Character Concept - Damodara

Completion Date: 01-08-10
Time Taken: 2 hours
Medium(s):
+ Sketched in Opencanvas 1.1
+ Text and watermark added in Photoshop CS2
Music:
+ She Dances With Her Soul - Lifescapes
+ Tamana - Niyaz
+ Molk-E-Divan - Niyaz
+ Kajra Re - Bunty Aur Babli
+ Mehboob Mere - Sunidhi Chauhan and Karsan Sargathiya

Comment:
This character is one that's been a long time coming and I'm finally getting a chance to flesh him out.
I have very few rodent characters, two to be exact, and have always wanted more of them just because I find them interesting. As many of you know (or might not) I am a huge fan of tightlacing, corsetting, and body modifications in general; I'm actually able to say that comfortably now without feeling weird. XD But in any case, yes, I do enjoy the world of tiny waists ever so much and it occupies my thoughts more than it probably should.

Which got me to the point that I am now with creating this boy here. I was sitting and doodling, and thought to myself, "What if you made a tightlace rodent character?" Now I thought that was a rather refreshing idea and decided to scribble down some things as I went. And then another thought occured to me, "Rats and mice can collapse their ribcages...hm." I've been itching to see how "extreme" I can take tightlacing in my art, and as much as I love Yun Hee, I don't think she'd survive the experiment. XD;;; So I started digging around for more information about that delightful bit of info on the rat and of course more tightlacing. All the creativity came to a head this morning at like 2am, and I just started sketching everything from my notes I'd taken.

Indian culture is a big love of mine and I thought it would be fun to make a rat from the Karni Mata temple into a character. If you don't know what Karni Mata is, long story short, its a temple where rats are worshipped and held as sacred creatures. With that in mind I began designing him accordingly. What I ended up with was an adventure and something I really love. Meet Damodara, one of the man rats living in Karni Mata!

His name is derieved from the Sanskrit elements of daama "cord" and udara "waist," basically translating to "waist chord". A fitting name for a tightlacing rodent if I say so myself. Damodara is unique in his ability to cinch his waist due to the collapsible ribcage. Not only does he compress his waist size, but he has also bound his ribs to make his body even thinner and narrow. The overall result causes him to appear very long and willowly with a sort of bizarre elegance, truly he is extreme. He also wears the sash to his skirt below the hipbones to make his body seem even longer as you can see in the sketches. The fullbody sketch shows this the best as well as the waist up one (which I plan on finishing into a full piece).

I love this guy so much... > u <

^{Artwork, Damodara © 2010 P. Lolla (*souls-poison)
DO NOT USE WITHOUT PERMISSION!!! ARTWORK AND CHARACTER COPYRIGHT P. Lolla (*souls-poison); ALL RIGHTS RESERVED!!! DO NOT STEAL, ALTER, COPY, AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW!!!}