Tales of Kenah

Author notes

ToK returns

XeaRi

on April 15, 2010

…Hello? Anyone out there? No?

Wow, it's been a year and a half since I updated here. I'm sorry the hiatus went on for so long! Long, long story short, the contest HaneHito never happened (the person running it seems to have vanished), and some other stuff happened, and then I got really frustrated with ToK. Something about it wasn't clicking with me. But I refuse to abandon it. It's my child in a way… and I am determined to get it right this time, but I don't want to dive into it and screw up again. So here's the deal.

- My art has improved wildly over the past year and a half. I've been accepted at a university to study animation in England, so I must be doing SOMETHING right! The problem with that is that, although my art has improved a lot, I no longer draw dragons as much as I did when I did the comic. I've come to notice the flaws in my dragon-drawing, but my knowledge of it is higher than my physical skill in fixing it. So I'm working on bringing that up to the same level.

- I'm nowhere near ready to start again. I'm revamping a lot of the story. This doesn't really matter to many of you, as the comic didn't get very far, but the written part is going to change a lot. The problem: I haven't actually started rewriting yet. My original plan was to rewrite the whole story before beginning the comic again because as the comic progresses, plot points in it can no longer be changed to work with future parts, which could pose a problem if I write myself into a corner. But the writing may go slowly, especially at the beginning, so this might not work out. My modified plan is to write enough to be able to stay ahead of the comic. I hope this works out.

- Since I'm busy writing a fanfiction right now (which should end in a few months if I'm lucky), I haven't had much time or mind to spare for ToK, which is part of why I haven't started rewriting yet. The other part is that my ideas aren't ready to be set in stone right now. In the meantime I'm simply brainstorming and practicing drawing my characters.

- Why was I dissatisfied with ToK? There wasn't enough tension. I've been writing other things since the hiatus started, and I've really developed my style in terms of themes. I like exploring character relationships more than anything, but ToK didn't have enough of that for my liking. So when I rewrite this time, I'll end up adding more of that, simply out of habit. You see, my fanfiction is mainly romance and angst (oh yes, lots of angst) and so is very character-driven. I want ToK to be character-driven too, instead of world-driven. But I'm still interested in the fantasy genre, so I want to use my own world and concepts to express these characters.

Think I've ranted enough? There's lots more to say, but that's some of it, in any case.

For the next little while as I work back up to ToK, I'll be posting sketches and the like so that you can see my progress, perhaps every week or so to keep you interested (lol). Here's one now, a quick sketch of Xeari and a study of her wing. As you can see, my style's changed a lot. If you're still there (hi!), I encourage you to tell me what you like or don't like. Anything in my old style that I've lost and you want back? Any improvements you like? Let me know! Audience participation is awesome.

Oh, and by the way, when ToK starts up again proper I'll be moving to a new account and starting fresh. My current handle is Hexephra, or Hex. See you soon!

- Hex