DIKSIA.COM - ND Stevenson is a name that many fans of animation and comics recognize. He is the creator, showrunner, and executive producer of the acclaimed Netflix series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, which ran from 2018 to 2020.
He is also the author of the award-winning graphic novel Nimona, which is being adapted into an animated film by Blue Sky Studios. But who is ND Stevenson, and how did he become one of the most influential voices in the industry?
Early Life and Education
ND Stevenson was born on December 31, 1991, in Columbia, South Carolina, to Diana and Hal Stevenson. He is the third of five siblings. He was homeschooled before attending A.C. Flora High School, where he created picture books and won a local award in the Visual Literacy Book Production category.
Stevenson attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, graduating in 2013. While there, he gained fame as a fan artist under the name “gingerhaze” for his “hipster Lord of the Rings” characters. He also created cover art for Rainbow Rowell's novel Fangirl, which was published in 2013.
Nimona and Lumberjanes
During his junior year, he created his soon-to-be popular character Nimona as part of an assignment in one of his classes. In mid-2012, Stevenson began creating a webcomic around the character, also called Nimona, and soon signed with a literary agent who found the webcomic online. The agent helped him sign with HarperCollins to publish Nimona as a graphic novel.
Nimona is a science fantasy story about a shapeshifting girl who becomes the sidekick of a villainous knight named Lord Ballister Blackheart. The comic explores themes of identity, morality, friendship, and power. It has been praised for its humor, heart, and subversion of tropes.
For his work on Nimona, Stevenson won Slate Magazine's 2012 Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Web Comic of the Year and the 2016 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: Reprint. Stevenson was also named a 2015 National Book Award Finalist for the graphic novel version of Nimona.
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