The next time someone makes a gorgon...
SnowSultan
Posts: 3,596
...would you consider trying to make it so the snake tail begins past the hips? It would be trickier, but having the tail always connect with a strong straight edge at the waist doesn't give the figure as much shape. I'll post an example of how this looks below. Transmapped is fine too if geografting isn't possible.
Also, please consider the following:
* include tail thicken and thin morphs, and an optional rattle on the end of the tail.
* please think about separating the tail into two material zones so the underside can be textured differently than the outer skin.
* if you include a character shape, please do not make it mandatory.
* UPDATE: and PLEASE let it be compatible with any of that figure's compatible female skin textures. Not being able to do so severely limits it's appeal.
Sorry for sounding specific, but I've bought every gorgon/naga that's come out in the past 15 years and I still always resort to sticking the DAZ Python on the bottom of a female figure and doing a ton of postwork. Thanks for listening. :)
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Comments
Hmmm...I've never seen a gorgon like that before but then the only one I'm familar with is the Marvel Comics Gorgon that is a member of the Inhumans. He was really more like Pan though, half human and half goat.
Sorry, but there were no rattlesnakes in ancient Greece; they are an endemic species of the Americas ...
Nonesuch: Medusa was a gorgon, and now the term is often associated with any half female-half snake character. Technically it's a 'naga' if it doesn't have snake hair and can't turn you to stone, but nagas are also portrayed as a snake with only a human head, so that's up for debate as well.
Carevelle: Well what if we need to portray an American gorgon? Or maybe if they mate with Westerners, their offspring has the rattle. :)
(update: added one more thing to original post)
Gorgons: Women (three sisters) with snakes for hair and NO TAIL.
Naga: creatures half human (upper) half snake (lower), or maybe snakes with human heads. Normal human hair.
[wiseguy-mode off]
I didn't know that Medusa was a Gorgon or had forgotten. I knew the Greek Medusa had snakes for hair. There is Medusa that was a member of the Royal Inhuman family, like Gorgon was, had very long hair that she could control like squid or octopus arms but it didn't look like snakes. That Marvel author creative license.
I ready quite a few books on Roman and Greek mythology as a 12 year old but I have forgotten most of it. I do remember Medusa though and Gorgons as a name but had forgotten that the Gorgons were sisters of Medusa.
The Gorgons were three sisters, one of them named Medusa:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon
The classical equivalent of the naga would perhaps be the demoness Lamia, who was sometimes said to have a snake's tail, although that may have been largely the invention of the poet John Keats. Lamia might also be familiar to fans of '70s prog-rock:
Three vermillion snakes of female face.
The smallest motion, filled with grace ...
... "Rael welcome, we are the Lamia of the pool.
We have been waiting for our waters to bring you cool."
["The Lamia", Genesis]
Well, technically, Medusa only looked like that in 'Clash Of The Titans'. The actual legend of her mentioned nothing abotu having a half-serpent body. :) The film's production team seem to have taken artistic licence... My guess is that they followed the view that Medusa's mother was Echidna (her mother's identity varies, depending on your source), with Hesiud's 'Theogony' describing her as being half-serpent, half-maiden.
So, in the film, they probably decided to combine that with the legitimate traits of Medusa's form having serpent hair and turning people to stone with a look. Descriptions of Medusa, herself, I don't think mentioned anything about having a half-serpent body.
Medusa's appearance from 'Clash Of The Titans', therefore, has more to do with Ray Harryhausen than legitimate mythology. :)
Interestingly, she was made to look facially disfigured and unpleasant in that film, whereas the more recent remake made it so that she still looked attractive. Neither interpretation is wrong. One was meant to infer that her curse was meant to make her look repulsive in general, whereas the latter was meant to infer the curse gave her an alternative form, but to reflect that she retained she could have sitll retained the astonishing beauty of human years which led to that tragic fate.
Echidna was the figure from mythology who had the half-serpent body configuration. Lamia is an intriguing addition to this, as there are a group of 'Lamiae', which may or may not be one and the same as Lamia, herself (they share similar names, but that could be superficial coincidence). While Lamia looks largely nothing like a serpent, some descriptions of the Lamiae are portrayed as giving them half-serpent bodies. The Naga, however, are a more widespread entity witnessed in Asia... Probably far older than the other mythological references, too. It's possible that writers of Echidna and the Lamiae may have been influenced by the Naga.
The Naga are most definitely described as having serpent trunks below the waist. There are males and females, with some having good intent, some neutral and others apparently being negative (so, basically, a lot like human psychological differences can be).
One of the reasons for me being involved in Daz Studio for art is so that I can try to represent these entities, as I've been in the process of writing a fictional novel about them. :)
The first interpretation I saw of the Gorgon as half-snake half woman was an illustration in an old Warren magazine (probably Vampirella) sometimes in the 70's. It may be where Harryhausen got the idea, because Harryhausen was acquainted with Forest Ackerman who was editor for the Warren magazines, and 'Clash of the Titans" came out a considerble time later after the issue was published. I'll have to dig through my collection to see if I can find the exact date that issue came out, because as a kid into stop motion animation I immediately tried to scuplt a model of it. In fact I remember being disappointed when Clash came out because Harryhausen had beaten me to it. After Clash of the Titan's the half-snake interpretation of Medusa has been the prevalent interpretation in most illustrations of her since to the extend that I'd rather portray her in the classical manner now.
The Naga; however, is pretty well-known to gamers who play JRPG's as the character is a staple of the Persona series which has a following in the U.S. as well as Japan.
Also, there was the Snake Mother in A Merritt's "The Face in the Abyss"; you can probably find illustrations of her with a little digging. I am pretty sure John R. Neill (illustrator of the Oz books) did one for Argosy.