Advanced Animation Project: Samsa-kosara and Sena Mahara

Just some tentative character sketches whose stories I likely won't follow through with. I was attempting to make some interesting deity figures, which were at once human yet not, and all together rather gruesome (because old fairy tales were, well, actually rather adult). For me at least, I've discovered that developing story and developing visuals go hand-in-hand - that doing one helps a lot with the other.

This drawing is Samsa-kosara ("samsara" means suffering). I wanted to play with the idea of Siamese twins, "grey twins" who are the children of the Yin and Yang deities (yet un-named). They are male and female, which is impossible in nature. This gives them an otherworldly duality and unison. The female, Kosara, is immaculately pregnent with a child that grows every year with the seasons and is always stillborn. Samsa-kosara is similar to the Fates - jaded, wise, sinister, ever-present, cyclical - the kind of characters mortals seek help from ... at a steep price. They make instruments from the bones of those who don't pay up.


I guess every culture has some sort of mermaid, and I have Sena Mahara. I've always loved the concept of the sea as a woman - both loving and beautiful yet furious and death-dealing. The slime, tentacles, and barbed tale hint at her sexual relationships, all of which were sour.

Sena's father was a poor fisherman who prayed to the for a child. Therefore, the Trickster god slept with his wife, and they had a beautiful girl with jet black hair and ocean-colored eyes. Even at a young age, every man she spoke to fell in love with her. A gift from the gods must be treated carefully, but people always seem to forget that. Her father decided to arrange a marriage for her. Although her suitors offered plenty of material bribes, Sena hated all of them. One day, a red goose showed up at their door, and she chose to marry it because it is the only man she has met who does not want her for her body. Her father arranged a marriage, anyway. On her wedding night, after sleeping with him, the man her father made her marry strangled her because he did not want any other man to have her. In horror at his own actions, he throws her body into the sea. The red goose dived in after her and revealed himself as the Trickster - he real father. At his bidding, the sea creatures came to her body, filling it with their own lives and giving her control of the tides. From then on, all men had best to be careful when entering the water lest they die at the hands of Sena Mahara.

My problem is the goose. I feel it should be something that draws her into the ocean. Geese aren't ocean creatures. Maybe a herring, a red herring (just kidding). That, I also don't want to imply that beastiality is okay, either. He's meant to represent a relationship without ulterior motive.


Human folly when dealing with gods, abuse of talent, men turning into birds, and forbidden lovers seems to be a recurring theme in my work. Although, what's the difference between a "strong recurring theme" and a "re-use of old material because you can't think of any better"?

Thinking up character names has to be a weak-point of mine. They always sound like they came from a bad fanfiction. It's hard because I need something that doesn't reference anything easily found in the real world without sounding like I randomly hit letters on my keyboard. I'm very well open to changes.