About this Comic
Some common questions I'm asked. This section was last updated on January 13th, 2007.
Q: How in the hell do you pronounce "Velharthis"?
A: I pronounce the word phonetically, like so: "VEL-HAR-THIS". The "T" is combined with the "H" to make a soft sound, as you would with words that begin with "TH".
Q: How old is (insert character name here)?
A: Character ages can be found in the "Story" section of the site.
Q: What does "Velharthis" mean?
A: The word "Velharthis" is the name of a mythical sword known to the people of Tyr. It may or may not also have other meanings...
Q: Why don't you do your comic in colour?
A: I'd love to, but doing my comic is black and white is more economic. Since I don't charge people to read this comic, it doesn't bring in money for me, and as much as I'd love to work for free, I have certain life obligations that require me to work for a monetary income. Therefore, I have other responsibilities in my life that do not leave me with as much time to draw as one might like.
So yeah, no time!
Q: Boy, Peter sure is emo...
A: He sure is!
Q: Some things in this comic really remind me of Legend of Zelda...
A: Legend of Zelda is my favourite video game and its stories have drawn constantly upon classical heroic narrative. Some aspects I have respectfully adapted to my own work, and some are merely circumstantial based upon the fact that so many stories of myths and legends operate in the same manner. I draw inspiration from a number of sources, like any good, honest storyteller, and hope never to willingly or unwillingly steal ideas that legitimately belong to others.
Q: What influenced Velharthis?
A: Velharthis is a collection of junk I've seen and read and heard over my short lifetime so far. I admit I am not as well-read and cultured as I would like to be, but I know of some things. As a child I enjoyed watching 80's fantasy cartoons, and I guess I still do. I have also become interested in recent years with old myths and stories from around the world and how, as humans, are drawn to certain kinds of stories, particularly the simplicity of the heroic tale.
Initially, though, Velharthis began life as a story I wrote for a dear friend from high school. It was originally titled, "The Enchanted Alcohol Dispensing Fountain" and was even more bizarre and poorly written than this comic. I filled it with strange, almost-slap-stick humour, but some of the staples were there: Peter as a poor idiot, Jenise as impatient and stubborn, etc.
I kept writing the story, partly for fun, partly out of that childish, teenage sense of self-importance. I quit when I began to take the story to seriously and decided it was time to stop, only to rework it several years later into this only because I had come to know Peter and Jenise in my head so well.
Q: How do you name your characters?
A: Okay, no one has asked me this yet. I just really wanted to share these origins.
Jenise was originally supposed to be a satirical character based on some close friends. It is actually an amalgamation of the names "Jenny" and "Denise". I later discovered it was a name that had already been in use by real people for many years.
Peter I chose because it sounds great when yelled or screamed by women. Many times I have heard Jenise in my head, screaming at Peter for some dumb thing or another. Also, it was one of the few names that, at the time, I had not known anyone personally to have.
The names of the other characters are of more recent invention and their name origins are quite dull in comparion, since Peter and Jenise so far are the only characters I have retained from my oldest stories.
About this Site
This section was last updated on January 13th, 2007.
This would be version 2.0 of Velharthis as a site. I started it in January 2004 in a futile attempt at art organization. I made the latest version with the help of Dreamweaver 6.0 (thanks Khuffie), Dan, and The Missing Link. Outside of the credits here and below, I code the site myself.
I advertise on this site, but try to keep all advertising to an appropriate minimal so as not to upset the viewing pleasure of my readers. All attempts have been made to keep the commercial aspects of this site as unobtrusive as possible, as I personally dislike extreme forms of capitalism.
The current layout was created in September 2006. I call it "chunky fall".
Credits for Stuff Used to Create the Site/Comics
Screentones for the comic come from: 
Screentone Depot, Digital Tones, and Digitone.
I also do a lot of toning myself using Photoshop.
Fonts for the comic come from Blambot Comic Fonts and Lettering.
The script used for the comic viewer is called Lightbox. You can find it here.
About Me
This section was last updated on January 13th, 2007.
Name: Louisa
Age: Haha!
Nicknames: weegie, L, Foo Goo Mi, Some Girl, Puppyface
D.O.B: February 10
Residence: Toronto, Canada
Pets: Two cats (crazy cat lady!)
Art
Formal Training: 5 years of high school art courses + Honours Bachelor of Arts in History and Art History from the University of Toronto
Photoshop: Taught by a friend; semi-consistant usage since 2002.
Painter: Sometimes I use it, but I need a faster computer to run it optimally.
Art Specialties - Mediums: Pencil, watercolour, pen.
Art Familiarities - Mediums: Printmaking, acrylics, oil, sculpture.
Art Specialties - Subjects: People and characters of all sorts.
Art Familiarities - Subjects: Some animals, buildings, and landscape.
I'm Currently...
Working full-time as an instructor for adults teaching English, math, and computers.
I am also very annoying.
Contact
Email - louisa@velharthis.com
ICQ - 68537241
MSN Messenger - pika_pi_12@hotmail.com
Linking to this Site
Use the link buttons on my links page. The URL here is www (dot) velharthis (dot) com.
Please do not hot-link to any image on this site! Hot-linking involves coding an image to display directly on a site on another host without their permission. Sort of like if I coded the Google logo image directly from the Google site to appear here right
