"It happened that, as I was watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one of them was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream. The main current ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate swimmer. It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these creatures, when I tell you that none made the slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing which was drowning before their eyes. When I realised this, I hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at a point lower down, I caught the poor mite and drew her safe to land."
Chapter VIII "Explanation", The Time Machine
Well, like with the Conan piece, this was also another digital illustration I did for Illustration class this year. And honestly, I've learned a lot about inking, lighting and model references in that class.
This artwork, I feel very proud and accomplished with because of all the hours I put into this.
If you're wondering what I've been doing in April and May, this is why. This artwork I did for a Digital Illustration Class assignment.
The subject is Conan the Barbarian and the pirate lady Valeria looking at the ruined lost city known as Xuchotl, which is illuminated by the light of the moon.
Valeria's pose was based on a pose from @adorkastock complete with the swords.
Conan was based on a low-poly model lended to me by the teacher (as we had no big muscular figure for reference).
And I used Cinema 4D to figure out where the lighting of the moon would hit these characters and what kind of shades would emerge from said lighting. The overall artwork is ultimately done in Procreate.
Well, CinemaCon showed Disney's Hexed and unfortunately changed the protagonist from a boy and his mother to a girl and her mother. It's rather a pity since we rarely get mother and son movies (The last one I remember was Elio, but that was a boy and his aunt rather than a mother for some reason).
With that said, the protagonist's smirky pose and magic seems to be a remnant of the original idea. Very tomboyish to say the least.
And thus, I couldn't resist but use the pose to draw my take on Tippetarius (Tip).
Well, it's the start of March and that means spring is around the corner. In the meantime, I decided to advance the next stage of whole Barbara Ivy AU side project. Whereas the past artworks were simply redrawing Barbara in screenshots as a plant person, this one is not based on any screenshots and instead have Barbara and Pamela Isley in new and original (or at least based on a pose I found on the Internet) poses.
It also gives me the chance to show the full body of Barbara Gordon for future references. Namely that her plant clothes are almost a symmetrical mirror to Poison Ivy, and while her plant straps are in the same limbs as Ivy, they're positioned differently to reflect Babs' wristband and Stephanie Brown's leg belt. Two peas in a pod.Now I still don't know what codename Barbara would take in this AU scenario. But I do know is that she will have to fight Poison Ivy at the beginning due to being more moral and sane. But in the end, the two would reconcile and rekindle their strained friendship (possibly blossoming into a romance). Whether it be Pam reforming or Babs turning to the dark side, I'm not entirely sure. They just look well together.
And I do hope one day there will be a completed fanfiction of this scenario one day. I am not a fanfiction writer mainly because I hate writing dialogue.
General Jinjur. A Munchkin woman who witnessed the Wizard's departure and Scarecrow's ascension to the throne, Jinjur feels that Emerald City has become weak and frail due to the Scarecrow's honest truths (such as Emerald City never really being made of emeralds) and lack of intimidation (since Scarecrow doesn't possess any magic on his own). Jinjur decides to take matters into her own hands and form a woman army known as the Army of Revolt to overthrow the Scarecrow and put women (namely Jinjur herself) in charge of Emerald City and Oz. Of course, this puts her in conflict with Tip, especially after Jinjur recruits Mombi into her ranks.
Jinjur is both easy to conceptualize and difficult to design. Naturally, it was easy to figure out what kind of uniform she would wear (a military outfit) and what kind of characteristics I want her to have. She has to have this young and uptight soccer mom feel to her. Someone who looks on the surface to be inspiring and reasonable but, when you truly get to know her, is actually tyrannical and arrogant to a fault. I used the Sour Kangaroo from Horton Hears a Who as my main inspiration.
The hardest part was the colors. Jinjur is from Munchkinland, which primarily uses blue. However, the Army of Revolt is composed of many women from all sides of Oz, and the revolutionary colors that stereotypically signify tyranny taking helm is red.
So I experimented on many color patterns (and use greyscale) to find the right combination of colors that A) Highlights Jinjur coming from Munchkinland, B) Showcase her Army of Revolt's diversity, and C) use enough red to visually clue in viewers that she is revolutionary, not a typical army soldier.
I also made the Army of Revolt logo to be a pair of scissors positioned in a manner where you can see an abstract A and R. After all, if I recall correctly, they used sewing tools (including scissors) to fight against the men in the books.
As 2025 comes to a close, I decided to make a collage of all the Dorzma artworks I've made for this year. I haven't hit all the months to make artworks, but I have made enough to warrant this showcase.
Glinda of Oz, based on L. Frank Baum's final Oz book cover of the same name. Featuring Princess Ozma, Princess Dorothy, and Glinda the Good Witch of the South. All in my designs on the characters (except Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, I didn't have time to add them).
UPDATE: Managed to get enough time to add Scarecrow and Tin Woodman. Plus fixing a few issues and adding colorful planets.
I mainly did this because I realized that I haven't done more with Glinda outside of the initial character design. I wanted to change that AND showcase just how tall she really is compared to everyone else.
You can thank Wicked For Good for prompting me to do this rather continue with Nomes for NomeVember. I needed a reminder of who Glinda really is from the books with everyone else talking about Ariana Grande's Galinda "Glinda" Upland from the Wicked films. She's really the polar opposite of what people usually think of Glinda thanks to the MGM adaptation.
The recently appointed General of the Nome Army: Guph. And the only reason he got the job is because that his hatred for the good and happy people outweighs any rational thought (which got his predecessors, well... discharged from service permanently). Through his hate, he was able to come up with a plan so bold and insane that even the Nome King doubted it would work.
An alliance with other wicked tribes neighboring their kingdom to form one huge army to overwhelm the forces of Oz. Yes, it is without a doubt that they could conquer the Land of Oz. But the tribes of Whimsies, Growleywogs, and Phanfasms hate each other as much as they hate Oz. And all were planning to backstab each other for dominance after conquering Oz. Guph is aware of this inherent treachery and plans to backstab them all by stealing the Magic Belt and then banishing them away to their home countries again so that only Nomes shall conquer Oz.
Out of all the Nome Generals featured in The Emerald City of Oz, Guph stood out as among the rest due to having a substantial role that wasn't "Your Majesty, this invasion is impossible" and then being executed by the Nome King. For one thing, he has a personality that is distinct from Roquat and Kaliko. Whereas the Roqaut embodies greed and Kaliko embodies servileness, Guph embodies hate.
Hate is all too real in our world. Hate drives normal people to do horrible things, often in the name of righteousness. Hate is completely irrational. It demands that everyone sacrifice everything, including lives, for a gamble that may not even pay off. It makes dangerous alliances with factions that you don't understand. And it will not end with just the specific target. It will seek new targets to fill in the void. I knew exactly what I wanted when drawing Guph here. It can be seen in his military uniform.
Guph was designed with Danny DeVito's Lorax in mind, namely being short and having a giant mustache and eyebrows (as well as the voice). He also has a lot in common with Yosemite Sam too, having a very short-tempered and is trigger-happy. I even gave Guph red eyes just to emphasize how rage-filled he is.
Now, according to the book, Guph is described to be a very old Nome with long whiskers that needed to be tied around his waist just so he can walk without tripping.
That was a pain to do since I have no real reference as to what it could look like and be animatable. Guph's design in Marvel's Oz series at least trimmed his whiskers to just touch the floor with no need to tie them down. But I wanted the whiskers to have that same feel as the book's description... and I managed to get that by having the mustache wrap around his legs.
For the color of his skin, I went with a bleached out rock and muddled with the tone give a sort of pale look to him. I really wanted him to look old. Additionally, I had hands be fur colored to really emphasize that this Nome is extremely old even by Nome standards.
Overall, I do like how he came out. Truly an angry old Nome that stares into your soul for this Nome-vember. I'm not sure if I can do more Nomes right now. Three is a good number. But if I have time, I'll try to tackle the other Nome Generals.
Kaliko: "Your majesty! What are we planning to do tonight?"
Roquat: "Same thing we do every night, Steward. Try to take over Oz!"
I couldn't resist. Kaliko is the Chief Steward for the Nome King. He theoretically acts like a grand vizier or advisor to the king. But in practice, he's just a glorified butler following orders, recording meetings, and cleaning up his majesty's mess. Occasionally, he does serve as a contrarian to the Nome King, but only because Nome King knows that Kaliko is a suck up at heart and can be easily cowed into submission. This is why he hasn't ordered his Chief Steward's execution despite executing other subjects for far less.
Still, Kaliko is a competent and reasonable Nome. Which is why he takes command of the Nome Kingdom whenever his majesty goes absence for a period of time.
If Ron Clements is the inspiration for my Nome King, then it's logical to have John Musker be his Chief Steward. A fairly simple process since his caricature drawings of himself feature him with a long, pointed nose, a mustache, and glasses. That was the easy part. The hard part was designing the rest of the body and his outfit.
The book illustrations show Kaliko has being tall, lanky character with a rather butler-esque outfit. That would be simple enough if it weren't for the fact that the Nomes in general are described to be fairly round and short. So I gave Kaliko a pot-belly. As for his outfit, trying to draw a fancy jacket was a pain, so I made an outfit that was similar to the Nome King's and reduced the butler aesthetic to just his pants and a vest with a high collar and tailcoats. I also gave him a golden chain since that was described in the books too.
The colors, I gave him a red shirt since he is part of the Nome King's inner circle, but I didn't want him to overshadow his king. I gave the Steward more grayish and muted colors around the red. And speaking of gray, the Nomes are described have skin colors of rocks and look like they were chipped away from the mountains. Thus, all Nomes have gray-ish and muted hair colors to look like they've been carved from stone.
Yeah, the Nomes do center their lives around rock carving. You can see Kaliko holding a stone cutter tool just to write down the words of the Nome King on that tablet.
Next up on Nome-vember is General Guph, a Nome who hates everything.
It's November, and Wicked: For Good is out. Hmmm, I'm in an Oz mood right now, and you could easily call this month NOME-vember. Which, in that case, I'm gonna draw my own takes on the Nomes. Starting with their King, Roquat the Red.
Now, the Nome King is described to look like Santa Claus, even having a jolly and reasonable persona when Dorothy first met him. But that persona is merely an act, and we see that in spite of the Nome King's rationale and justifications, he's ultimately a selfish man-child of a king, claiming everything underground is his property and abusing his subjects when things don't go his way. Truly among the most loathsome kinds of rulers, and one with terrible tastes.
So imagine a Santa Claus who is rude, slobbish, and wears a tacky, red Elvis-stylized jumpsuit with a crown instead of anything truly noble. That is the Nome King in an eggshell nutshell. He also wears the Magic Belt around his waist, adorned with more jewels on the sides even though he only needs the big red ruby for his magical powers. Good thing the belt can accommodate anyone's size.
I have done the Nome King before, for a class project about sculpting and modeling in 2019. And back then, I was amateurish and was more concerned about making a sturdy, chubby model figure than focusing on the minor details. As such, the figure was low on details but clear on body proportions.
Of course, he was more top heavy with gorilla-sized arms and tiny legs. And he has a more Seuss-esque head. The intent I had was that the Nomes were more Who-ish in nature compared to the other Ozians, and thus they have four-digit, furry hands and a more cat-like faces. I even based the face off of Hervnick Z. Snerz from Netflix's Green Eggs and Ham (2019) to reflect the greedy and child-like nature of the Nome King.
However, the face wasn't working when I tried to draw this model in 2D. I realize it's because I wanted his face fully exposed with only a chin-beard. The Nome King in the books was described to look like Santa Claus, who also had a mustache attached to the beard.
It wasn't until I went to the LightBox Expo and attended a panel featuring Ron Clements and John Musker (directors of many Disney classic movies) that I found the perfect face for the Nome King: Ron Clements himself.
It's largely due to seeing Musker's caricatures of themselves that the gears started turning. That squat, round head with beady eyes and a massive beard lends itself well for the Sultan in one drawing. And to be fair, I did follow their advice on who to base the villain's design on if you're having trouble brainstorming.
Once I got the head down, I redesigned the body shape to better reflect the Nome King's physique. He's now bottom heavy instead of top heavy, gets a new Elvis-inspired collar, has a more detailed beard, and his eyes are completely sunken to give the impression of craziness (and glasses in reference to Clements). He even gets a tacky crown (which was ironically the last thing I made for this character design). All to emphasize him as a Santa gone bad, representing the worst aspects of greed and gluttony.
For the Magic Belt, I didn't want to fully retcon the design since I love how it looks on Dorothy already (for the most part). But on the Nome King, it looks bland and boring with only one gem. This is the Nome King, a greedy and haughty ruler who loves to flaunt his wealth and possessions to everyone. So I gave the Nome King additional gems to his belt but added chain segments to justify why Dorothy only seems to have one gem when she wore the Magic Belt. She had to get rid of the additional gem extensions in order to wear the actual belt.
As for the throne... yeah, I know the Nome King has a throne of gold rather than a throne of stone, but I like to think the Nome King has several thrones, and this stone throne is just his temporary envoy chair.
The base pose I used for the Nome King is Ganondorf from Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, only mirrored. I loved how the Gerudo King's slouch reflects so much pride and sloth in that one image. Perfect for an arrogant king like Roquat. All he's missing is a chamberlain steward doing whatever he wants.
Speaking of which, Kaliko is up next for this Nomevember.
Or rather, the head of a Gump mounted on trophy wall. The Gump is described in L Frank Baum's Marvelous Land of Oz as being elk-like, complete with antlers and a long beard. Return to Oz made the Gump look more like a moose than an elk, but I find that a moose feels more appropriate for the Gump's personality.
So you get a hybridized animal that both a moose and an elk, with green fur and black antlers. Maybe I should make the beard longer though... what do you think?
The noble steed of Princess Ozma. A logging sawhorse brought to life by Tip (Ozma's alter-ego) with lifepowder, he takes the term horse to the literal conclusion. Outfitted with ear stakes, a tail stick, horseshoes made of gold, and a saddle, this Sawhorse is a tireless working engine that puts other horses to shame despite being so small and made of wood.
This character design proved to be the most tricky so far. Mainly because, unlike other interpretations of the Sawhorse such as Logan from Yellow Brick Ramble, this Sawhorse is a literal log on two pairs of sticks. Thus, he has no visible joints to make it easy to draw, let alone animate. Has to follow the rules of rubberhose animation. I have to admit, I'm not sure how much of the original sawhorse can you see, but I'm going to assume the magic of lifepowder made a few adjustments to the body proportions.
October has come, and that means pumpkins for Halloween. Speaking of pumpkins, here's my take of Jack Pumpkinhead. Built from a log, four long branches, and one head carved into a pumpkin, Jack Pumpkinhead was built by Tip to play a prank on Mombi... and maybe have someone to talk other than his abusive surrogate mother. Sure he doesn't talk back, but least it's better than verbal abuse all the time.
That is until Mombi decides to give life to this figure at this window. Now Jack can move and talk like any other person. Of course, having a head of a pumpkin doesn't make him bright. He has a dopey personality with the intelligence of a 4 year old child. In fact, he considers himself to be Tip's son since he built him. And due to that, Jack Pumpkinhead is utterly loyal to Tip (and later Ozma and Dorothy).
I wanted Jack Pumpkinhead to not be a repeat of the Scarecrow design. Thus the approach was inverted. Rather than someone who looks like a professional Munchkin villager, Jack is a farmhand who wears Tip's worn out clothes. Since he's too tall to actually fit in these clothes, Tip had to stitch extension cloths, best seen in the pants and vest.
The pumpkinhead was initially round, but I decided that it should be more pear-shaped to emphasize his dopey personality. More chatting than thinking for this character. Also, his boots are brightly colored green so that he can stand out with gray scaling.
Meet Billina, the yellow hen who accompanies Dorothy Gale in her second visit to Oz (well technically, it was the Land of Ev, then Oz). In the magical world, the ordinary hen is given the ability to talk, and she proves to be a sassy and spunky bird.
Of course, she was originally known as Bill, because the owner who named her didn't bother to check if the chick was male or female. Dorothy was surprised by this and insisted that Bill gets a feminine name, Billina, because Bill is not right for her. Now that can be problematic today even though Billina is accepted by the hen. I suppose we could call her Bill, but Billina is more of a unique name.
I supposed the remedy for this is to have the yellow hen feel hurt by her owners expecting her to be a rooster and then sold her off to Australia for being a hen, and not even bothering renaming her. She only goes by Bill because that's all she knows. And Dorothy politely asks if she wants a new name, and Bill accepts under the condition that the new name means her. And thus Dorothy chose Billina because it sounds enough like Bill while being distinct.
For the design, I'll make it brief. I used Hei Hei from Moana as the basis. A goofy chicken with bulging eyes makes for a fun fowl. She may look ditzy but she's smarter than she looks. She's also much stockier than Hei Hei, since she does pick a fight with the other chickens. Personally, I think she would be easier to animate than Toto.
Oh, and don't tell the Nome King about Billina. He hates chickens...
Updated Model Sheets for Tip/Ozma and Dorothy Gale. Complete with Grayscale.
If you may notice, Dorothy Gale on the left has been slightly shrunken has braids instead of a short bob hair. It's how she looked when she first arrived to Oz. Closer to the Judy Garland version, with darker blonde hair and some freckles. The Dorothy Gale on the right represents Dorothy Gale in her second visit to Oz. This time she's wearing a more nighttime dress and is older with a haircut.
