The Heroes Project: Character Design - Designing the Mantis

During his research period of The Heroes Project designer Abhishek Choudhury came across a lot of folktales which spoke of a trickster deity called /Kaggen in their stories. In folklore of the /Xam people, /Kaggen is seen as the most important deity as a trickster and a creator. /Kaggen is said to be a shape-shifting bushman shaman and often represented as a mantis. The bushman shamans often spoke about physical transformations and shape-shifting in the spirit realm. /Kaggen, the mantis, is said to be the one who created the moon and also the first Eland and other antelopes. In Phase 1, he did an analysis into the character of /Kaggen in an effort to understand the natural and cultural forces that could have moulded this character. More on the character design process.