Artist/Writer teams vs. same person

[Rob Klein]

I agree with Don R. that often when the same person writes and draws a story, it can be 
something special.  But that doesn't mean that an artist writing his own stories is always

better than team productions.   There are a lot of teams that do very good work.  Fallberg

and Murry, De Maris and Gottfredson, Jan Kruse and Verhagen, Kruse and (several 
artists), Van Horn and Lustig, Transgaard and Milton, Milton and Jippes, Jonker and Bas 
or Mau Heijmans, Jonker and Gulien, Gregory and Strobl, The McGreals and (the 
Spanish(Argentinian artist with the Italian name who worked on the dinosaur stories), 
Klein and Gulbransson, and many more.  Some of these teams do or did their best work 
as a team.  For those, when they did everything on their own (or didn't work closely with 
the other person who worked on their stories), I liked their work less.

Firstly, it should be noted that lots of the Disney writers are artists, too.  Jan Kruse,
Evert 
Geradts, Frank Jonker, Pat Block, Gorm Transgaard, Rune Miekle and I, and a lot of the 
other writers can draw well.  Many of us (including all writers for Dutch Disney) draw 
storyboards as our submitted "scripts".  Some of us provide input into the drawing in the 
final artwork.  We also write stories, always keeping the visual aspects in mind, coming 
from an artist's point of view.   Although I didn't work closely with Scalabroni on my
Gyro 
Gearloose stories, my editor always made my wishes clear to him, and I believe my notes 
elaborating on my storyboard art  weregiven to him, as his final artwork was generally 
very close to what I wanted.  Of course, I would have rather worked directly with him, but

that wasn't physically possible.  With Jan G., I'm involved every step of the way.  That's

the ideal situation.   In future with camera telephones or on-line live-action digital 
moviecamera technology, it will be possible to work closely on projects with people 
accross the World.  

Often, two minds are an improvement on one.  The best of two people can replace some 
of the weaknesses of one.  I think few people reach the excellence in both the writing and

drawing that Carl Barks did.  So very many teams have produced great things.   I do think 
that when a single artist writer does reach excellence it can be very good.  I hope to be 
able to draw final pencils and inks some day on my own written stories, but for now, I'm 
very happy with my collaboration work, (and that of many others) 


I work together with Jan Gulbransson on stories.  We both
provide

---------------------------------------------
This message was sent using the LA Free-Net - LA's best kept secret.
http://www.lafn.org/