We are honoured and delighted to be writers in residence for the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2015. As part of the Baillie Gifford Schools Programme, we will be working in collaboration with hip-hop artist Dave Hook doing a series of workshops in Shawlands Academy in Glasgow, exploring stories, translations and fairy tales from different languages and traditions. This is an exciting celebration of storytelling in its many different forms, and we are very much looking forward to being involved. The workshops will take place after the book festival and will culminate with a celebration on Burns Night 2016.
We are also looking forward to our schools event on Sept 1st on Charlotte Square, Graphic Novel Fairy Tales with Metaphrog, for ages 9-10, which will premiere our new graphic novel The Red Shoes and Other Tales. More information can be found in our previous post: http://metaphrog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/edinburgh-international-book-festival.html
We’re thrilled to be part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival again this year and honoured to be doing an event as part of the Baillie Gifford Schools Programme. The other exciting news is that we will be premiere launching The Red Shoes and Other Tales at the festival. Limited numbers of a Special Festival Edition of the graphic novel will be available in advance of the official release date.
Graphic Novel Fairy Tales with Metaphrog is on Tuesday September 1st, 1.30-2.30pm. The event is open to children age 9-10 and the venue will hold up to 100 pupils.
The programme is packed with exciting events and fantastic authors and illustrators, including: Debbie Gliori, the festival’s Illustrator in Residence; Cathy McPhail; Nicola Morgan; Lari Don; Keith Gray; Alex T Smith; Sarah McIntyre and Philip Reeve; Barry Hutchison; Alison Murray; Vivian French and many more. Check out the full programme here: https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/learning/schools/baillie-gifford-schools-programme
Book now to be the first to hear all about The Red Shoes and Other Tales and get a Special Festival Edition of the book! There’s also a 25% discount on books ordered in advance of the festival for schools, and a £3 book voucher for all pupils attending events.
The official release date of our graphic novel The Red Shoes and Other Tales is October 13th 2015.
Here it is: the cover for our new graphic novel The Red Shoes and Other Tales to be published by Papercutz in October! It’s going to be a nice quarter bound hardcover in full colour and contains our interpretation of the Hans Christian Andersen classic.
And here’s the trailer!
THE RED SHOES AND OTHER TALES by Metaphrog – Coming October 2015 from Papercutz! from Papercutz on Vimeo. An original graphic novel from the award winning team behind the LOUIS series! The first story in this volume adapts the classic fairy tale “THE RED SHOES”. This volume also includes Metaphrog’s adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen classic, “The Little Match Girl” and a tale of their own invention, “The Glass Case”.
We’re really looking forward to being part of the Wonderlands Graphic Novel Expo on May 30th. This one day event in Sunderland University’s City Space will be a celebration of comics in their book form, with panels, workshops and publisher hall. Patron Bryan Talbot, author of the Grandville series and (along with Mary Talbot) Costa winner Dotter of her Father’s Eyes worked on developing the programme, and the whole event is organised by Sunderland Mac Trust.
We’ll be kicking off the day on the Young Adult Graphic Novels panel, along with Benjamin Read, Paul Register and chaired by Dr Mel Gibson. We will also run a comic workshop suitable for age 12 up to adults.
Posy Simmons, Steve Bell and Dave Gibbons are headlining the show, as well as of course, Bryan and Mary Talbot. Check out the excellent programme on the Wonderlands website, including guests Hunt Emerson, Dylan Horrocks, Woodrow Phoenix, Kate Charlesworth, Darryl Cunningham, Paul Gravett, Paul B Rainey, Ian Culbard, Ian Edington, Al Davidson, Stephen White, Kev F Sutherland… and publishers Emma Hayley, Dan Franklin and Ben Smith who will be discussing the current and future state of graphic novels.
Wonderlands is a free, family friendly event held on Saturday May 30th at Sunderland University, CitySpace, Chester Road.
We’re really excited that this year will see the release of our new graphic novel! The Red Shoes and Other Tales will be published in October 2015 by Papercutz. The book includes our interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic along with two other short tales. There will be some really exciting events at prominent festivals to mark the release, but more on this soon…
Papercutz is the publisher of New York Times best-seller Lego Ninjago, Nancy Drew, Geronimo Stilton, The Smurfs and other fine graphic novels for all ages. Check out papercutz.com to see all their exciting titles! The book will be available in the US and UK through their Macmillan distribution, as well as via Diamond Comic Distributors. As a first glance, here’s a pencil drawing from The Red Shoes and Other Tales.
The Red Shoes pencil by Metaphrog
Special thanks to Creative Scotland who provided substantial funding last year for us to create new work, one result of which was this book. Keep your eyes peeled on this blog for more info over the coming months. You can also email us on metaphrog@metaphrog.com and request to be on our mailing list to receive more information as release date approaches and keep informed of our festival and in-store appearances.
Once again it’s been a busy few weeks and we’ve had great fun travelling around visiting places as far afield as Helsinki and giving talks and delivering workshops at The Lakes International Comic Art Festival and Craigmillar Book Festival among others. Last week was Book Week Scotland 2014 and we did a string of events in schools and libraries up north.
With pupils at the Craigmillar Book Festival
First stop was Portlethen on Monday 24th November for two sessions with 13-14 year olds. We then went on to Aberdeen, to Northfield Academy, where we are Patrons of Reading until 2016. We have been going there regularly since we were appointed in 2013, and this time we delivered a series of very hands-on workshops over two days, with the younger pupils.
Sandra’s Xmas character to inspire the pupils
Post session photo with pupils of Northfield Academy
The pupils produced some really fun Xmas-themed characters and comics….
… such as this really crazy comic made by a young girl about a killer snow clown! The cartooning is hilarious.
Some pre-Xmas pychopathicness, in pink
It has become a custom that when we visit, John is challenged to a chess game during lunch break by pupils.
A big thank you to Mandy Wilson and Neil Hendry at Northfield Academy – they are such dynamic and fantastic people and are doing such great work at the school. It’s always a pleasure to work with them.
With librarian Mandy Wilson and head teacher Neil Hendry – Northfield Academy
Next stop was Meldrum where we gave two talks to a total of 300 students!
One of the Meldrum events
We then briefly came back to Glasgow before heading to Oban on the Friday for two events, one in a school and the other, an open event, in Oban Library.
This month we had the pleasure of running the Comics Lab, which Scottish Book Trust and Literary Dundee were hosting. The first part was a pretty intense weekend with wall to wall talks and workshops.
From left to right: Michel Faber, ourselves, Bryan Talbot, Mary Talbot, Kate Charlesworth and John McSane
On the first day, David Bishop gave a talk on comics and how to write for them, Jonathan Cape editor Alex Bowler’s talk was on the publishing side of graphic novels, and we delivered a talk about our own work and creative approach. Later we also held a workshop looking at the nuts and bolts of the medium. On day two, we hosted a second workshop on the medium looking at how to get the best out of a page. Guests William Goldsmith and Isabel Greenberg talked about their books, Vignettes of Ystov and The Encyclopedia of Early Earth respectively, and Bryan and Mary Talbot with Kate Charlesworth talked about their collaborative work on Sally Heathcote Suffragette. Finally John McShane talked about his take on the industry and opportunities for employment possibilities. It was a privilege to have such great guest speakers. That weekend the lab ran at the same time as the annual Dundee Comics Day, in the room next door in fact, and we’d have loved to attend it but had our hands full!
Day three, a couple of weeks later, was a follow-up and feedback day, where we evaluated the participants work along with Chris Murray and Phillip Vaughan, who also gave talks about their courses at Dundee University, the Comic Studies MLitt and the Comic Art and Graphic Novels Expansive Module.
Same as above but with Caitrin Armstrong this time instead of Sandra.
Huge thanks to the Scottish Book Trust team and to Literary Dundee for organising it all and for inviting us to run the lab. Special thanks to Claire, Caitrin, Sasha, Fran, and Peggy Hughes for their kind support and to Will Mackie for help with the initial groundwork. And of course a big thank you to the participants who devoted a chunk of their time and all their attention to the lab. The work they produced for the feedback day was fantastic and we really got a discussion going on how to best improve one’s work. It was fantastic to have the chance to talk about the medium of comics all weekend with like-minded people. As a bonus to the whole event, Michel Faber, who was doing a reading from his new book, The Book of Strange New Things, at Literary Dundee, attended a couple of the talks when he learned that the lab was running.
Collection of graphic novels that was in the Comics Lab room which were donated to the university by Grant Morrison.
The Comics Lab ran in the Cam Kennedy studio at Dundee University.
We’re gearing up for a really busy autumn, now that we’ve finished our new book. September already saw us do some events at the excellent Tidelines Book Festival, and we’ll continue giving talks and delivering workshops in schools and libraries around Britain over the coming months.
We’ll also be doing several public events at The Lakes International Comic Art Festival including a talk on how we self-published over the years, two drop-in workshops for 7-10 (free), and a signing at Waterstones in Kendal. We’re very excited about “The Magic of Metaphrog”, a free exhibition which runs from October 1st until October 31st, featuring some Louis pages and also a preview of pages from our forthcoming book with Papercutz..
We’ve also been invited to speak at Helsinki’s International school and are really looking forward to spending a few days there, doing several workshops and assembly talks to the whole school.
Plus, Book Week Scotland will see us travelling around the country including a visit to Aberdeen and Northfield Academy where we are Patrons of Reading.
That should see us pretty exhausted by the time we reach the end of the year…
We talk about our work to date, our approach to the creative process and also our new graphic novel, due to be published by Papercutz in 2015.
Last year we received substantial funding for a year from Creative Scotland to research and develop new work and the graphic novel is one of the exciting outcomes.
We have been fortunate to receive funding from Creative Scotland to create new work this year. One of the things we have been working on is a new graphic novel which will be published by Papercutz in 2015. Papercutz is the publisher of New York Times #1 best-seller Lego Ninjago, Nancy Drew, and other fine graphic novels.
Some pages from this new book will be exhibited, in an exclusive sneak preview, at The Lakes International Comic Festival 2014, where we’ll be guests, doing a talk on self-publishing and the Louis graphic novels, some drop-in workshops and more!
