Amazonian Sphinx - Kejali

Yeah, so, um...haven't updated in a while. This summer's been killed by summer school for me, so I haven't CGed much, erm, and my tablet recharger's lost, so I have to borrow one, but...got CS3. So, thought I'd try using that since I've been working with PS Elements 3.0 prior.

Anyway, this was the result. Kinda got lazy towards the end with the background and I wanted to color her lineart, but I've been working on this far too long and I want it done. Maybe when I can recharge my tablet again (it's dead) and I have more time I'll finish it, but for now this will do.

Kejali is one of my first and least frequently used characters. I believe she was inspired by the cartoon Inuyasha when I was into demons in 2004. Well, she's evolved since then. Became less of a character and more of a creature as a part of a species I created. Amazonian Sphinxes. Still developing them. Long story. Below is current info.

She used to have white wings, but in this pic I made them black for camoflodge purposes. Besides, I didn't have much in mind when I made her some years ago. Like, what're those markings? No idea. Just thought they looked cool back then, I guess. Don't ask. For all I know it could be tribal paint made from the blood of her prey. Or her past mates. *shrugs* The females of this race are far more vicious/aggressive.

I know her anatomy's probably off and whatnot, but hey, she's a sphinx. Let's not get technical here. Still, constructive critisim is appreciated. I'm not sure I've ever attempted to put so much detail into a CGed piece before. Guess I'm somewhat proud of it.

Kejali © Me

Amazonian Sphinx © Me

-----------

Name: Kejali
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Race: Possibly considered a sub-species of Sphinx, like those of Greece & Egypt, only a rare variation found only in rainforests and jungles. To humans, she may be vagely classified as a Jaguar/Leopard Demoness with wings, as her feline body is a mix of both feline families.
Weapons: A crudely-made flint javelin adorned with colorful fearthers and with a wooden shaft made of of amazon rainforest trees.
Appearance: She has long, wild black hair that goes down to her waist. It is often tangled with leaves and twigs, as she rarely takes the time to pause and groom herself.
However, she does seem to like to look nice, as she is often seen with a pair of brightly colored feathers in her hair. Naturally, as a female of her species she is a quadraped, but is able to walk as a biped. Height is 5' 7" when she stands. Her eyes are golden-amber as jaguar and leopard eyes and are as mysterious and emotionless as the predatory felines' she seems to have decended from.

She wears naught but a jaguar skin cross-top, thought to have been made from the hide of a rival female's feline coat or perhaps even her mother's. She also sports a pair of feline ears, the lower body of a jaguar/leopard hybrid, with jaguar spots but the slim legs and tail of a leopard. She also ties colorful feathers to her tail, contrasting with the huge, white, feathered wings that protrude from her back.

Kejali is very silent most of the time, tranquil unless hunting, aware of her surroundings but closed to human contact, and suspected of being more of an intellectual than others of her kind. She seems to be a sort of leader among her species.

Prseumably, she was left to fend for herself in the jungle at the age of five, though more capable than a human of the same age. It is unknown whether her parents abandoned her for a reason or if it is merely the way of her species for their young to grow up alone. She taught herself to hunt and in the process discovered the human weapon called the javelin by watching human hunters. Soon, she had created a makeshift javelin of her own.

She hardly uses facial expressions to communicate, because, like most animals, she has never known true human emotions. She lives merely on pure animal instinct, as do the rest of her kind, though perhaps with her human-like brain she might have the potential to understand such feelings if someone taught her how.

There are mysterious red and green stripes decorating her left arm and cheek, and it is unknown whther these are markings she was born with, paint, or scars of some sort. Paint seems an unlikely cantidate, however, as the stuff has never been descovered around sphinxes.

Other Information: Females of her species are nocturnal and hunt at night, while males are diurnal, so they hardly ever encounter one another, except during mating season, where they meet at dawn and dusk.Good thing too, since both are very territorial.

They can live in harmony because the females act more feline and the males act more avian, so the males remain in the tree-tops and canopies where they hunt birds and roost. Females have lairs and dens to themselves, though they have been known to climb trees and nap in those as well. Confrontations during this occurance usually end in conflict and permanent damage to male wings, if not death.

Females tend to be more aggressive, requiring sharper predatory skills to hunt the small mammals they live off of. Thus females spend more time on the ground as quardopeds, blending in with the environment with feline spots and stripes. It is rare to see a female with brightly colored wings, as theirs are more natural and muted tones. Males, on the other hand, in an effort to blend with their prey of tropical birds, are the opposite. They sport colorful feathers of various patterns and plain feline coats of mute, natural colors. Therefore feathers and fur are ideal gifts used in exchange as a token of vows when taking mates.

This behavior of obsession with the colorful feathers is thought to originate within the idea that males sport colorful feathers, and those a female adorns herself with may or may not be a symbol of past mates. It could also possibly be a method of intimidating other females, or attracting males during mating season.

Though these creatures have human-structured bodies from their torsos up, it is difficult to say whether they have the intelligence parallel to humans, despite the legends of the riddle-asking sphinx from Greece which these creatures so similarly represent.

They speak little, and only few words have been recorded coming from their mouths. Most disappointing is that those recorded have only been discovered to be repeated words that have been said to them by humans. In essence, they seem to pick up words, like parrots, and recite them, but without a meaningful understanding of the human language.

It was thought through this discovery that the Sphinx had merely recited the single riddle she gave to all passerbys without truly understanding its meaning. She may have been taught to identify the correct answer, but nothing more can be confirmed.

No one has been reported to have ever successfuly managed to capture a Sphinx, Egyptian, Greek, Amazonian, or otherwise. Their wild ways have installed a fear within their researchers about whether as in the story of Oedipus Rex, a sphinx will actually consume human flesh. Human killings, however, have been reported on numerous occasions.

They act more beastial with growls, hisses, snarls, and purring from the females and chirps, twitters, caws, squaks, and whistles from the males. It hasn't been identified as strict languages between the two, however, since during mating season males use cat sounds and females use bird sounds.

They do not live in tribes or groups, but are instead scattered randomly throughout a rainforest territory. This ensures they will have enough pery to support themselves and a territory to protect. Male and female territories often tend to overlap, as males live in the canopies and females in the undergrowth. Often, niether gender is aware of the others' presance until mating season, or so it has been thought due to their behavior of ignoring the opposite gender.