Well, for each of our series it seems like the image of the character always comes first, and it’s actually from Jenny, she’s always the one who had the image, would scribble it down, and like this is the character, and then we would sit and figure out who it was, and what they did and everything. But after that initial thing everything else was always words first, we always work out the story to like the utmost before we start doing any drawing because drawing takes a tremendous amount of time, and there’s a lot of steps.
We do pencil sketches, and then I usually do some marker sketches to clean things up, and then I’ll do the final art inside the computer, and so that takes a long, long time. And it’s always to make story changes early on in the text than it is to make things, changes later in the artwork.
Well, I do have a lot of experience as a writer. I was a writer for many years, as my profession. And, so I am writing children’s books as well as drawing Squish and Babymouse. I mean I do also, do writing on Squish and Babymouse. Jenny will do the manuscript and send it to me, and then I’ll revise it, and sometimes she’ll just get stuck, and say, “Matt, write something funny here to fix this scene.” And so I’ll have to go and rewrite some stuff for her.
But, the biggest problem is, I just, I’m doing so much Babymouse and Squish work I don’t have a lot of free time for writing. I do have a middle grade chapter book that I have been working on for, I don’t know, six or seven years now that is finally being submitted to publishers now. So, hopefully in the next few years that will come out as well.
