Xanny’s Curse Blog

Welcome to the very first official update post here on http://blog.xannyscurse.com.

We decided that since we were going to be preparing for the inevitable return of Xanny’s Curse that we should separate some of the blogging elements of Xanny’s Curse from the actual comic itself. That way, we can show you more on what it takes to actually revive a webcomic and what it’s taken us to think of in order to make this transition of artists and writers as seamless as possible. Don’t worry though… I, Xanny, will still oversee everything that goes on the webcomic site itself and of course whatever goes on in this blog.

So early on, I wanted to give the fans an insight as to how we operate here at Xanny’s Curse. Currently, we have an artist and a co-writer who will be creating the art and providing the necessary elements that I felt was lacking in the original version. In this post, we will be focusing on how we’re transitioning the art from what currently is shown on the webcomic site to the new style that we’ll be using soon.

First, it was important for our artist to get a grasp on what Xandy currently looks like. Our artist rendered Xandy as close to the original version as possible. Our artist even remarked once that the original design was so good that we almost stuck with it throughout. Eventually, we realized that changes had to be made in order to inject more life into the character and to provide a better representation of the characters’ personalities themselves.

Click on the scan to see it in higher detail

The next part was to try to find a good, comfortable style that our artist can render Xandy. Since we’re in a phase where her personality would need to be locked down (we will be meeting with my co-writer tomorrow to discuss this further), I just had our artist focus on making sure that they’re able to withstand drawing multiple versions of said character. We wouldn’t want our artist to be fatigued by putting too much detail on Xandy on the onset, only to learn that it won’t be detailed throughout the comic’s life.

Our artist then went ahead and looked at other hair style possibilities. Now that our artist is able to render Xandy in her original form, it was important to be open to new hair styles to represent her.

Click on the scan to see it in higher detail

These variations ranged immensely and shows how incredible our artist can render the same character in varying degrees of mood and styles. While we haven’t locked down the style that we’re going to use, we’re showing you the fruits of our artists’ labor right here so that you can comment on it this early in development.

Finally, our artist moved onto rendering an early version of another character. Now, I’m not going to tell you who it is… so let’s make this a guessing game shall we? What character is our artist attempting to render below? We’ll post the answer in the next update.

Click on the scan to see it in higher detail

So why are we starting from scratch in terms of character design? And where in the storyline will Xanny’s Curse be updated?

We’re planning to ret-con (i.e. change parts of the story in earlier pages) by slowly updating older pages with the new art. Until then, we are going to be focusing on continuing the Xanny’s Curse storyline exactly where it left off. I figured, “Hey, I left these guys hanging with a cliffhanger, it’d suck if we restarted the entire storyline again from scratch.”

So yea, Xanny’s Curse will be back sooner than you think. Tomorrow, we’re going to be meeting up and finalizing certain details that should make Xanny’s Curse, overall, a lot interesting than what it already is. Above all, despite having people helping me, know that the story will not deviate from its original plan and that I’ll still be here to provide you all with information as to how we’re working on this great webcomic.