Helena Heissner (author)

When doing the old eye look, I initially tried an eyepatch on the witch but then realized that it would be more scary and unique if it was an empty eye socket with the surrounding skin having a melted look, a subtle hint that she had experienced water before Dorothy gave the rest of the bath.

My headcanon is that the Wicked Witch's abuse of magic caused her body to shrivel and mummify over the countless centuries of living, and the realization that she is now vulnerable to water caused the witch to become cowardly. She's still threatening, but she is far past her prime and she doesn't anyone else to know about it.

Oh and one little trivia: The quick melting scene sketch is based on Belos melting in the Boiling Rain. Note the shrivel skin melting off of the skull.

Naturally, to design my own take, I set up a few design rules for myself:

1) Make her like a Greek goddess. A stunning stature that would cause everyone fall in love with her. I mainly took inspiration from Palutena from the Kid Icarus series since I wanted to give her a potential mischievous aura to offset any stoic nature of the character. I also took inspiration from the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio to incorporate an otherworldly feel to her (at least compared to Dorothy and Ozma).

2) Use Galinda as a reference of what not to do with my take. The MGM movie infamously depicted Glinda as this bubbly, fairy princess that flies in a bubble and constantly smiles all the time. Galinda from Wicked cements that take and deconstructs that archetype as being insensitive to real issues and clearly being a mask of insecurity. Not to say the character is bad, it's just not how I see Glinda as. Maybe Elphaba and Galinda can be their own characters separated from the originals...

3) Looking at the book's description and motifs related to Glinda. According to the book, Glinda has deep rich red hair, blue eyes, and peachy cheeks with a pure white dress. She is also the ruler of the Quadling Country, whose primary color was Red. Glinda's red hair proved to be useful to make her clothes focus on white and silver colors as I found red to be very distracting unless it's close to Glinda's face, which the red hair excels at. Of course, as a little homage to the MGM movie, I gave her a pair of red ruby slippers underneath her dress. Glinda was also said to travel on a chariot pulled by swans and storks, so I designed Glinda with a bird wing motifs. You may actually notice that her crown has several swans at the front, and her cape is meant evoke wings of a bird.

To capture the mythical, goddess aspect of Glinda, I used the Procreate Symmetry tool to give Glinda's character model a sense of perfection and orderliness to contrast Ozma's more tomboyish approach to being a ruler. The only thing that is not symmetrical is her arms since I need her to hold a wand.

The funny thing about designing Glinda is that she is never actually seen wielding a wand, staff or even scepter in the official illustrations. At best, she has a book in her hand. So all I had to go by was the classic star wand from MGM. But I felt that a star wand would be not be regal enough for Glinda but luckily, I had stumbled upon a flag banner in Santa Barbara during my winter vacation which had a star shape that feels like a star and royalty. I actually debated on whether the wand should be ruby or silver, but I ultimately chose silver with ruby highlights.