Plans We Made by Simon Moreton slated for TCAF 2015 release

Grimalkin Press has been quietly excited for quite awhile now at the prospect of publishing Simon Moreton's first long form effort. As the time for fundraising and printing draws close we are happy to share this update from the artist's own fevered lips.


Beginning transatlantic transmission. Grimalkin adherent Simon Moreton. Status update on forthcoming printing efforts.

Corporeal mainfestation slated for TCAF 2015

PLANS WE MADE is a comic about the memories and the feelings of small streets and growing up and trying to get some sense of perspective on the weird world between spaces you inhabit when you're a kid.

PLANS WE MADE will be my first book of original material,  a set of reflections on my teenage years spent in the suburbs in the South East of England. It builds on the story told inissue #4 of my autobiographical zine, SMOO, now out-of-print but available as part of a book-length collection from Avery Hill Publishing.

Writing this book is odd: It's a funny feeling, moving through that time in your life, trying to remember events and then draw about them in a way that lots of people might connect with, or see themselves in. I'm trying really hard to get at those universal things that get us when we're young, those feelings and fears, those adventures and opportunities, victories and sadnesses.

It's mostly drawn all in thick dark pencils. There aren't many words and it'll be pretty minimal, like lots of my recent work. It'll be around 200 pages long when done, and I'm about a quarter of the way through it now. Lots of little stories, little vignettes.

I talk a bit about the book and all about my process in an interview for Dan Berry's Make It Then Tell Everybody podcast, which you can listen to here. (http://makeitthentelleverybody.com/2014/05/simon-moreton/)

It'll be out early next year, all being well, and I'm so excited.

My website: http://smoo-comics.com
Tumblr: http://smoo.tumblr.com
Twitter: @smoo_comics

Book Excerpt:

PRESALE! The Little Grey Splot by Nicholas Straight!

It's been awhile faithful adherents of the Grimalkin Gospel, but that time apart has not been in vain. We come to you today bearing great tidings and joy! For quite some time we have wanted to publish a children's book and that joyous day is fast approaching! We are proud to announce that we will be debuting "The Little Grey Splot" by Nicholas Straight at SPX! It is a gorgeous full colour activity book for kids of all ages that encourages them to draw their own fantasies! Much in the vein of Ed Emberly's drawing books The Little Grey Splot gives kids the art building blocks and let's them run crazy.

However in order to be able to send it off to press in time for SPX we need a small push to meet the printing budget. So we are offering it here at a REDUCED PRICE PRESALE! We would appreciate it a whole heck of a lot if you felt like getting one...or a few.

Oh did we mention the book comes with a FREE pdf download code so you can download unlimited extra "splotch" drawing pages?! IT DOES.

Here are some sneak peeks at some early pages of the book.

40 pages (Covers +36)
Full Colour CMYK
Perfect Bound
Soft Cover
Includes free PDF download of extra SPLOTCH drawing activity pages

Release date Sept 13, 2014

 

ORDER HERE!

Sneak Peak at the cover of Crying in Front of Your Dog and Other Stories by Phil McAndrew now available for preorder in the Grimalkin Press Store

Grimalkin Press publishes Phil Mcandrew's Debut book!

Hail and well met faithful mendicants of printed art! We are gathered here today to unleash announce that the much rumored ascendance of Phil McAndrew is at hand! All the signs and portents have led us to this annunciation!

WE WILL BE PUBLISHING "Crying in Front of Your Dog and Other Stories" by Phil McAndrew EARLY SECOND QUARTER 2013!

McAndrew is an artist that we have admired for quite some time and we are giddy with the chance to put his ideas and vision into ink and paper.  His art comes from the illustrative tradition of Searle and Steadman.

 

Crying in Front of Your Dog is  over 200 pages of new and collected stories about life, death, love, ghosts, cats, time travel, humans, literature, fear, magic, evil organizations, happiness, television, secrets, dogs, loneliness, house plants, ancient dark rituals, pizza, failure, power, money, nature, government conspiracies, regret, the internet, horrifying monsters, awful jobs, wizards, the ocean, aliens, dads, kissing, crying and teeth.

We will be collecting ALL of Phil's previous never to be reprinted work as well as over a hundred pages of new material! We're pulling out all the stops and nerding it up on the print front. French flaps, heavy offset vellum paper, patterned interior covers! We're all a'twitch just thinking about it.

Also we've decided to offer a limited edition, available ONLY with presale orders print for those who reserve a copy now! 

BUY IT HERE!

We plan to debut the book at TCAF 2013.

We made this with sweaty hands! We breathed on this with our Mouths!

The assembling of HIVE FIVE:

So let's get this tour started...


The cover art was made by the amazing Megan Frauenhoffer and the book design by wunderkind Mark Leicht.

We bought the vellum in parent sheets then cut it down and print on it with a plain old printer. We tried to silk screen on the vellum but it never ended up being consistent enough to trust with a run of five hundred. Pretty expensive paper so we didn't want to be messing up every fifth one or so . . .

 

Then we bought the paper for the belly bands which fortunately was in a much better weight to be silk screened onto. We cut those parent sheets in half to handle better and got to screening. 

Britt Sabo (Top photo) and Myself (bottom photo) did all the silk screening for this edition

 

Then  I took the pages over to Open Book and rented studio time to cut them down on the guillotine 

Then I enlisted Curtis Briggs to try and help me fold the dust jackets. Originally I had the insane i dea that the jackets needed four folds. Two for the spine and one for each of the flaps. 

This made Curtis (pictured) swear a LOT and decide to never help me on another paper folding endeavor. It was pretty shitty guys the vellum was cracking (we were using rulers and bone folders) and it wasn't as easy as it would seem to get those spine folds perfect. But then  in a moment of despair I looked over at my bookshelf full of dustjacketed comics and realized I was an IDIOT. Nobody folds along the spine! You just make two folds for the flaps and let that tension hold the cover snug to the spine! FUCK! So I quickly made a little one sheet jig which was really just two lines where I needed to fold the book to get the best fit. So then that part of the book was smooth sailing....

The books on top of the jacket are just to hold it still while folding.


Next is the part that i am still toiling through and gives me bookmaking stress dreams  . . . the belly band. So I decided to use that super thin filmy double sided tape that STICKS TO EVERYTHING BUT WHAT YOU WANT IT TO because I am super smart. Honestly though glue takes too long and all the easier to use tapes just don't stick as well or aren't thin enough to not have the seam be super visible. So yeah . . .I'm still doing the next few steps ad infinitum  . . .

FINAL PRODUCT!

Totally worth it! Feel free to get your own here!