Check out this AMAZING back cover for the new issue, Reed Gunther in Trains, Reigns, and Pains!

Chris has got a fantastic track record of coming up with visually striking and interesting back covers that sometimes go unnoticed. The other day I had a copy of Stalac-TIGHT Spot face down on my desk at work, and a buddy approached me, extremely excited because he thought it was a new issue. I turned it over and showed him that it was the back cover and he exclaimed, “I’ve never seen that before! Is that on my copy?”

After the jump, check out the other awesome back covers from issues 1 and 2!

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Hey there folks!

Reed’s third issue, Trains, Reigns, and Pains! is chugging along steadily and pin ups for the issue have been trickling in!  Check out this super awesome pin up by Bryan Durren!

Bryan delivered this fantastic colored pin up, and since we print our book in black and white we wanted to make sure you guys got a chance to see these beautiful colors!

Thanks  Bryan!

HOLY COW!

Remember that pin up Chris did of Eric Powell’s amazing book, The Goon?  Well, it’s been printed in their latest issue!

Check out this crappy cell phone photo for actual proof:

Man, that Eric Powell is one stand up character!  Thanks for including Chris’ pin up!

Now go hit up you local comic shop and check out The Goon issue #33!

Wowee!  Take a look at this fantastic fan art sent in by Bryan Durren’s kids, Heath and Haven!

While Bryan was working on his pin up, his kids thought they’d get in on the action and came up with some fun and amazing drawings!

First up is Heath Durren (7 years old) with his terrific rendition of Reed, a Stupid Cow, Sterling, and Starla!  Awesome stuff!

Next up is Haven Durren (5 years old) with his fantastically goofy versions of Reed, Sterling, a Stupid Cow, and the Steak Snacking Snake!  While drawing, Haven suggested to his dad that he shave his soul patch so he would be left with just his fu manchu so his dad would look more like Reed Gunther!  Fantastic idea, Haven!

Great work guys!  Thanks so much for sending in your awesome drawings and keep it up!

If you’d like to share your Reed Gunther Fan Art, please shoot it our way at: mail(at)reedgunther(dot)com!

Hey everyone!

Chris posted another time-lapse video showcasing his awesome inking skills! I’m considering putting up a time-lapse video of myself writing a Reed Gunther script, which would contain such amazing actions such as me just sitting at a computer for hours, drinking loads of coffee, taking walks, talking out loud to myself like a crazy person, and jotting down notes on my lap in the middle of LA rush hour traffic. Riveting!

Until then, enjoy this awesomeness!

- Shane

Sweet because of the honey! Get it?

Anyway, this fantastic piece comes to us from Jongmee Kim, a friend of Chris’ from Detroit, MI!

Thanks for the super cute illustration Jongmee!

- Shane

Hey everyone! We thought it might be neat to give a little glimpse into the process of what it takes to make a page of Reed Gunther!

“It all starts with a script.” – someone said that.

Well, sort of.  For me, I’ve gotta come up with some sort of mind-shatteringly awesome idea first.  These normally come to me when I’m driving home from my day job when I’m stuck in terribly slow LA traffic.  To get in the creative thinking mood, I listen to movie scores when I write so there’s usually a lot of Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, and Randy Newman going on during my writing sessions, whether it’s in the car or at home.

At stoplights, seriously, I’ll jot down some marvelous idea, scene, line of dialogue, or whatever, which turns into indecipherable scribbles because the light will change and I’ll have to start driving again.  Sometimes I’ll also write in my notebook when I’m not driving and it looks like this:

Much clearer writing than when I’m jotting down ideas in the car, and sometimes there’s doodles!

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Hey Folks!

We had such a great response to our first Fill in the Word Balloon contest that we thought we’d do it again for Reed Gunther in Trains, Reigns, and Pains!

Here’s your page:

So here’s the skinny:  Fill out these here word balloons from this brand new page from Reed Gunther and email your entry to mail(at)reedgunther(dot)com for a chance to win some cool stuff!

And now, the longer version:  Click on the above comic page and download the the image by clicking “save image as”.  Then open it up into Photoshop, or another image editing program, and fill in those word balloons with hilarious words!  Save the new image with your name in the title and email it in!

Don’t have photoshop?  Write a brief script with what the characters should say, and if it wins, Chris and I will photoshop those words in for you!

Remember, you can make this scene about anything you want, from firecrackers to spacemen, so fill in the balloons with your best one liners, funny sounding words, and be creative!

Last day to submit:  January 20th, 2010, the same day that Reed Gunther issue #3 is available!  Just email your submission to: mail(at)reedgunther(dot)com.

Prizes:

Chris and I will choose the submission that makes us giggle the most and declare it the Ultimate Super-Cool Grand Prize Winner, as well as one 2nd place Runner Up, and we’ll post the winning submissions here on the blog!

The grand prize winner will receive an autographed issue of Reed Gunther in Trains, Reigns, and Pains! (issue # 3), Reed Gunther Pins, and an original drawing of your choice by Reed Gunther artist, Chris Houghton!  Wowee!

One runner up winner will receive an autographed issue of Reed Gunther in Trains, Reigns, and Pains! (issue # 3)!

Now hop to it!  And in the mean time, have a happy holiday season!

- Shane

Hey guys, Chris here!

So after Shane sends me his really cool script and I give it a read, I start to plan out how I’m going to compose each panel. Shane usually has a pretty good idea on what each page needs and it’s not that often we discuss changing up the pacing of what he originally sends me. I make small (and very loose) thumbnails on the side of the script to try and get a general idea of what the finished page might look like:

After I go through the script, I then tighten up my initial thumbnails into more thoughtful 3″ x 4″ sketches. Here I’m mainly thinking about a variation of shots and making sure everything will be clear for the reader:

Once I’ve got the issue all thumbnailed out and I’ve done any research that the script might call for (in this page’s case I had to figure out what a train station in the 1880s looked like) I then feel confident enough to start penciling out all of the pages at 10″ x 15″:

I keep my pencils loose so that I can finish up a lot of the drawing in the inking stage. This is the stage where I check back in with Shane to see what he thinks. We’ll usually discuss a chunk of the penciled pages on the phone and on this page, we decided that the only change that should be made is that in the 2nd panel: Sterling should be facing left instead of right to make his discovery of the little girl on the 3rd panel more evident. Shane’s a great writer to work with because he a.) only requests changes if they’re necessary to the clarity of the story and b.) those changes are usually pretty easy to make. Those two things make for a very happy artist!

After we get the pencils straightened out, it’s onto the inks which is probably my favorite step:

After that, the inks get scanned in and digital halftones are added along with any lettering and speech bubbles the script calls for:

Then, it’s off to the printers!

Thanks for following through our “Anatomy of a Page.” If you haven’t read Shane’s Part 1- “Words!” yet, then click here!

-Chris

Just a little update on some friendly matters…

Joe Foo, amazing author of the always awesome Desmond’s Comic, has graciously included Reed Gunther in his Holiday Background!

Joe drew a fantastic pin up of Reed and Sterling for Issue 2, and coincidentally enough, the other plush figure in Joe’s drawing is from Sean Mack’s Revolutionary Times, and Sean Mack provided an equally fantastic Reed Gunther pin up for issue 3!

Also, video game creator and friend of the blog, (and possible creator of a Reed Gunther video game??? *wink wink*), Nico, has released his new idle game, A Knight’s Story 2!  And in about a month or so he’s releasing an update for the game which is going to include the 8-bit version of Reed Gunther!