Creatures Of Ozeum

[creaturesofozeum]

Welcome to Ozeum!

Ozeum is a magical world populated by animal people, and these comics are their stories!

Each comic short is self-contained, so you don’t need to start from the beginning if you just wanna read a few comics. However, the same characters show up multiple times, and you might enjoy seeing their lives unfold over time if you do read in order. It’s up to you!

Comic update every Tuesday and sometimes on Thursday too!

The very first comic is here!

I post everything early (sometimes months earlier!) for my ko-fi members here!

My main blog is fruityfinch and I am also ‘fruityfinch’ on most other platforms I use!

Enjoy!

[creaturesofozeum]

Stay tuned for more comics - just probably not for a few weeks!!

[creaturesofozeum]

No. 38 - introducing Jolly!

Jolly is a black-tailed jackrabbit and a recently graduated artificier, which is a sort of engineer. She’s started work at an interesting time in Ozeum’s history… as magic continues to fade, all kinds of tools and infrastructure reliant on magic are beginning to fail. It’s hard to know how to even begin approaching that many problems at that kind of scale.

(I started this comic and the first two pages just sat unfinished for quite some time - when I picked it back up I went overboard with the preliminary sketching, and decided to just clean up the sketches and use those instead!)

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‘Creatures of Ozeum’ is a comic series consisting of many self-contained short comics - feel free to start anywhere!

[creaturesofozeum]

No. 37 - Lore of Ozeum (meat-eating part 2)

(Previous)

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‘Creatures of Ozeum’ is a comic series consisting of many self-contained short comics - feel free to start anywhere!

[creaturesofozeum]

No. 36 - Lore of Ozeum: Meat-eating

I understand why a lot of media with animal people has food chain-related tension between predator and prey species, buuuut in Ozeum it isn’t a huge issue. Agriculture and magic/technology take care of food concerns, so it’s not a major cultural problem they have to deal with.

Which is not to say that it NEVER happens, of course…

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‘Creatures of Ozeum’ is a comic series consisting of many self-contained short comics - feel free to start anywhere!

[creaturesofozeum]

No. 35 - Lore of Ozeum (parentage and breeding continued)

(Previous comic)

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‘Creatures of Ozeum’ is a comic series consisting of many self-contained short comics - feel free to start anywhere!

[creaturesofozeum]

No. 34 - Lore of Ozeum (parentage and breeding)

If you have questions or want to know more about a specific detail, on this topic or any other topic/character of Ozeum, drop an ask or a reply - the storyteller would love to elaborate! 💬

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‘Creatures of Ozeum’ is a comic series consisting of many self-contained short comics - feel free to start anywhere!

[mosswall]

No offense but I think some of you would be a lot happier writing a fictional atlas or encyclopedia instead of a narrative story

[ramshacklefey]

Concur! Go forth and write your Dragonology and your Guidebook to Fairyland! Write a traveler's diary of a setting! These are fun and legitimate things to do!

[lizardywizard]

I love books that are literally just this!

[pyrrhiccomedy]

also consider that if you love worldbuilding but are mid on coming up with an actual, like, story, you might not need to be writing a book. you might need to be DMing a tabletop game.

[enoua5]

The tt-rpg approach is what I ended up doing and it was great! Especially when other people can help flesh out parts of the lore I hadn't thought much about!

I've also been mulling over the idea of creating in-universe highschool textbooks on various subjects, lol

I've also been feeling inspired by @creaturesofozeum's approach of largely disconnected slice-of-life stories set in the world, which made me realize that's pretty much exactly how I want to present my worldbuilding

[creaturesofozeum]

I am so delighted if my comics have inspired you!!

I was, myself, inspired by comics like Azumanga Daioh! and SuperMutant Magic Academy. Almost every comic works as a standalone strip, but they develop the characters and tell a story over time that you can get a sense of with a longer view.

The idea of just straight-up producing a graphic novel is. intimidating. Short, not-fully-sequential stories work better for me. Maybe alternative forms of storytelling and exploration can work better for YOU (anyone reading this)???

[creaturesofozeum]

No. 33 - Koz & Tallulah

Tallulah keeping up the time honoured tradition of PE teachers and sports coaches wearing big coats while kids run around in t-shirts!

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‘Creatures of Ozeum’ is a comic series consisting of many self-contained short comics - feel free to start anywhere!

[creaturesofozeum]

No. 32 - Lore of Ozeum (Asejjan and Heassan continued)

Relevant previous comic

In response to a comment from @veryhumanperson (thank you for commenting!)

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‘Creatures of Ozeum’ is a comic series consisting of many self-contained short comics - feel free to start anywhere!

[creaturesofozeum]

No. 31 - Lore of Ozeum (Asejjan and Heassan)

Are there any bits of lore / world-building you’d like to know more about? The Storyteller loves to talk so will happily answer your enquiries if you have them!

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‘Creatures of Ozeum’ is a comic series consisting of many self-contained short comics - feel free to start anywhere!

[creaturesofozeum]

My wrist is still unreliable atm, but I do still have comics in progress! I’m looking forward to introducing you all to this fellow and his torments.

[fruityfinch]

“How does he get those rings off his staff when he wants to use them…?” By magic, of course!!! ✨

Zorses are real things (offspring of a zebra stallion and a horse mare) and they’re pretty cool-looking, especially since their fur patterns and colours can REALLY vary between individuals. You don’t know exactly what you’re gonna get with a zorse!!

[fruityfinch]

I strongly suspect I’ve developed carpal tunnel and am waiting to see a physio in September, so I’ve had to slow down on comics considerably. I’m also trying to get comfortable with not spending quite so much time on individual pages!

But hopefully I will be able to resume progress and even finish the project by our local year of 4047, which as we all know will be the year of the horse-bean longhorn beetle.

[creaturesofozeum]

You can trust them. Can’t you?

Don’t you think you can trust them?

Do you trust them?

[creaturesofozeum]

No. 30 - Calico & Nat

I cash up for my job sometimes and you Gotta wash your hands after handling money for any extended amount of time. Sometimes the water runs grey when you do. It’s real nasty 🤢

In Ozeum the currency is called Grats, but there’s also still commonplace bartering or exchanging of favours! “Grat” comes from the word ‘gratitude,’ since cash money is still closely related to the idea that you’re exchanging knowledge or skills with people when you buy stuff… just indirectly.

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‘Creatures of Ozeum’ is a comic series consisting of many self-contained short comics - feel free to start anywhere!

[creaturesofozeum]

No. 29 - introducing Kanko!

I’m fond of Kanko and pleased to finally introduce her… She’s a black kite, which is a bird that’s been known to spread wildfires to flush out prey, so it made sense as a species pick for a pyromancer!

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‘Creatures of Ozeum’ is a comic series consisting of many self-contained short comics - feel free to start anywhere!