Today I’m posting a little bit of concept art from book 1 of Oddity Woods! These were from around 2014-2016, when I was working on OW as a webcomic. I wanted each chapter to be an individual mystery, like a mini Agatha Christie story. When writing the Labyrinth Inn chapter, I knew I wanted to do a “whodunnit” type story, though I had some other ideas at the beginning.
The first one wasn’t about an inn, but a town where the people were cursed to become wendigos when the clock struck midnight.
Marietta and Wyatt would figure out how to free the town of their curse and find the first Grave Key. I ended up scrapping this idea because I didn’t find the story very interesting, and moved more into a murder mystery direction instead.
Early concept art of Silvia/Velia. The inn chapter went through a lot of different versions, but it was always about a character getting revenge for their murder. Funny enough, I think Velia was once originally a part of the werewolf family too, along with different workers like maids, until her character was finalized as an outsider.
Early Owen had a skeleton cat and the two would have been reoccurring characters. Sorry bud. Ultimately I didn't like having so many extras working at the inn when I could have more unique guests be a part of the mystery instead, so the extra werewolves got cut!
Designing the side characters for this chapter was a lot of fun, though it took some time to figure them out. I kept drawing them over and over until a design felt right. I think I liked designing Leo and Capella the most. I also wanted them all to have distinguishable silhouettes.
Everyone was finalized in 2017! The original script had a lot more going on, but needed to be condensed last minute (partially because it was too long and partially because I was hitting burn out while working on it as a webcomic). My mindset was to create something similar to a point & click mystery game, which I realized didn't quite translate perfectly into a comic. I still like it overall though! I'd love to try and write another campy murder mystery again someday.
This will be part one to a series of OW concept art posts. There’s a lot of stuff I can’t really talk about until the series is finished, but I’ll share what I can in the meantime!