I've decided that the princess of this story should be Inuit. I thought of the original Scandinavian story, and they describe the beast that comes to claim the peasant family's daughter as a white bear. Obviously that means a polar bear, so I thought who else other than these Icelandic settlers would come into contact with a Polar Bear... the Inuit!
They also have a very rich spiritual and mythological history, so I thought it would be fun to mix the cultures.
Ideas for the cursed prince... they're not quite there yet... but getting there.
Exploring the Polar bear's design, haven't nailed it down yet, but I've finally started to break down the shapes in my mind that make up a Polar Bear's face, and not just a regular brown bear... polar bears faces are more pointed and distinct.
In my research about trying to find a description of the North wind - I thought just a bearded old man with wings was too on the nose - I discovered that the Inuit also had a Spirit of the North wind, Negagfok, and since masks were used for a variety of reasons, including Shamans using them to make contact with the Spirit world. I thought that it would be fitting if the North wind wore a spirit mask.
The Troll princess is proving to be a challenging character for me, since Trolls have a varied and colourful mythology across cultures. Some cultures describe them as being hideous, with shape shifting abilities; they can take the form of being human, but they cannot transform their tail which is the tell tale sign that they are a troll, or they are extremely beautiful to lure travelers to the death.
I don't want her to be hideous, but a fusion of human and troll is unappealing to me. I think I will try to make her beautiful... but they can't transform away the tail...
Every time I look at # 1, she makes me laugh.
I'm not sure that beautiful is working either... #4 reads more as an enchantress than a troll.... and I don't even know what I was thinking with #2.
I didn't want her to be comical, but I really like #1, so maybe some kind of fusion with #3...
So Now... Here's some environments,,,
Will focus on elements from these three.
Puffins!
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