Sia sketch

Sketch of upcoming OC.

Once again, I decided to deliberatedly promote little used characters. This time is Sia Burashanti. This hindu elephant girl was actually one of those one-time characters (those kind who has an important role in a single episode), but I decided it'd be interesting to "promote" her - as well as make proper changes.

Besides my art style and skills from now and then, I also changed her name - her old name was Simmy Pakeedhermi. Yeah, silly pun surname, no need to tell. I was going to keep the first name, but then I decided to research and see if that was a legitimate or at least a close Hindu-sounding name. After all, I took it from a Capcom game... In the end, the closest match I found was 'Simi', which means "limit". I asked myself what kind of girl name is that, so I lurked a bit more among Hindu female names lists and found a nice and simple one that even sounds cute: 'Sia' (a name derived from a Hindu epic called Ramayana). Her new surname 'Burashanti', if Google Translate didn't pull my leg, means "greyish serenity".

But the biggest change: she's now one of the fighting girls of my cast. When I first created her, she was just a humble dancer which asked for the help of the Main Four after sumbling upon them. I didn't erase that from her background, but apart from being a talented dancer she also learned Malla-yuddha (a traditional grappling wrestling from South Asia) and Mushti yuddha (or Muki Boxing, a part of the Indochinese family of kickboxing styles).

And, of course, not putting the fetishist side apart... indeed she's usually seen barefeet, and if you're curious about those marks in her feet, that's just the traditional painting used in Indian classical dance.