I've mentioned, I think, how happy I am to have
susandeer on board for
NeverNever. We've had four solid months of
NN now, not a day missed, and beautiful work all around. And given the upheaval going on in our favorite doe's life, this is no small achievement. She's changing
coasts, fer cryin' out loud!
Anyway, as awesome as that would be by itself, I've recently become aware of a change, and one for the better, that's come about in my writing for the strip now that she's on board: I've become more ambitious.
There have been times in
NeverNever's past where what I ended up writing was not really what I thought would have made the best story, because I didn't trust my art to stand up to it. The early
NeverNever strips were very visual, because they were written before I knew how good an artist I was (or wasn't). By the time of
NN's first relaunch, it had become very sparse (e.g.,
this strip), because I was a) rushed, and b) had no confidence in the artwork. Or more accurately, I was quite confident that it wouldn't be what I wanted.
But that is so not the case with Sue on the job. Take a look at
this strip, for instance: in the storyboard version I sketched for Sue, the school was basically a big, oblong box with windows. Sue's version actually looks like a school -- but an appealing, cartoony school of exactly the style I picture
NN having when I write it, but am totally unable to draw myself.
What this means, among other things, is that I can just go ahead and
write the strip I want to write, confident that something awesome will come back from Sue. The current storyline has blossomed from a little idea to what I think is a pretty neat action sequence (including cliffhanger) because I could spend my time thinking about what would make an engaging tale rather that fretting about how hard it would be for me to
draw the warcats attacking Grognard -- or some of the even more complex stuff yet to be seen.
I'm very pleased with how
NN is going. Thanks, Sue, for being so awesome!
-The Gneech
EDIT: X-posted to the
SJ/Gneech.comics forum.