About This Comic

Chirault is a high fantasy epic webcomic! It is complete, having run from 2007 to 2018, and is 1267 pages in total, so... if you're a new reader, welcome! Settle in for the ride and make sure you have some water to drink.

The story deals with themes of identity, found family, bigotry, the nature of "monsters", and self-discovery. There is some violence (at times bloody), although due to the greyscale style it is not graphically rendered; there is also occasional mild cursing. It is rated PG13 accordingly. .

Synopsis (non-spoiler version)

The world is not a peaceful place. A young half-demon named Teeko has been forced from her home, and to make matters worse, is now the size of a squirrel thanks to a wayward magic spell. Her only protection is the demon-hunter Kiran, who is a demon himself and lacks patience for children. Together, they must seek the help of a mage to reverse the spell on Teeko...

...But the Mage Guild has problems of their own; they've created an enchanted orb with the power to destroy cities and must find a way to control or dismantle it, before it's too late.

The Story So Far (in more detail!)

Teeko is shrunk to the size of a doll and is found by Kiran, a demon hunter who happens to be passing by. He agrees to help her by bringing her to a make who can reverse the spell; unfortunately, along the way they discover that not only has Teeko's home city been destroyed, but the entire mage guild is too preoccupied dealing with the cause to spare Teeko much attention. The guild's problems are only getting worse, too, as the magical artifact responsible for the destruction is stolen from under their noses.

In the course of their journey Kiran and Teeko find out who killed Teeko's parents, and meet up with others who help them in their journey: Bethan and Aaron, residents of a small village that was infested by a body-stealing demon and then destroyed; and Astrid, a mage sent to help who found himself afire with curiosity about Kiran's nature.

Kiran began to have difficulty controlling his powers; after being provoked by a rogue tree spirit, his travel into increasingly more magically unstable parts of the land began to wear at his control. He had never really known much about himself or his abilities, and was not eager to find out for fear of losing himself in his demonic side. But the tree spirits they encountered along the way appeared to know something about him, and a mysterious woman in communication with a shadowy figure far away appeared to as well.

Bethan lost her material form, becoming an intangible wraith, after an accident with Kiran's powers stripped away a part of her essence. This resulted in an incident in the mage guild headquarters in Aerquist where she fell through several floors; only Teeko, being tiny, was able to accompany her and help her regain control and stop the fall. This left them in a position to overhear a secret meeting between the leader of the mages' guild and one of the Council members, who had discovered some secrets that the leader did not want uncovered.

While they dealt with this, two mysterious individuals appeared in town to lure Kiran to the edge: Rupa and Trillia, acting under the orders of their master, Viraigo. Trillia provoked Kiran into losing control of his powers as they fought; their master arrived shortly thereafter in an attempt to take Kiran with him. Over the course of fighting to prevent this, a large explosion forced an end to the combat, thrusting the main party beyond reach. Aaron was killed by the debris.

The guild's problems begin to become everyone's problems, as it turns out that the man who has been ordering Rupa and Trillia around is the same one that may have been responsible for the theft of the dangerous artifact. And somehow, Kiran's origin may be wrapped up in it all as well.

(click for full-view)

Incidentally, if you are wondering why Kiran's outfit seems to have suddenly grown straps, or where Eryss gets her arrows, or why on one page some detail that was there before has suddenly vanished (only to reapper on the next page)... Chirault is not immune to what I like to call 'continuity errors'. I may at some point go back and fix them-- it is the kind of task that is not difficult per se, but is extremely repetitive and irritating, and so I have been putting it off.

Creator: I generally go by 'Thane', 'Varethane' or some combination of the two online; I am a Canadian artist and animator, currently working in Toronto. Anyway. I can be reached via email at varethane@gmail.com, or found on Deviantart, twitter, tumblr, and possibly other such online network sites with the username 'Varethane'. Any questions, comments or suggestions can be directed in any of these venues.

Other credits: Teeko is originally the creation of Cloneclone. In 2007 we started fooling around drawing our characters interacting with one another in paintchat. I enjoyed those interactions so much that when I decided to write a comic about scarf-boy, of course I got permission to have her in it as well. She's evolved independently quite a lot in order to fit into the comic and as the story continues!

The site's css and design was coded by Larking, owner of the site Dry Oasis; the CMS it's running right now (and the current incarnation of the site's more unified appearance) is courtesy of the SpiderForest Collective's RanJado, to whom I owe many many thanks.

And thanks to my beta readers/soundboards: Duskglass, SlyEagle, and Lennan!

Process: Because it seems like a lot of people are curious about this, here's how the comic is made (with pictures!):

First I sketch out the image in mechanical pencil (usually 0.7mm lead, though I've used 0.5 sometimes when they run out). The pencil seen here is my Funky Pencil, which was tragically lost a few months ago; now I generally use Bic, not that it's made much of a difference to my art. The notebook is one of many (about five or six) which contain story notes and tiny page thumbnails, accompanied by snippets of script and margin notes about things I'd forget if I didn't remind myself.

The black pen in this photograph is magic. No, seriously.

...Okay, for real serious now. I use it for all the lines in the comic (excepting the prologue and the panel borders); it's a Pentel Calligraphic brush pen, with replaceable ink cartridges. This is important because I go through about three ink cartridges a month, and if I couldn't replace the things I'd have to buy a new pen each time one ran out.

The other pen is used for the panel borders (because brushes don't work too well for making straight lines, even if you do have a ruler); the brand doesn't really matter because I use pretty much any pen whose tip is the right width (between .3 and .5mm). I also use it to ink the words in the speech bubbles, because after I've inked over the pencil lines I erase everything, and I don't want to forget what everyone was saying (and it's easier to erase quickly if I don't have to worry about not messing up the bubbles.)

And the last step before scanning! Markers. In this picture all of the markers are the same brand; that's because at the time this picture was taken, I was still just beginning to use more than one marker to shade the whole comic. Now I use anywhere between three and ten markers on a single page; usually they are either Tria Pantone or Promarker, since their colour systems are consistent. I work from dark to light; the thick lines make things easier here by widening the margin of error.

The script often goes through changes at this stage. Often I'll figure out a better way to word something, or realize that something was omitted that shouldn't have been (or vice versa). I usually think of these changes as I work on the art, which is why I don't have a single solid script for the entire comic; the tone of a panel or a scene can change depending on nuances in the art, so I don't want to commit myself in advance to some line of dialogue that may end up not working out quite as I'd meant it to in the final. This means that the story and characters are constantly evolving in some rather unpredictable ways, which makes the process of making it more interesting for me. (:

And, the final version of this page can be seen here.

-Thane