Squishbook

Squishbook: Make comics with Squishface Studio and friends

Squishbook is a big fat book from the artists of Melbourne's Squishface Comic Studio. We're a shared workspace for comics makers. We spent ten years in a shopfront in Brunswick, a year at the District Docklands mall and we've just moved to a new office in beautiful South Melbourne in time for our 12th birthday.

This book is a "kids annual"-style collection of comics and activities, but it's also a how-to-make-comics book, and a why-you-should-make-comics book!

It's been a long time coming:

It's ten years since we had the idea to make it, and it's exciting to have it finally done, with contributions from Ben Hutchings, Sarah Howell, Jo Waite, Scarlette Baccini, Briar Rolfe, Alex e Clark, Patrick Alexander, Jin Hien Lau, Ive Sorocuk, Alex Pavlotski, guest "writers, not drawers" Nicholas J. Johnson and Warwick Holt... and put together by me, David Blumenstein.

Who's this book for?

We spent a year writing, drawing, running workshops with the grade 2's at Kensington Primary School and answering their questions. All our expertise, silliness and philosophy is rolled into a book for 8-12 year olds -- the ones we've met over the years at Squishface Studio. The ones who love to draw all the time and their parents go, "What can I do with this child?"

Give them this book!

I also think this will be a great book for your school or local library to have, as well as art, writing and media teachers who want to teach comics to primary and secondary schoolers.

It'll be a big, beautiful 80 page book, offset printed by the experts at Jeffries Printing with eye-popping blacks and spot colour all the way though, like those great-looking old Beano and Victor annuals.

Who am I?

I'm David; I'm a service designer and cartoonist. I do long form graphic reportage and sometimes short funny stuff.

I used to work in animation, helping make kids TV shows, and I've also made a few of those cheap illustrated books they sell to parents at Big W. This eventually burnt me out and made me angry about the lack of originality in material for children. I wasn't able to think much more about it until I had my own kid and saw what kind of stuff she likes to watch and read.

I decided to push forward with Squishbook for two reasons:

1. Kids deserve original ideas and some weirdness in the stuff they watch and read, and artists who don't ordinarily make mainstream children's entertainment are a good place to get that!
2. I think that the arts is woefully underfunded in Australia, and the best way to get people to take notice is to remind them that they are artists too. That starts with children.
   
   

The artists and writers

Alex e Clark is a Melbourne artist who makes comics, portraits and illustrations. She runs the annual zine fair Hallozeen with Sticky Institute. Alex is known for her Cats of Brunswick comics, autobio comic A True Story and being ever ready to talk about some piece of history she's just read about, or Lee Pace. Find her at lexlotl on Instagram.

Alex Pavlotski is an anthropologist who is into movement culture, conflict, masculinities and ethnographic research methods. That means he studies people, and societies, and tries to understand why they think the way they think, and jump on the things they jump on. Born in Pripyat, near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Alex is also really into disasters and what they have to say about human nature. Finally, he is a graphic artist with a passion for the comics medium. He hopes to grow up to be Joe Sacco, Guy Delisle or Scott McCloud.

Ben Hutchings is one of the instigators of Melbourne’s Squishface Studio. He has been writing and drawing comics for over 20 years. His most recent works are the children’s graphic novel Mini Mel and Timid Tom, the highly awarded graphic novel The Invisible War, published by Scale Free Network and the new series of Avanti! language learning books for children.

Briar Rolfe (he/they) is a trans cartoonist who tells stories about good friends making bad jokes and worse decisions. Briar was shortlisted for a Ledger Award in 2017 and highly commended by the Kat Muscat Fellowship in 2020. They are working on their debut graphic novel, Get Your Story Straight, for publication by Hachette Australia in 2025. Briar is represented by Danielle Binks of the Jacinta DiMase literary agency. They live on Wurundjeri land in Melbourne with their partner, two noisy cats, and a lizard called Vogue, who always makes it into the end of their artist bios.

David Blumenstein is a service designer and visual communicator. His award-winning comics work includes Free Money, Please: How to Make Passive Income While the World Burns, Octane Render: Cartoonists talk about A.I. art and the book #takedown: My Evening on a Pier with Pick-up Artists and Protesters (Pikitia Press). His comics have appeared in The Guardian, The Nib and Australian MAD. He is a founding member of Squishface Studio and currently deputy president of the Australian Cartoonists Association.

Ive Sorocuk is a 44 year old man from the western suburbs of Melbourne, Geelongside. His early days were spent making comics, going to exhibitions, finding local art groups to be a part of. These days he does the same but closer to Melbourne. You might remember his Comic Face comic from Trouble mag. Those were good times. Ive makes 3D characters and tabletop games and zines and a great deli meat sandwich.

A proponent of the values of narrative across all forms of media and practices, Jin Hien Lau believes that in order to tell a good story, you must listen to a thousand better ones from everyone and everywhere first. Based in Sydney but a frequent collaborator on projects across Asia, Jin has applied his craft to fields ranging from prints, comics, illustrations and animations.

Jo Waite has been a Melbourne based queer artist, illustrator and writer working in comics and community arts for more than 30 years; self-publishing comics, curating group art exhibitions for Melbourne Fringe, lived in and ran an art gallery in Brunswick. From 2007 to 2012 she was part of The Comic Spot; a fortnightly radio show about Australian comics on 3CR Community Radio. She has volunteered at the Squatters Union, Friends of the Earth, the Queer Archives Australia, and Housing for the Aged Action Group. In 2016 to mid 2017 she was a State Library of Victoria Creative Fellow.

Nicholas J. Johnson is a comedian and magician who has spent 30 years chasing European street swindlers, learning sleight-of-hand tricks from card sharps and researching con artists in order to learn about all the ways people get fooled and scammed. He’s written many books, including Tricky Nick, and performed at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, the Edinburgh Science Festival, and maybe at your school with his three shows for secondary students: Sway, The Bad Science Show and Deceptology.

Patrick Alexander is a silly cartoon man and subtle manipulator of international democracy. In ancient times he made comics called Pink Chickens and Tobias and Jube for children’s magazine Mania, then wrote about videogames for Total Gamer and EEGRA. He’s done comics and writing for Dark Horse Comics, Square Enix, Frederator Studios, and Sony Pictures Television — none of which you’ve seen — as well as that comic about the Australian electoral system where a koala slaps a dingo, which you have. He sometimes makes YouTube videos, and he uses swear words every single day.

Sarah Howell is a cartoonist and educator based in Melbourne. Sarah is often involved in projects that promote the Australian comic book art scene. She is a founding member of Squishface Studio, self-publishes zines and mini-comics and was the first director of the Homecooked Comics Festival. She has worked as a cartooning tutor at Box Hill Community Arts Centre and a cartooning and graphic novels tutor at the Centre for Adult Education in Melbourne.

Scarlette Baccini is a comic book illustrator and a painter based in Melbourne. She is an intermittent member of Squishface Studio, and in 2013 joined the Caravan of Comics tour of Canada. Utilising her background in science, she loves to explore the relationship between the psychological and the biological through her work, which hovers between the genres of dark comedy and horror.

Warwick “Wok” Holt has written over 60,000 jokes for Australian TV shows including The Project, Good News Week and The Glass House. Some of them even went to air. He was a writer and creator of Bruce, a black comedy web series about the only convict on the First Fleet who came out here chasing his girlfriend, which won heaps of awards worldwide. He has had jobs as a chaos mathematician and record company IT manager, and he made a documentary about Aussie Star Wars fans called The PhanDom Menace. He most recently wrote this bio. 

OK, so here's how the budget works:

1. Squishbook is supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants. That has paid the artists to make work for the book and to run workshops with our friends at Kensington Primary School.

2. What the grant does not pay for is the production and manufacturing of the book. The production of the book has been done by David, in his spare time (this is called his "in-kind contribution"). The manufacturing will also be paid for by Squishface Studio, with their spare money [insert laughter here].

3. But seriously, we think this book rocks and we're getting it printed now, already, by the time you read this. So there is no risk of it not appearing. The risk is on us. Which is why we will really appreciate your picking up a copy or three now, when it will help pay for the print run, rather than later (though Squishface will be thrilled to sell you one five years from now, at a comics festival, if we still have stock).

4. The cost of the print run is $5200. We would love to raise at least half of that through pre-orders, hence our initial goal of $2600.