Hamish Steele

New Year New Me

Hello everyone. It has been a little while.

I have been a little overwhelmed lately but work and the world. But I am approaching a period of time where I am getting back to comics and starting new projects which will lead to lots of new art. Starting with my first Ham of the year!

The Founder of the Feast - A Ghost Story for Christmas

As is swiftly becoming a tradition, my brother and I write each other short horror stories as Christmas presents to each other.

Last year, I wrote this one - Seen and Not Heard, and this...

Ham at Christmas

Happy Holidays!

This is the illustration that will accompany tomorrow’s final newsletter of 2025.

If you have bought any of my books, listened to a podcast of mine, shared a post or (in your case) subscribed to my Patreon at all this year, I can’t thank you enough. It’s meant the world!

Hears to 2026! Featuring Go-Man Vol 2 and more!

DOROTHY Part 13 - Beatrice Blue's Mombi and Wizard Designs

It feels a little unfair posting these as not nearly enough time was done getting them right, but here are some designs for Mombi and the Wizard by
Beatrice Blue.

We tried to make them an old married couple, fighting for control of both Oz, Ozma and eventually Dorothy. Neither side are in the right and both do terrible things to make their point.

This was also at a time where o...

DOROTHY Part 12 - Camille Perrin Mombi's Cottage Designs

Finally, some designs for Mombi's cottage. She was going to be the true BIG BAD of Season 1, not the Wicked Witch of the West. But we were gonna make her a bit of a twist villain, seeming at first like a friendly face to Dorothy, who wasn't aware of the abuse she was inflicting on Tip. Mombi was insisting that her ward was a boy and not a girl and keeping him prisoner, fearing he might go to th...

DOROTHY Part 11 - Camille Perrin Emerald City Designs

And here are some designs for the Emerald City, with a cheeky statue of Ozma.

While the series was going to follow the plot of the books closely, we were intending to merge the plots and events of the first two books together, with Tip meeting Dorothy on their travels.

DOROTHY Part 10 - Camille Perrin Location Designs

Here are also some location designs by the talented Camille Perrin. Here is a brighter, more magical take on Dorothy's house in Munchkin Country as well as a creepier, more foreboding take on the Witch's castle in Winkie Country.

This was at a time when we had abandoned the idea of making physical sets and were instead looking at making the backgrounds very painterful, but with CG charact...

DOROTHY Part 9 - Cécile Carre The Wizard's Throne Design

Here is the Wizard's throne room as depicted by Carre, and the final commission we got from her.

We were definitely planning to adapt the visit to the Wizard as it is in the book. Each companion is brought in separately and meets a different form of the wizard - the Giant Head is the one best known, but in the books he also appears as a beautiful Sorceress, a terrifying beast and a ball ...

DOROTHY Part 8 - Cécile Carre Winkie Country Design

On the West of Oz is Winkie, a barren and desert-like country which was once prosperous and lush. That was until the Wicked Witch of the West took up residence and cast a spell to create an endless draught, out of fear she might be touched by a single raindrop.

Of course, now that Elphaba has never been more popular, persuading audiences to hate the Wicked Witch once again might've been t...

DOROTHY Part 7 - Cécile Carre Munchkin Country Design

Our take on Oz was that I wanted it to feel real. The books are certainly fantastical, but it is not a DREAM world. It's a place. A long-lost kingdom on Earth where magic still exists. And so we wanted it to largely conform to the physics and reality of our world.

I still would like it to be a bit more magical than this, but this was some concept art for Dorothy's house landing on the Wi...

DOROTHY Part 6 - Cécile Carre Emerald City Design

Now, let's move onto some concept art for the WORLD of Oz.

Right from the off, I needed to figure out a way to make the Emerald City as huge and impressive and GREEN as people want it to be, while maintaining the reveal in the books that the whole city is actually NOT green, but an illusion. In the books, everyone who enters the city is given green tinted glasses - but this element has al...

DOROTHY - Dorothy Gale Fabien Mense Designs Part 5

Toto was again quite an easy process because we loved his initial design. Our brief was "the scrappiest farm dog ever" so we really wanted to emphasise a slightly mangey, goofy expression.

In the books, Toto can talk but decides not to for a few books. We would've moved that reveal to the end of the season, just as a funny button to end the show on.

DOROTHY - Cowardly Lion Fabien Mense Designs Part 4

The Lion by far was the hardest character for everyone to agree on and I am sure we drove Fabien crazy. None of the executives could agree and he is the only character who is straight up just an animal. This was why I was so pro clothes, but for whatever reason, our partner company was not interested.

The first slide is what we eventually all settled on (although this was after we made 2025-12-04 14:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post

DOROTHY - Scarecrow and Tin Woodman Fabien Mense Designs Part 3

These designs also came together very quickly, as I was pleased with the first attempts.

Our key note for the Tin Woodman was "sexy". He was meant to be a big gruff Rugby Player with a soft heart (awks!) of gold. We used Tom Hardy as a reference point and told him to go for it.

We also included a little tattoo acknowledging the Woodman's true book origins (sorry Boq!)

In the...

DOROTHY - Dorothy Gale Fabien Mense Designs Part 2

Let's start with Dorothy herself. During most of development, the show was called "Dorothy Gale and the Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (a mouthful) but we eventually wanted to simply call it "Dorothy".

I've always felt she is the one character given a short straw in Oz adaptations and revisions. I love her the most of all the characters (well, matched perhaps with Ozma and Tik Tok), so I wanted ...

DOROTHY - Dorothy Gale Fabien Mense Designs Part 1

SO, let's chat about my Oz show again.

Recently, I posted designs done by Dani Diez which was where the show was at the time of its cancellation. However, that was all part of the big se...

Wicked Baum-Accurate Book Cover

Idk.

I started out thinking it might be fun just to recreate the movie poster for Wicked but with book accurate designs and then kept going and committed to the bit. This is my idea for what the book might look like if published when the original Baum books were, with illustrations by W. W. Denslow.

In order to "generate content" I'm going to attempt to post the making of this cove...

GO-MAN | Update 104 - Seina Poster

If you picked up the hardcover copy of Go-Man Volume 1, you'll have noticed a poster on the inside of the dust jacket featuring the Robug Squad. The idea was it was a poster that Tobi might have in his room. For Book 2, I've decided to make it something Grace would have in her room.

We get a little more information about her favourite tv show and manga in Volume 2, including a full sampl...

Shin Ham

Here is the illustration that'll accompany my November newsletter. I wanted to pay tribute to Godzilla more than usual because November his is anniversary month and Shin Godzilla remains my favourite of the current Reiwa era.

Expect to see my newsletter either later tonight or tomorrow morning.

GO-MAN | Update 103 - Go-Man 2 finished!!

Me while working through the worst October of my life to get Go-Man 2 done vs me getting Go-Man 2 done!

Huzzah! It's over! Meaning Go-Man updates are going to slow down. I keep scrolling through the book to find things to post but honestly at a certain point, every page becomes too spoilery to post. I have a few more things I can share, but I'll space them out a little bit.

To let y...

GO-MAN | Update 102 - Grace vs Tobi

What could be going on here? Is Grace really turning on Tobi... or what?

GO-MAN | Update 101 - Spigera Has Landed!

In book two, Spider comes to Earth. What is her ultimate plan? And will she succeed?? We will get all those answers in Volume 2...

HADES HIGH... DeadEndia 4?

I have just come back from London MCM Comic Con. It was a lovely weekend where I got to meet lots of fans including some of you and the conversation about the whole Elon Musk situation continued.

But one thing I noticed was that a lot more people were asking about a fourth DeadEndia book then a third Dead End season. And the thing is, I do have an idea for one.

In the final few pa...

Rockman

I've been playing D&D lately and this is my character, a warforged barbarian inspired by Tik Tok in Return to Oz and the ancient robots in Breath of the Wild and Castle in the Sky.

He is a friendly if blunt presense in the group, often announcing "I am here to help!" before stomping head first into immediate danger. In his backstory, he was unearthed by sonr dwarves, presumably a rem...

GO-MAN | Update 100 - GO-MAN-CON

SPOILERS! In Go-Man Volume 2, Go-Man has got popular enough to have his own entire convention!

I thought these pages would take ages to colour but it actually worked out pretty quick, because there's so many blues, reds and yellows.

Go-Man Volume 1, despite being super fantastical, was a pretty personal book, detailing some stuff that happened to me as a kid regarding making friend...

The HAMpire

Here's my Halloween theme illustration of my Ham kaijusona that'll be including in this month's (very late) newsletter. I didn't forget, I just didn't wanna say anything earlier this month. I still don't know how I'll address the situation with Elon yet. I don't really want to, because I didn't do anything, let alone anything wrong. It just sort of happened to me.

But I do have to send o...

Skreeonk! Godzilla vs Hedorah Cover

I was once again invited to provide some art for my fave Godzilla podcast Skreeonk!

They've just posted the episode on to their Patreon (officially out next week) and so I thought it was OK to post this art.

Godzilla vs Hedorah is a very good film, very unique and colourful while also being deeply grim in many ways. It reminded me of the 1970s horror manga I love reading and so I wa...

GO-MAN | Update 99 - The Zoy Empress

In Volume 1 we made some references to the Zoy Empress and here she is, albeit viewed through a hologram in true sci-fi-space-emperor fashion.

But doesn't she look a little young? Could she really be the leader of such a scary force? And doesn't she look very different to Spigera? What exactly ARE the Zoy?

GO-MAN | Update 98 - Doomscrolling

What is Tobi doing on his laptop so late?

GO-MAN | Update 98 - Travelling Man Tour

This weekend I will be touring a few cities in the UK to sign copies of Go-Man and I made these sort of spur of the moment as a way of advertising. Some are better than others (Manchester feels a bit lazy while Newcastle is one of my favourite Go-Man images I've ever made) but I kind of like the idea of doing this no matter where I end up doing signings or events. Might start working on ones fo...