Vanessa Wells is the writer and artist of modern fantasy comic Shrouded. Vanessa's roots in drawing in an Eastern Manga style can be seen throughout the pages of Shrouded, it adds a nice touch to the more Western style that can be seen that the art in the comic follows. Vanessa has been drawing for a long time having spent 7 years as a professional games artist, and as mentioned previously has published work in various small press Mangas.

Vanessa's first venture into the world of small press was for the Fanzine 'CyberAge', based on the futuristic Cyberpunk Anime series 'Cyber City Oedo 808'. Moving on from there Vanessa also drew strips for 'Burnt Soup', another Manga offering. More recently, Vanessa's artwork can be seen in the 'Blue is for Boys' anthology, providing the art for short story 'Transmutation'. Shrouded represents a more creative approach from Vanessa, previously being the artist to others writing Shrouded really lets her explore the realms of her creativity, and so far it seems to be working! The idea was thought up in 2004, and as of now two full issues have been released, with a third planned for March 2008.

Vanessa has a few more smaller projects in the pipeline ready to be released under her own publishing name Studio Withbits. They will be in a very different tone from Shrouded, shorter fun self-contained comics. I like what I've seen from Vanessa so far, if you enjoy a hint of Manga style in your comics like I do, then I'd definitely suggest giving Vanessa's material a go.