sabbatical from the usual Twitter and Facebook haunts at the moment, so here's the one place to find me. I'm kind of done with the constant information barrage that is social networking, so I may or may not return to it. And if I do return, it'll be in a way reduced capacity. I've definitely been guilty of using both sites as a forum for mindless bitching and snarky comments, so I'm done with that at the moment. I just wanna draw good comics and have some fun.

Oh, and I finally dropped my LinkedIn account. Because it was totally useless.

CHEW #21 hits stands today, so check that out. I'm knee-deep in penciling #22, which should be out in mid to late November. It's a longer break between issues than I like, but the issue calls for it. It'll be worth it, promise. Strong, strong issue.

Best,
Rob

On The Schedule.

Last Monday was an important day, as Mondays tend to be. It's all about building up that momentum that will (hopefully) carry me through the week. An important day, made even more so because I was starting the next issue of CHEW, the first of a new story arc and the first chapter of the second third of the book's life. It was crucial that I start the week off on the right foot. So on Sunday I mentally prepared for the work day, psyching myself up. Off to bed early, planning to wake around 5:45am and begin the kickassery that surely awaited me when I woke.

Monday's Goal: Layout, pencil, ink and scan Page 1. And pencil (and maybe ink) the cover of the second CHEW Omnivore Edition.

Cut to Monday morning. My wife is down with severe neck pain from God knows what, bleary-eyed from sitting up with our 7-month-old, who has the shits from a mild food allergy. Apparently, he's lactose intolerant, as I am. He's okay, but CRANKY.

So work had to wait. As it does whenever Life kicks The Schedule in the crotch. You see, Life, REAL Life, hates The Schedule. Mine, at least. It's always throwing things in the spokes of my plan. Someone gets sick. Someone dies. An impromptu trip pops up. Someone gets a flat tire and needs a ride. And it tends to be right when I'm getting into the flow of things. Never fails.

So, after taking care of things on the home front, I arrived at the studio 5 hours late. Half of my workday GONE, just like that. GAH. I don't know if other artists experience this, but there can come a point when a blank page can be a bully. For me, my blank pages remind me of time I wasted and of potential unrealized. Fortunately, yesterday was one of the good days. I tore past the doubt and anxiety and got to work.

Five or six hours later, I'd produced the work you (partially) see above.

Actual Work Completed: Page 1 penciled and partially inked. Omnivore Cover penciled.

So I fell short of what I wanted. Sucks, but it happens. Didn't finish the inks on either piece, and I still have to make up the time later. Maybe on a weekend or a late night. Bummer. Still, I left the studio at a reasonable hour, happy with the work and energized.

As I said, Monday was one of the Good days, despite the small bear trap that Life set in my path to achieving the day's goal. I've had many, many bad ones. Days where NOTHING went right. Days where I sat at my desk, fought with a page for hours, then tore it to shreds. Days when I forgot how to draw. Horrible, horrible days.

It happens. All you can do is keep rolling with it, suck it up and work the extra hour later. That's how it is for me, anyway.

A week later, I'm still cranking, and still a few hours behind where I want to be. But what else is new? Below is the above cover, still in progress, but getting closer.




-Rob

Pill.

Panel from HERO Comics 2011 Charity Book. Out Today!

-Rob

Peek.

Panel from CHEW 20.

Yep.

My wall of Awesome. And Voltron protects them all.

For those who haven't heard, CHEW won the 2011 Eisner for Best Continuing Series last weekend. And that's pretty stinkin' awesome. Thanks to all you fans, creators and retailers that made this possible. You guys are awesome.

And YES, I know the blog's been pretty damn barren as of late. What can I say? Between having a kid and keeping an (almost) monthly comic schedule, things have been busy. A lot's happened in the last year, and I've sucked at covering all of it. So I've dedicated myself to posting more regularly from here on. Seriously this time. SERIOUSLY.

See ya tomorrow. (seriously).
-Rob!

Process Junkie: Coloring CHEW.

Alright, due to the positive response of my inking process post, I've decided to go forth with this short tutorial, outlining a bit of how I digitally color CHEW.

First, a Disclaimer. I am not a "Tech" guy. I have had several conversations with professional comic colorists, and they pretty much always degrade into me staring blankly at them while they talk about Photoshop Channels or whatever other crap that I have no idea how to use properly. Look, I took ONE Photoshop class in college, and it taught me NOTHING. What I've learned over the past decade of using the program is a cobbled-together mess of "Things I need to know to achieve the look I want." Truthfully, I have scratched just the surface of Photoshop's power, and I know how to do one or two things in it well. But I've dedicated my life to exploiting those one or two things until the day I die.

Step 1: Scanning!


First up, I scan in the finished inks at 1200dpi in B&W Lineart mode. It's crisp and the red graphite I pencil in doesn't show up on the scans. I use studiomate Kody Chamberlain's Epson 15000 scanner, and it's got the best scans I've ever seen. From there, I convert it to GreyScale mode, then CMYK mode, then drop the resolution to 600dpi. I drop the lineart into a pre-made template, then size it down to about 6.875 x 10.187. From there, I'm ready to go.

Step 2: Rough Shadows!


Next up, I'll roughly draw the shadows for the page. This is mostly an informative step, since I have a color assistant, S. Steven Struble to fill in color separations and clean up shadow work according to my guides. Also, I do this because I am ANAL. Several comic friends rib me for not just contracting all my color work away, but hey, doing it myself makes the finished product that much more rewarding to me. Maybe one day, after I have sufficiently worked myself to death, I'll stop coloring.

Anyway, below is the "rough shadow" layer without lineart.


Step 3: Separations!


Thank God for my color assistant, because I hate this stage. Struble goes into the lineart, and basically lays out the foundation that I will be building the rest of the color on top of. For major characters, he works from color guides I provide him with. For everything else, I generally just let him do whatever and change the color choices when I get around to it. Struble's contribution has been totally invaluable to the book's workflow, and we could never keep it coming out at this pace without him.

Step 4: Shadows!


Next, I drop Struble's flats into the lineart. I tweak the color choices, generally leaning toward more subtle colors. Then, I tweak the rough shadows, adding a darker shadow layer for extra depth. It's mostly detail work, really.

Also, I brush over some of the black lineart, turning it into color, for more depth and a fun touch. Note the green bubbles floating around Drunken Colby, as well as the backgrounds in Panels 2-3. Turning the background lineart a different color is an easy way to separate background from foreground. Easy, but I like it.

Step 5: Harmony!


An easy step. I drop in a couple Photoshop filters for color harmony. Generally, I have one Color Layer at low opacity and a Burn layer just to darken things a bit.

Step 6: Gradients!


Another shadow and lighting step. Using the digital airbrush I add gradual lights and darks. One Multiply layer for darks. One Overlay layer for lights.

Step 7: Highlights and Texture!


I drop in a texture layer in Multiply, just for a nice non-uniform feel. I have a crapload of textures, everything from sidewalk cracks to grease stains. All totally invaluable. Again, I lean on the side of using them in a subtle fashion.

Plus, I draw in the Highlights in an Overlay layer. Two depths of lighting: A bright white for brightest points, a grayer white for not-so-bright spots. Again, gives the feeling of a nice depth that probably only I can appreciate. Did I mention that I'm ANAL?

Step 8: Vivid Glow and Effects!


Last step. This is literally polishing the page. I drop in a Vivid Glow onto Panel 1, just to simulate the sunny day feeling I'm wanting. Plus, I also airbrush in some Vivid highlights onto the windows, metallic substances, etc... Just a little extra something. I drop in a red color layer over Colby's red eye, just for a nice glow. Plus, I drop in a Zip dot texture into the background of Panels 4-5, just to busy the space a bit more. From there, I save the file as a Tiff at 600dpi, and I'm done!

And FYI, in the end I generally have no more than 20 Photoshop layers for a standard page.

Here's hoping this wasn't too mind-numbing and at least partially informative. My best advice: Just experiment. Try some stuff and see what you come up with. There's no better substitute for getting your hands dirty.

-Rob

Process Junkie.

Alright, people have been bugging me for what seems like forever to do a walk-through my process for doing a page of CHEW. Of course, being busy (and a bit lazy), I've been ignoring said requests until now. Short, sweet and simple, here's the making of a page of CHEW.

Please excuse the crappiness of my photos. I don't have the will to actually scan in each stage. Told you: LAZY.

10:30am: Thumbnail.



Step 1 is actually reading the script a few times, but for the sake of boredom, I'll skip to the thumbnail. Above is a reeeeally quick thumbnail of our page. I tend to focus more on mass, layout and pacing than much detail. It's not much, but it's all I need to get started.

11:00am: Rough Pencils



Next, I work up a quick, very rough layout of the page. I pencil using red graphite, because I find blueline's too waxy to ink on top of. Red's easier to see, plus it won't show up on a scanner. And it kinda looks cool under the finished inks. Again, focusing on layout and mass, but starting to flesh out character acting. I try to do these as quickly as possible, because Morning Rob tends to need a warm-up like a car in winter. I attack the blank page before it can intimidate me, really. These take, maybe, a few minutes.

11:15 to 1:00pm: Detailed Pencils



Now, onto the details. One panel at a time, I flesh it out, generally starting from the last panel, working backwards. I'm weird like that. I spend more time on body language and facial expressions than anything. As simple as they look, I agonize over the nuances of them.

Pencil Details: Click to embiggen!




1:oo-2:15pm: Fine Line Inks.



I think this might be the most important step of my process, mentally. This is the point where I commit to the page. Right or wrong, there's no turning back. Unless I f*ck up and have to use white-out, but that's rare. I tend to draw a lot with the pen, adding details without ever penciling them. Fairly improvisational. It's all cake from here.

More details:



2:30-5:30ish: Line Variation and Blacks



This is the part where I get to put a movie on and shut my brain off a bit. Simple stage. Adding thickness and variation to the fine lines, adding patches of shadow, etc... I usually add easter eggs and background jokes at this stage, mostly out of delirium.




And that's kinda it. Maybe one day I'll walk you through the Photoshop stage. Maaaaybe.

Peace,
Rob!

CHEW 15.

Poster Cover for CHEW 15, due out 11/10.

Post SDCC 2010.

My first shiny prize.

So, being that I've only posted a whopping 2 times in the last year, I figured it was time for a real update. The last year, not the mention the last week, has been one bit of madness on top of more madness. All in a good way.

1) CHEW wins the EISNER Award for Best New Series:
Complete and utter lunacy. Not to mention that the awards were presented to us by the great Dave Gibbons. Fitting, as I studied Gibbons' work on Watchmen for ideas on how to build the world of CHEW visually. A surreal experience, and an incredible honor. John and I have put a lot of hard work into making CHEW a consistently entertaining read, so it's great to have it pay off with the comic industry's most prestigious award. Thanks to everyone that supported our weird little endeavor.

2) CHEW in Early Development for TV:
It's true. And so far Stephen Hopkins (Californication, 24) is attached to direct and produce it. Exciting, but I won't allow myself to smile about it until 1) I see it on TV, 2) It's GOOD and 3) The check clears. Maybe a lot to ask for, but I'd rather aim for excellence than mediocrity. Either way, things are looking good.

3) CHEW in Morgan Spurlock Comic Con Documentary:
Weird, but Layman ended up as a "character" in this thing. I ended up being his awkward, but incredibly handsome partner. Actually worked for me, as I hate being on camera. The camera crew managed to get all sorts of SDCC goodies on film, including our Eisner win. Should be a great time capsule.

4) CHEW/Threadless Contest Announced:
Yep, submit your best comic-related shirt design. If you win, your design will appear on a major character in CHEW #15. Lose, and Layman gets to pummel you to death with his Eisner. We'll be judging this personally.

5) CBR Interview on a Yacht Online:
We got limited edition CBR kazoos!

6) We got HARVEY Nominations:
One for Best New Series and I got one for Best New Talent. Honored to be nommed, of course. And of course, I wouldn't mind winning. Won't be able to make it to the ceremony due to a signing that same night.

7) CHEW Shirts:
The first CHEW apparel, featuring Poyo (below), was debuted at SDCC, and is available online. $20 plus shipping. Printed on American Apparel shirts, these are comfy and high quality. Expect more designs shortly. Email chewcomicsales@gmail.com to order.



And I guess that's it for now. Back to the grind. Below is an unreleased bit of CHEW art, created for the Image Comics SDCC Exclusive 2010 Yearbook. Enjoy, and see ya later.



Peace,
Rob!

Check-in 2010.

Damn, I've reeeeally been slacking on the blog-updating side of things.

But hey, it's been a crazy 2010. Went to Italy (as pictured above) for the release of CHEW's Italian version and enjoyed fine wines, fine cuisine and a much-needed nap. I also finished CHEW's second story arc, "International Flavor", and am knee-deep into the book's third arc, "Just Desserts". And even made time to impregnate my lovely wife April. Life is good...

Here's what's new:

1) CHEW #11 will be released on June 9, along with the CHEW Vol.2 trade paperback (both pictured below).

2) CHEW Omnivore Edition Vol.1 due out on July 21. Hardcover goodness collecting the first 10 issues of the book, along with tons of sketches and exclusive goodies.

3) CHEW nominated for an Eisner Award (Best New Series) and 2 Eagle Awards nominations (Favourite American Colour Comic and Favourite New Comic). Hells yeah. Pretty damn flattering to be nominated, but I must admit that I want these shiny prizes.

I'm looking to post a more extensive blog post later, but for now, here's a look at future CHEW covers (including a cryptic peek at the top secret CHEW 15 cover).







Peace,
Rob