So Hemaraj is a half lion and half Hem creature, which according to Thai mythology is a sort of a bird mixed with a crocodile. It's been a bit of a struggle but this is what I've got so far.

Animatic V1:

Based on Justin's advice and by looking into traditional Thai costumes I made a few thumbnails to help us visualise our character . The special ornaments she'll be wearing will be used to emphasize her Thai and bird like qualities like the tall headpiece,  the wing-like ear cuffs, the long fingernails and the chain hanging from her arms creating the illusion of a wing.

I had a chance to ask for some help from Justin Wyatt today on our characters and got some great tips to improve our design.

I used Lai Thi art as reference for the detail in the tail and wings. These are very early sketches but I can already see what changes I need to make. The human torso looks like it's a completely different part of the bird body. The Lai Thi influences need to be added on the top half  to make it look more consistent.

Some more tests. Discovering new methods in Maya:

Here is a couple of initial foliage designs with new colour palette. Interesting to note in the attached references is the gold colours. On an international level, gold combined with lighter shades symbolises wealth and prosperity. Another way to look at its meaning – albeit subjective - is it’s usage to represent armour on top of flesh belonging to an imperial lineage of people. But in the references there a few individuals wearing no gold. If we assume the notion of social stratification, the people excluded from the golden patterns probably belong to a common ancestry and so there is illustrative divide. Our lead character is something of a special deity so the idea of bloodline and imperial belonging is a feature we're thinking about for the character design/ dictating the amount of gold in her costume.

There is a lack of gold in the surrounding nature in the murals (works conversely in the case of our designs). Gold is central to life, very bold; the first thing we see. Experimented use of gold in nature is something to consider, then whether there’s a weighted use of it. These are things to continue thinking about...

We’re going to continue experimenting by limiting the colours to core Thai cuisine: Golden patterns, green and jade etc. 

Andriana discussed colour theory from Thai culture on an older entry; click here to read her analysis post.

Here are a selection of designs we both worked on.
Andriana established some shapes by looking at traditional Thai
art & Lai/ Kranok patterns. We scanned in the pictures
and I experimented with colour.
These are mainly pieces of foliage:

I was having a little play-around in photoshop with some mirrored 'scribbles' and came up with some very interesting shapes/ silhouettes. I worked nearly the same way as Alchemy but for some reason it worked a lot better for me this way. Ideally, they were going to look like feathers but some ended up looking like tentacles. It is a start anyway..

For the purpose of exploring new turf, I have recycled the 3D model from my transcription piece: Mèng Pó. A concept that is very different from re-use. We have progressed to the unsatisfied, however, the 2D and 3D projections in Maya itself have revealed some decent potential. The early idea of progress implies, as these images show, the cutout styles. We have also starting looking into Lai Thai Patterns: Ancient Art Works, relevant to the study of core Thai themes. Updates will be posted soon as we continue to inject and experiment with this concept and later introduce negative space and the inner-confines of patterns.