May Mailbag
Shaenon: Everything is hard to draw. It seems unfair.
Channing: In Shaenon’s defense, she makes it look easy, even though it isn’t.
Skin Horse
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Shaenon: Everything is hard to draw. It seems unfair.
Channing: In Shaenon’s defense, she makes it look easy, even though it isn’t.
Well, you’ve all risen to the various challenges admirably, and I, for one, have been highly entertained!
Do over, eh? So after the main story we get a what if side story as well? ^_~
Naw. The final panel will be of Tip awakening in a plain white featureless asylum cell swaddled in a plain white straight jacket with a small square window where a distant blimp can be glimpsed possibly advertising “Tremontino’s Haberdashery”.
Yeah, I’d buy that.
“This place has become confining somehow.”
I’d follow it if you started doing a rewrite, or spinoff, or whatever. Skin Horse is going to leave a fairly large gap when it’s ended.
I’d actually love some Mel, Unity, and Sweetheart mayhem, but that may just be me.
The material to be mined in the Narbonic universe is so rich and varied I really think a “Narbonic Consortium” funded by Kickstarter could support multiple spin-off strips paying royalties to Shaenon and Jeff en perpetuity.
.. or at least a set of Colorforms, fanfic edition 😉
Honestly, I think a generic design works for Echo Bravo. I feel like he’d be a lot less funny if he wasn’t just another minion visually. Sometimes things work out!
Agreed!
Memorable challenges, generic designs. All drawings of different kinds. It might’ve been numbing, but the work kept us coming, watching character-based monkeyshines.
Thanks for answering my question! Writing and drawing a daily comic seems hard.
Hard? Heroic. Daily for decades = superheroic!
I’ve really enjoyed watching Shaenon’s drawing style evolve over the years. From the early days of Narbonic to now, I’m loving how her characters have become more refined and expressive and how backgrounds have become more defined and detailed. Couple that with Skin Horse’s ability to continue to make me laugh my a– off, between the writing and the drawing, Shaenon and Jeffrey really do make it all look easy.
Pancha too. Good colouring makes a huge difference to the strip but when it’s good it goes largely unnoticed, apart from the occasional show-off special effect. (I did comment at the time that the bees must have been super-fiddly though.)
Agreed!
I feel that Shaenon draws hands funny just to play with our minds.
(e.g.: panel three))
(…er, I meant five.)
Hands are hard to draw
…indeed they are.
I thought Shaenon did an excellent job of drawing Mell, but a little older and established in her law career. It’s a subtle difference but it was clear that was what was going on. If drawing is hard, and I’m inclined to believe that it is, drawing with such subtlety must be super-luxo hard. Well done.
It does seem to be Mell, sitting in the Ground Control Cafe when a little mechanical bird tells Chris what to do. Mell is even wearing the same suit she is now, I think. (I have just one suit. After I bought it, I have worn it once.)
It’s based on the way Neil Babra drew her in the future in Li’l Mell. Dang, Neil’s good.
I can relate, whenever I work with my artistic partner they have to convince me they won’t die if I write in s staircase. I’m still not convinced…