Dea'vatera THE DEAD WITCH

In the MGM film, the wicked witch of the west has green skin , a long nose a pointed hat and generally looks like the typical cackeling witch. In the original text however there is no mention of green skin or the chliche witchyness of the film . Instead Baum describes her as having one eye that can see across the world and no blood in her vains due to it drying up because of the sheer age of the character. I wanted to reflect this making the witch a strange and old feeling enigma , an ancient being from out amongst the dark between the stars , almost lovecraftian. This wasnt going to be the manic green skined wicked witch of the west .This was to be The dead witch an evil of countless years that had taken over a large portion of the OZ system uniting various pirate clans and enslaving the native races.

For her design I wanted to make her convey this 'off-ness' about her like you couldn't pinpoint exactly what she is or where she came from .So i decided to give her a slightly androgenous look along the lines of David Bowie or actress Tilda Swinton along with a spindly ,skelatal and slightly out of proportion body with a weird grace about her like a desturbing ballarina.

Heres some more ideas, you can see some more thumbnails as well as some variations of the idea the witch would have armoured arms made out of the same material as the silver slippers ,on the opposite page you can see some more organic looking ideas with me incorporating some visuals from sea anemones and butterflys , however I felt that these where a bit too busy for what I was going for.