I S H I K A k h e t a n.
illustrator | concept artist | character designer
Cloud Girl
A winsome nature spirit who looks like a 5-year-old girl, Yuu was born from the merging of sunlight with a raindrop. Her cloud of hair drifts her to places unknown, allowing her to create friends from her cloud and grant them sentience. Expressive like an animal's tail, her hair signals her feelings. When she is happy, it is bubbly, when she is sad, it rains; and when she is mad, beware, because a thunderstorm is brewing.
FINAL DESIGN
CHARACTER EXPRESSION SHEET
During an unbelievably hot summer when even the eternal oasis in an arid desert had dried up, a childless, parched couple with one foot already in their sandy graves begged and prayed to the skies for rain.
Then, a miracle occurred. A cloud on its way to the oasis found itself heavy with little droplets. Barely able to hold off, it delivered them right over the oasis.
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Then, a bigger miracle happened. Sunlight hit a tiny droplet as it fell, right through the center. The droplet rolled and rolled and rolled. Until finally opening its eyes to a world painted so beautifully, it could not be short of a miracle itself. The droplet, now a babe, floated down on its hair of cloud, a gift from its mother cloud, down to its new parents who cried tears of joy, reflecting her toothy smile and welcomed her with arms extended. That day, the couple was granted their greatest wish.
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Yuu lived a happy life with her adoptive parents, but the march of time and the cycle of nature was such that they had to part from her still young. Her sadness was soothed by the knowledge that they had become the soil that she watered with her cloud, now able to pay her gratitude back.
But attachment to the soil could never keep a cloud rooted, and hence, with her connection alive in her heart, she lets the wind carry her to wherever she needs to be.
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CHARACTER BACKGROUND (MYTH)
DESIGN ITERATIONS
PRE-TEEN VERSION
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My character takes obvious inspiration from Hindu mythology – like Parvati, she molds a being(s) into existence, like Vishnu, she lounges above and observes the wonders and chaos of the world, like Krishna, she plays an instrument, expressing the music of her heart through it.
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“The pains and sorrows the soul experiences through life, are like holes made in a reed flute, and it is by making these holes that a player makes the flute out of a reed. This means that the heart of man is first a reed, and the sufferings and pains it goes through make it a flute, which can then be used by God as the instrument for the music that He constantly wishes to produce
INSPIRATION BOARD
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