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Introducing Warpaint PressAn interview with co-founder Shane Matthew Stiles

Posted on: February 13, 2013 @ 11:40PM
Published in: Interviews

Our pal Shane is, truly, like a boss. He's got a sharp eye for talent, a passion for posters, and a deep understanding of all things screen-printed. Starting March 1st he and two other partners will be bringing their considerable skills right to your mailbox with the launch of Warpaint Press. I've caight up with him recently to find out more about this soon-to-launch company, and scored us an exclusive sneak peek at one of the first prints they'll be launching by the very skilled Craig Robson. I urge you all to keep a close eye on Warpaint Press. Visit warpaintpress.com for more peeks at upcoming releases.

Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?

Absolutely! My name is Shane Matthew Stiles, and I’m the co-owner of Warpaint Press. As a day job, I’m the operations manager of Threadbird Printing, printing t-shirts, posters, stickers, buttons, etc. for people around the world. Prior to that I was a music publicist, so I’ve always tried to make it my point to assist artists in any realm with making their vision come to fruition, be it bands with albums, brands with t-shirts, or designers with posters.

What's the concept behind Warpaint Press? What sets you apart from other print houses such as Mondo, Nakatomi or Burlesque of North America, to name a few?

There’s so many companies out there, each of them have something a little different. Mondo is a great company and probably the most recognized, but they specialize in licensed movie prints. A great guy, Tim Doyle runs Nakatomi, Inc., and they do fantastic stuff, but it’s an endless sale model, selling until they have no more. Burlesque of North America is a similar setup to Nakatomi, Inc.… great stuff, but endless sale. Warpaint Press has more in common with Mondo than the other two, but we’re still far apart.

Unlike Mondo, Warpaint Press isn’t focused on licensed pieces; in fact, we’d like to try to stay away from them as much as we can. At Warpaint, we’re focused on art for art sake. We want to see great pieces from designers, whether they’re pop art related or just the crazy stuff rattling around in their brains that they feel like they need to put to paper. Unlike setups like Gallery 1988 - Melrose, Warpaint doesn’t expect the designer to pay for printing services; all we need from the designer is a design and some umphf once it’s available for sale. After all, it’s their piece; they should want it to do well.

What is your ultimate vision for Warpaint Press?

Our ultimate vision for Warpaint is for the company to be a great source of artwork, easily accessible by the masses. You’ll see us running closed editions, sure, but you’ll also see some timed open editions, where we’ll have it for sale for five days and whatever sells is the edition. We want to be able to put great art in the hands of people who enjoy it. One of the most infuriating things as someone who collects rare items is missing out on it and only being able to find it on eBay at anywhere from three to ten times the original cost. We can’t promise that every poster will be accessible to all, but we’ll do our best to make sure that “limited” and “desirable” aren’t two sides of the same coin.

Will there ever be a physical Warpaint Press gallery?

At this tine we’re not looking at that as an option, but we’re not ruling it out either. No one ever knows where their company is going to go when they start it. If Warpaint takes off, I think it’d be amazing to be able to have a physical gallery, but if it never happens, I won’t be heartbroken either. So to answer that question, I guess only time will tell.

I'm guessing you'll be printing with Threadbird, can you talk a little bit about the process there, the equipment, and why you're the best? (Admittedly, I already know the answer to that last part)

Sure! All of our prints are done on an M&R Saturn Flatbed, using a mixture of Nazdar & TW inks. Every print will be on French Paper, either 100# or 140#, depending on what the design and designer call for. If it’s a full coverage piece, edge to edge, 140# is the way to go to ensure you don’t get curling when printing. As for why we’re the best, I’d rather leave that up for our customers to say if we are or not. No one likes a bragger :)

What is it about screen printed posters makes them so awesome?

Lots of non-collector types truthfully don’t see the distinction between screen prints or digital prints. To them, a poster is a poster. To those who are seeking us out, there’s an obvious distinction. A digital print, to me, is a throw in / throw away item. It’s something that you go “oh that’s neat”, stick a pushpin in it, hang it on your wall for a bit, then when it rips, you toss it. Screen prints are more of a work of art. Truthfully, screen printed pieces are the closest things to an original print that you can get, I feel. It’s an item you want to frame, you want to keep, you want to brag about and show off.

Are you a collector? What kind of art really motivates and inspires you?

Mike here at Warpaint is a much bigger art collector than I am, I love posters but my vice has always been vinyl records. As for what art really motivates and inspires me, just like my music tastes, I’m all over the place. I love a great hand drawn piece, you can feel the warmth and the amount of time poured into that to make it look the way it does. I also love a great vector created cartoon-ish piece, flawless lines, really polished, somewhat whimsical. Too much art is out there to really fixate on one type, so I’d say it’s more about the exploration of art styles and applying as much diversity as possible that motives and inspires me.

Let's say, hypothetically, that I am an artist looking to be printed. What is your curation process for Warpaint Press, and how should artists get in touch with you?

We tried to make it as easy as possible for designers who want to work with Warpaint, let’s face it, they’re supplying the art so we shouldn’t make the process tedious or difficult to figure out. A business advisor once told me that there are two things you always need to do when you develop a new project: make it quality, make it easy.

For designers looking to submit pieces to Warpaint, you can simply go to http://www.warpaintpress.com/submit.html and fill out the form there. All the questions are fairly simple, and are all pointed towards helping us make the best decisions possible for the direction of Warpaint. If you don’t have a design yet and want to do something for us, email service@warpaintpress.com, send us your portfolio, Facebook link to your art page, anything you have, and we’ll reply back to you as quick as we can.

Can you tell us a little bit about the artists you already have lined up?

Sure! It seems like we get new ones all the time, so forgive me if we leave someone out. We have designs (or confirmations) coming up from:

Godmachine, Dan Mumford, Derrick Castle, Jason Carne, Craig Robson, Short Army (Miri Rooney), Drew Wise, Joshua Andrew Belanger, Brad McGinty, Landland (Dan Black), Stephen Thomas, Nick Francel, and Kari Fry for now. We’re still working on but haven’t yet confirmed designs with: Drew Millward, Castlepop, Christopher Lee (The Beast is Back), Beast Pop (Jared Moraitis), and some big names we’re not comfortable announcing just yet.

How did you choose them?

The designers we’ve chosen to work with we’ve picked because we’ve worked together in the past or because we truthfully love what they do. Godmachine, Dan Mumford, and Jason Carne have all designed sample shirts for us at Threadbird. Drew Wise and Kari Fry have designed for Mike at The Yetee. Looking at the other services that offer printed posters, some of them use the same designers on a loop. We wanted to utilize fantastic poster designers while also injecting designers who do wonderful work, but aren’t known for doing flat stock. Sure, it does add somewhat of a casino-esque risk factor to the project, but it also gives us a chance to really do something fresh and new all the time.

What artists would you most like to work with that you haven't already been in touch with?

Just like any other poster company, of course our top tier is comprised of people like Kevin Tong, Aaron Horkey, Tim Doyle, Ken Taylor, Olly Moss, and Daniel Danger. That’s not all there is out there though. There’s so many people out there that we want to work with, people like Ross Moody, DKNG, Drew Melton, Graham Erwin, Jeff Proctor, Richey Beckett, I could run this list on forever. There are so many fantastic artists out there and we’d like to get the chance to use them all eventually.

And finally, what can we expect in the near future? Events? group/themed shows? pop-up galleries?

That’s a question we can’t really answer right now. These are things that maybe down the road we’d like to do, but for now, I can’t say that it’ll happen for sure. We need to grow first. Don’t want to put the cart before the horse.

Big thanks to Shane for answering all our questions! I'll be continuing to publish stories about this as prints become available in the coming months.

Artist Portfolios

Venue Portfolios

External Sites Mentioned

About the Author

Miri Rooney

Makin' hats and kicking butts.

More from the author:
instagram.com and @shortarmy

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