Not all the patients at Pangate Hospital get sick. Sometimes what happens to them makes them very … healthy. Too bad it’s not really a human sort of health.
One of the patients gets out in Acute Care, the latest Dark Conspiracy adventure from 3Hombres Games.
Poor Mr. Akita. He thought he’d just come in for a simple operation. Too bad preferential treatment at Pangate Hospital isn’t fatal. The patients just wish it was.
Another sketch for an illustration for Acute Care.
Another sketch at from Acute Care, the latest Dark Conspiracy. At Pangate Hospital, the doctors can’t be trusted. And for the one of the worst of them, being dead doesn’t even slow him down.
Ah. Feels good to have some time to actually post on a regular basis. And draw again. But that’s another story.
For the next week or so I’m going to be posting sketches of the work I did for the latest 3Hombres Games Dark Conspiracy adventure – Acute Care.
The above image is my sketch for the page banners of the publication. As you can tell, being a patient at Pangate Memorial is a dangerous proposition.
His Majesty, Prince … Ozzy … of Oz.
Who?
Get yourself a copy of Oz Squad: March of the Tin Soldiers (available as an ebook at the previous link or in a dead tree edition at Lulu.com) and meet the boy.
The Oz Squad website is in process. There will be, if nothing else, a placeholder page here before the end of September.
I know. Promises. Promises.
The Woggle-Bug makes his debut in The Marvelous Land of Oz. He’s an insect who has been Highly Magnified and Thoroughly Educated. He is also, as drawn by John R. Neill, one of the creepier looking denizens of Oz. He looks like a cross between the Joker and the Penguin. Uggh.
So when it came time to think of drawing the character I completely redesigned him. I tried to make him look more like a bug. Hopefully a friendly bug because he’s kind of an arrogant ass so he needs all the help he can get. No doubt this just make him creepier looking to people who are not me.
I didn’t get as far as drawing a background for this illustration. I only got as far as the basic inking stage.
In the first Oz book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Wizard is revealed to be a little man, barely taller than Dorothy, who is as bald as an egg. In every book thereafter the text describes him as a little man who is as bald as an egg. The illustrations by John R. Neill, however, show him with a lively fringe of hair. He’s also quite a bit taller than in the original Denslow illustrations.
As you can see I prefer a version with the lively fringe. If asked to explain the difference I’d say that the Wizard shaved his head during his first sojourn in Oz. A shaved head would have made it easier for him to slip on the disguises he needed to maintain his air of mystery.
I don’t have as easy an explanation for the difference in height.
The finished portrait of Ozma. In The Marvelous Land of Oz Ozma is described as having a cloud of golden hair. In every book thereafter, however, she is shown as a brunette. I figure that, as a fairy princess, she can have any color hair she likes. Personally, I prefer the dark hair, so that’s how I’ll draw her most often.
At the end of The Marvelous Land of Oz the hero, Tip, discovers that he’s really Ozma, rightful ruler of Oz and – a girl. When told he must be transformed back he’s not enthusiastic but he only spends a page protesting.
Finally he says, “I might try it for a while – just to see how it seems, you know. But if I don’t like being a girl you must promise to change me into a boy again.”
As far as I know, none of the Royal Historians have reported that she disliked being a girl.
