Fourteen Years of Exiern and Look Who’s Back
Things are never quite so simple with Exiern, including the answers to supposedly straightforward questions like, “When did it start?” and even “How many pages are there?” For simplicity’s sake (among other things) the start of Exiern is generally considered to be from the first day of the reboot on the 6th of September 2005 (the page before it does touch on why it’s a little bit more complicated than that, however, if you’re interested).
On that note, due to one of those bizarre chain of events that are strangely all too common on the production side of things here, it has lead to the return after more than 9 years away of Exiern’s first professional artist. You knew him as Studio Boom, he’s now back as Studio Katsumi!
You can check out his Patreon here (he does commissions!).
To celebrate 14 years and counting of Exiern, we simply said to just make anything he’d like with no further instructions to commemorate Studio Katsumi’s return as well as to mark this anniversary milestone. As you can see, a particularly memorable moment from among the earliest days of Exiern was chosen.
Don’t worry, Antipus will be remaining as the primary artist for Exiern’s main story – he’s not going anywhere anytime soon, we hope!
But wait, there’s more!
Check back here on Monday, the 9th of September for a special announcement below the comic page. The next story page will post later that evening. We’ll also have new announcements about the evolution of a long absent and gestating project soon!
If we could take this time to reflect, a lot has happened in and to Exiern since Drowemos first conceived of, wrote, and illustrated those first few pages over fourteen years ago (there’s that not-quite-that-simple again). And this is our opportunity to open a dialogue with everyone here about the future of Exiern through 2019 and into 2020.
We hate to discuss it, but Exiern runs at quite a financial deficit. The sensible thing to do would be to cut back again the frequency of posts, if not stop the webcomic entirely and invest the money from other sources in some very safe mutual or index funds instead.
Scott and his wife are also waiting to find out if at any moment they’ll get the call to be adoptive parents! It’s very exciting but will, of course, impact what Scott’s been able to invest in time and funds.
But don’t worry. We really enjoy making everything in the Exiern universe (and all the friends we made along the way) so we won’t be stopping unless we really can’t help it. To keep any interruption from happening we’re starting to increase the various direct income streams Exiern has access to.
We really don’t want to over-push the Patreon or other donation options. Everyone’s seen the banners. They’re always there to click on for anyone who wants to anytime. So we’ll be doing a number of things that are quite different going forwards, like more merch on Exiern Effects, and we hope you’ll find them to be something a bit different as well as fun and entertaining on top of everything else.
So, to recap: Welcome back to an excellent artist who made an invaluable contribution to shaping what Exiern is, and there’s a lot to look forward to in the months ahead on top of the usual updates. We’re really excited to share what we’ve been planning with everyone for a while now, starting with this coming Monday!
See you all then!
~The Exiern Team
“Don’t worry, Antipus will be remaining as the primary artist for Exiern’s main story – he’s not going anywhere anytime soon, we hope!”
Oh. that is disappointing. I preferred the more cartoony earlier look of the comic, and the writing and characterisation from that period too.
Then I think you will enjoy one of the projects we’re working on getting out! 🙂
Nothing remains the same forever, and in the world of the visual arts, the artistic line-up changes (even Stan Lee had to return to the Cosmos)
I have to agree with Doug. I’ve been reading Exiern for a good long time now and the style before the art drastically changed was good enough. The cartooniness was what made it fun. Now I’m having a bit of trouble discerning who’s who. Even their facial expressions have become quite limited in there functions. When it comes to comics (even web comic) there should be a certain level of consistency upheld. Improving one’s artistic skills are inevitable but that doesn’t mean the comic in question should become (in some cases) almost unrecognisable. An artist can keep to said art style while making it better so it is not as ‘rough around the edges’ like it was when it first started. Had Exiern started out with it’s current style it wouldn’t be such a big deal.
Well, without going into detail because for starters, I don’t even come close to knowing it all – the last change in main artists was necessitated due to circumstances and trying to find someone who will deliver on a regular basis at any price seems to be fiendishly difficult if my experience of the last 1 to 2 years has been anything to go by.
As it was to finally get a regular artist for our upcoming special project we keep talking about, after many failed attempts, it really was a bizarre chain of events where I was already looking for Exiern’s original professional artist in order to source the original art, failing miserably and while still chasing up more leads, quite literally tripping over him by accident without even meaning to and not realising it even after I did.
It really did go down like “Hey someone whose Patreon I followed by chance but only really looked more closely at many months later at the earliest, your work reminds me of our original artist, are you interested in a regular webcomic gig?”/”Sure if it’s a medieval fantasy comic.”/”Funny you should mention that, we have one of those. If you look at these pages from long ago, it’s kind of like your work.” (Yes, that is more or less how it happened).
We’re not even getting into cost here, suffice to say as we said above – it’d help if we could make more of it out of this just to run a smaller deficit if nothing else.
Nothing more than an observation but just trying to say this stuff’s surprisingly difficult and expensive is what I’m saying and I have the easy job compared to Scott.
As someone who has read this comic from the very beginning, (but just now making a post. ever. because I don’t do social media, don’t comment, etc etc.) But that aside, I’ll offer my opposing viewpoint. I really like the current artist. I prefer the more realistic style over the cartoony styles. The current art is probably one of my top two that have ever done it.
Also, I’m fine with the plot/story arc as it is. I’m not impatient, and I enjoy the comic immensely, just reading it once a week, and honestly dont’ even need a plot. haha, just watching these characters in their daily lives, dealing with whatever comes up, is plot enough.
While I’m doing the rare post, great job, to everyone involved.
The curse of the “realistic” strikes again, gonna toss in a gritty in there too for funsies? If I had my way then demanding any form of realism in SFF works would be grounds for the death penalty. Bring back the goofy fun comedy, and girly Tiff when we weren’t leaning hard into the trans metaphor.
I wouldn’t call it the curse of the “realistic”. This has been the case from the beginning of the artist switch which is that some people preferred the new artist and some preferred the old. I don’t think realism came into it as opposed to personal preference as to “I like how this looks” versus that and vice-versa. Realism is incidental in this case, I think we would have seen it in almost any before/after situation with two artists of comparable skill levels.
Anyway, it’s all kind of moot in the sense that one artist had reasons to move on and the other artist was the one that took over, without the artist we have now, it’s quite possible we’d have had anything from less to no updates since mid-2016.
As it is, we’ve only just exited a phase (hopefully for good or at least long term) where we’re not just hanging on by our fingernails in keeping with the update schedule of one new image of some sort every week.
All those non-main story pages weren’t us trying to vex people by wandering off from the main plot, it quite often really was the case of either that or no page of any kind of the week. Luckily, there hasn’t been a week without a page but it’s been a close if not very close thing a few times in the last few years.
I’d be less salty about the art style shift if it wasn’t also for the massive tonal shift away from humour and characterisation at the same time too. This feels almost nothing like the Peonie and Tiff that the comic used to be about, it might as well be a completely different set of characters doing something else. Exiern did end, just change the name of the comic and characters for whatever this is.
I’ve seen this brought up before and here’s my take on it, being someone who had never even heard of this webcomic until 2 weeks before the current official 10 year mark (like I mentioned above, these things aren’t quite as obvious as they should be) and then read everything up to that point in one sitting.
It certainly all did start out as predominately comedy and comic farce in the beginning but even then, there we’re some life and death issues lurking in the background and I feel they’ve increasingly come to the foreground over time.
I have to keep reminding myself that Peonie was still in her teens and Typh just out of them when all of this started, originally it was just a rescue mission but as part of those things coming to the foreground, they’ve had a lot of growing up to do as Typh had to come to terms with the terrible chain of events he’d set in motion that led to his exile and Peonie increasingly comes to terms with the fact she has to start running the whole place. In the interim, both have to take on more responsibilities and I guess that all unavoidably led to a tonal shift from the beginning.
Now, I guess the question remains as to how successful that’s all been in terms of the execution. Well, that ball’s in Scott’s court. I genuinely stay out of most of that. For example, until I saw the next page as part of the Patreon, I had no idea as to the upcoming resolution of the fight and why Roh could so confidently say what she said (good answer as it turns out).
Anyway, as a result that is an issue I’m going to have to leave to Scott as I’m even less help than usual with that one, I’m afraid …
The part I like the most out of the whole story to date is actually the part in the North by chemiclord actually as it happens …
Great to hear from you! We love to hear from everyone as much as possible and please considering commenting in future if there’s ever anything you want to bring to our attention, same for anyone else who either hasn’t commented for a while or never has to date.
Don’t want this to get lost in the shuffle of everything else going on but there’s also a new Dark Reflections page up here right now. We’re also going somewhere with all this too, I promise! Soon now, I hope.
Doug seems to be missing the point for the art and story change: different artist and different writer
This ain’t f!!!!!g ‘The Simpsons‘ where nothing has changed in thirty f!!!!!g years (Bart is still a loser 10 year old, Lisa still hasn’t become the drug-addicted washed out hippie we all know she is, and Maggie has still only ever said two or three word!)
Have been reading webics for the last 25 years (give or take), and one thing have learnt, is that successful webics, the ones that last more than two years, change and evolve, both in the art and story
Have even seen that happen with ‘gag-a-day’ webics: they eventually stop being gad’s and develop a coherent plot and storyline
The Simpsons are dope. May they never change.
And have you noticed how the art on that show changed over the years? Or were you not around when it debuted on “The Tracy Ullman Show”?
Thanks for making ME think about how I remember the days before The Simpsons existed…oi…
Back when The Flintstone’s was the epitome of Western (North American) cartoons 😛
I am always here and I like the criticism of my work, I accept suggestions to improve.
best
Bolder colours, less shadows and details. Let emotions come through as the primary vehicle for characterisation. Have Tiff blush more. Fit more story into each strip.
HTH
I write for very few panels per page, Antipus usually expands more than what I initially script, so that last note is for me. 🙂
Personally feel you fit as much story as is needed in each page: some pages have a lot, some pages do not
Also, zoom out a bit and lets see more of the character than just face and hands. Let’s see the person and surrounds. In bright, bold, colours. And in more dynamic action. Have you seen Schlock Mercenary? Not that, but definitely more that than this.
Howsabout just letting the writer and artist tell their story