General

The War of Winds is an epic fantasy/sci-fi story that spans in total, about 3000 years. The current story featured by this site details the end of the war between the Four Winds, hence the title.

This work is available both as an online graphic novel (webcomic) but its original form is a written novel. The first book of a planned series is complete at 24 chapters, while the comic is barely into chapter eight. I am also planning several prequels to this story, as well as several sidestories.

Comics are uploaded on Mondays, usually with something extra on Thursday, for more information, read the Site Features section.

Update notices for The War of Winds may be found at the following places: Online Comics, TWCL, Piperka, and also the new RSS feed.

Kez's DeviantART gallery

Mirror Site for the comic.

The Story

The Four Winds are not a legend as the people have come to believe. Created by the gods for the sole purpose of protecting the land and people, even the peace they brought to the First Days could not last. After all, peace is only that small interlude between wars, and there has always been war. Just ask the gods.

The adventure begins in the midst of the battle that exiles the Wolf, the North Wind-the only one of the Four whose power and strength rivals that of his brother, the East. With the Wolf gone, the Dragon, the East Wind, is free to put his own plan in motion, and bring upon the second rising of his Empire that the North had crushed a millennium ago.

The few who survive the battle are doomed to be drawn back into the fighting, even if the world has forgotten how it all began. Tired of dodging demons, bounty hunters and assassins sent by the East, they have no choice but to fight back, but quickly find out neither humans, nor the more powerful race of melded man and beast called the Ayenroki, have a chance of surviving with their own power. The only way is to find the fourth Guardian, the North Wind, and once again even the playing field. Even stalemate is better than defeat.

Features

There are currently 3-4 features updating on this site. The schedules are as follows:

The War of Winds: Monday

Cast Q/A: Thursday

Not Alone: Thursday (alternates monthly with Cast Q/A)

The Written Story: (No longer public except for excerpts)

Winged Wolf Studio Blog: Updates 3-5 days a week, with webcomic how-to's weekdays, and extras on the weekends.

The War of Winds:

The War of Winds was first seen online on April 26, 2004. The first pages were horrible. Truly horrible. Seriously. Many have since been redone, and will continue to be redone as I get to them. This story has currently has just entered its fourth year online with more than 250 pages.

The comic is updated in full-color RGB mode in high-quality jpeg format. While loading time may be slower, I refuse to sacrifice quality for the sake of speed (though I do apologize to you dial-up users). This comic is and never was meant for print. Pages are not kept to any specific size and style changes frequently. I have a webcomic, not a print comic. I like to take advantage of that fact.

Each comic page generally takes 12-20 hours to complete, with 2-4 hours spent sketching, 4 hour inking, and 4-6 hours coloring. There is a short and poorly-fashioned tutorial on how I once colored n' stuff, once upon a time, here. As of March '08, I bought a graphics tablet (6x11 Wacom Intuos) and am working on the transition to a truly digital creation. A new tutorial based on a recent wallpaper can be found here.

There is also a comic guide that summarizes each chapter in a pseudo-comic form, available here. Information about the world in which this comic takes place can be found here.

Cast Q/A

This feature was first introduced in 2006. I forget when exactly, but it was a successful attempt to foster audience involvement. One question is answered per week as a mini-comic, usually in a comical manner, though some have been rather serious. There are currently over 30 Cast Q/A comics available in the Q/A archive.

Not Alone

Not Alone is a side-comic that started August 2008 and was completed in June 2009.

The story follows a young girl named "Relan," as she comes to grips with visions of faraway places and the" monsters" that live there. You can find Not Alone here. The story is also available as a book to buy in the store.

The Novel

It has always been my goal and dream to one day see The War of Winds published as a novel—never as a graphic novel. I originally started the comic as part of a project to teach myself to write better, because if I could visualize it, if I could see how the characters interacted, I hoped it would help me. I think it has. Unfortunately, it has also made my rather odd sense of humor even worse...And delayed me finishing the novel, because making webcomics is very addicting. Seriously.

Currently, The War of Winds is going through a serious editing process. It is a complete work at 24 chapters and 500-something pages, but with multiple locations and characters, there are 66 chapter installments, with multiple parts per chapter. The Novel now has its own site right here. It's currently updatined M-F with one page a day, but this site will NOT get further ahead than the comic story. I think. Pretty sure.

Winged Wolf Studio

I started this feature because I was tired of repeating myself on forums, and I wanted a place to pool my 5 years of webcomic experience. Mainly, WWS updates with webcomic website how-to's, for example, which webpages to have, why to have them, and what to put on them. I also go into detail about advertising, publishing ads, and making ads. The blog isn't much about what stories to write or how to draw so much as a much-needed technical perspective on things not oft discussed on webcomic forums (or simply brought up over and OVER again). WWS also is a place where I post novel excerpts, script revisions, and previews of up-coming comic pages, usually on the weekends.

Who is KEZ?

Ahh, the elusive, mysterious KEZ. Firstly, I know you're asking—initials? No. I sign work in all caps. Normally, it's regular 'ol Kez, which is a nickname I chose for myself. As for the obligatory information-- I am female and looking for a job. I SHOULD be attending Roswell Park in Buffalo in fall '09, and I graduated with a biological sciences degree in May '08 from SUNY Brockport. I have a BS in BS. How ironic.

I am an avid martial arts practioner, and study 2-3 styles depending on how much time I have. I'm a big fan of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, and seriously wish RDA hadn't skipped out of SG-1, but I'm an understanding person and won't kill anything over it. Though now that SG-1 AND Atlantis have ended, I may go crazy...I'm already insane, but I may go crazy. Sci-fi doesn't have anything else worth watching.

Prince of Persia 2 is my most favorite game because it has the best fighting EVER, and...lemme see. What else? I also ramble a lot about things important only to myself, such as how great my dog is. His greatness beats your dog up anyday.

Thesis? For real?

The Art of Webcomics was my senior honors (creative) thesis for my undergraduate degree. The thesis validated comics and webcomics as a significant form of art, and used my own webcomic as a technical, experiential example. I strenuously believe there are not nearly enough webcomics out there that take full advantage of the digital format and rather, conform to print requirements. The digital medium is just that--a medium. This comic was never meant to appear printed on paper. I do not conform to proper dimensions, resolution, or colors. I take advantage of "infinite" canvas and negative space--I absolutely REFUSE to squish hard-won panels onto small pages, to cut out backgrounds,or to script to a pre-determined amount of pages.

The digital format is incredibly freeing. My pages can take any shape, and size. With advances in internet connection speeds, I can post larger file sizes. With advances in art software, there is so much available to explore--especially interactive features and animations. What is possible and how it's done, or how I go about doing it--that's my thesis. And as a biology/pre-med major, I'm stoked about it. Of course, this means instead of studying metastasis or biochemistry, I am often found fiddling around with CSS and Photoshop.

So, please think of this site as a gallery for my work--not as a one-stop shop for a 10-second viewing pleasure on update days. I'm going to come right out and say it: this site is about me, my work, my time, my likes. I hope that those of you reading this who do make a webcomic understand, and those who don't, that you try and think about the time and dedication that goes into a project like this. Those of you who complain about late updates, artist's rants, begging for donations, those who never ever leave any message about visiting for encouragement, I urge you to think about and appreciate the many webcomic artists out there who entertain you. Because this is real, hard, work, and most of us never see any money out of it--let alone any encouragement from those who visit. Please remember that PEOPLE, not invisible robots, make webcomics. Now go thither and multiply.

Anyone interested in reading the thesis should go here.

Commissions:

Please visit my new studio site, here, for quotes and information.

Contact

Email KEZ at warofwinds(at symbol)gmail.com or contact via AIM "kezhound;" via MSN "kezkay(at symbol)hotmail.com;" via forum, "KEZ." I also have a Twitter and DA account.

You can email me to request a tutorial, if you have questions about the story, commissions, webcomics or websites, or DEFINITELY if you want to send fan mail or fan art. Those latter two especially make my day. I don't really like talking on AIM at all, or any instant messenger for that matter, but I do love Twitter since it allows me to respond at my own convenience. If you absolutely must talk with me over IM, I'll try my best to get on there. (But I really don't like it D:)

Hate mail is now accepted and flaunted. Only really awesome people get hate mail, since it requires serious effort. I will post hate mail on the site publicly so that other people may share in my totally wonderful popularity. In you couldn't tell, that all was said tongue-in-cheek.

Link exchanges are A-OK with me, but I will not link X-rated sites.

Umm...I think that's it!