Originally I had the scarecrow as this lighter than air, wispy thing who constantly relied on the post he was tied to to function. But it felt the design was cumbersome and too Christ-like.

Character concept "Cassius McGrew":

Shock the monkey to life --
Winged Monkey!

Rejected Oz Lion.

I started doing the designs for my personal Wizard of Oz character design project with the thought - "What if these were made for a game?" So I wanted each of the characters to be a little darker and more fierce in nature. Holding weapons and whatnot.

My first passes at the designs weren't as successful as I had hoped, so I scraped the Game design idea and just started designing them as if they were made for some darker animated film project.

I'm currently working on a concept for the "flying monkeys" - nearly finished.