You can find more art of Ohoa by myself & by others at this link! http://bit.ly/OhoaBox

Past
Ohoashinbo is as much a creature of the theatre, and more particularly the Circus, as his friend and caretaker Moonface. He has grown up in corners of bustling tents, porches of cramped caravans and the ragged edges of common land where the Circus has put on its shows. His parents were performers, although apparently not members of the large circus Ohoashinbo is a member of. His name, he has been told, was given to him by his mother because it ‘just sounded pretty’ and has no discernable etymological root or meaning. He is immersed in the culture and artifice of the Circus in every breath, as an acrobat, a clown, a dancer and musician, even as a set erector, mask-maker and apprentice costumer.

His cradle was a safety net below the unstrung trapeze, and he learnt to walk, with the rest of his crèche, on a balance beam. As is usual practice, they quickly learned to ignore bruises, scrapes and falls that left them winded. The training Circus children undergo is broad rather than deep, but very specific, preparing them to fulfil a wide variety of roles in the vast dramatic cultural syllabus of the Circus’ performances. As such, Ohoashinbo is familiar with the fundamentals of several varieties of Opera (although he doesn’t excel as a singer, he has a very good speaking range), dance forms from African traditional through Ballet and a wide range of performance acrobatic and sleight-of-hand skills, especially associated with clowning. He is an above-average juggler, and can skillfully handle up to five clubs or balls.

Scholastically, Ohoashinbo was never expected to learn to do much beyond read and write, and of course memorise and recite scripts, though he can do so in several languages. While there are other learning opportunities within the Circus, usually classes provided privately by older non-performing Circus members on subjects like mathematics and history, Ohoa’s attempts to pursue extra-curricular activities quickly let to frustration and confusion, so he sticks to what he understands. As he has grown older, he has begun to feel more and more alienated from non-Circus people, children his own age (and he does still think of himself as such), and the non-Circus world in general. Everything seems bitter and cynical, without the dedication and joy he has come to expect within his close knit performing family.

Present
Ohoashinbo has lived vigorously, rapidly and enthusiastically, thriving in his adopted profession. Challenges to his physical and mental abilities have always been placed before him, and with application and determination, he has been able to overcome each of them. As a performer his life, while full of group activity and communication, is a little lonely but he is constantly undertaking some activity or another, so emotional concerns are sidelined at worst, at best swept away in the vibrant and powerful emotional communication between himself and an appreciative audience.

Much of the course of Ohoashinbo’s life has been dictated by what character he has had to play. At first, he was groomed for the role of Harlequin the merry, vicious, cunning prankster, one of the most prominent zanni of the Commedia dell'arte. After the assumption of this part by another member of his crèche he was given Pedrolino, a lesser character who caricatures the moon-struck poet, the romantic fool made mock of by his own whimsy. This sudden change in his destiny is the first real failure (or so he sees it) he has experienced, and he dwells on his short-fallings as both Harlequin and Peirrot. Even when, as Pedrolino, his life becomes more solitary and bereft, there is always Moonface with him, an ever-present comfort and protector.

Almost everything Ohoashinbo knows about or has experienced is understood in terms of his art. The Circus is a life and a community as much as it is a profession, so he has little experience of life outside its confines

Behaviour
Friendly, nervous and awkward, though still forthcoming, in an unfamiliar environment. Exhibiting the nervous tension habitual of a performer, he is constantly at the ready for a cue to do something. Having had little experience of making decisions himself, he normally waits for someone else to tell him what to do. Unconsciously tries to avoid sexually charged environments and situations, due to his lack of understanding of his awakening sexuality. like many acrobats and physical artists, he lives in constant dread of physical injury. Sometimes he has dreams about a plant that grows from a seed inside him and tears him apart.

Clothing
Ohoa almost always wears some variation on clowning motley. As Pedrolino he wears a simple white costume of short breeches, an oversized tunic with flapping sleeves and a large soft ruff. His more general performance attire consists of a form-hugging black sleeveless garment edged in white that splits above his waist into four long tapering tongues of cloth. Beneath this, he wears wide, loose black silk-cotton trousers, gathered in a cuff at the ankle. The two can be fastened together just below his ribcage. Commonly for big top audiences he he may also include a wide starched white ruff and three big white fluffy false buttons that can be attached to the tunic.
Extra: Usually he bears the ‘Pierrot’s tear’ symbolic of the role, carefully applied with blue greasepaint edged in black beneath one eye.

Physical Description
Short fur like rough velvet, following okapi colours, with his torso and muzzle a solid dark brown that gleams softly purple and russet in a good light. Up close, darker tapering zebra-stripes can be seen under the brown blooming outward from the dimple of his spine. In typical okapi fashion, this base colour begins to be broken by slim slashes of dull, creamy white on his upper arms and the upper curve of his rear, just below the small of his back. The dark colouring slowly thins to a series of chocolate garters encircling his thighs and arms, and he is solid white from mid-forearm and the tops of his long ankle-bones, save bracelets around his wrists and toes. His hair is quite fine and dense, ravelling naturally into shiny black kiss-curls around his jaw and the nape of his neck.

The end of his brown knee-length tail has a plume of similar dark hair. His ears are the same chocolate brown as most of the rest of him and smaller than those of a pure okapi, assuming the characteristic pointed leaf-like shape often seen in mountain goats. Ohoa’s horns, rather than the typical okapi stubs, are sturdy flat-surfaced bone crescents arching over his head from the forward curve of his skull. They are still fuzz-covered, though, sharing the white colouration that marks much of his face like a pair of giant spectacles. A bar of dark ochre, paling around the bridge of his nose, flows down his muzzle down beneath his throat. His nostrils and mouth are small, neat and undistinguished. Overall, his facial structure lies somewhere between the blunt softness of an ovine and the gaunt slender shape of an okapi, giving him a gentle, androgynous cervine prettiness.
His head is perched on a slightly-too long neck, with sloped shoulders and a long, lithe angular-looking body, all baby-fat rapidly burned away by constant arduous activity. His bony unguligrade build makes him well adapted to be an exceptional dancer and tumbler, his hooves specially filed to improve his grip on smooth surfaces. The same hooves, adopted as hands, make life quite difficult for him as a musician, as he only has two useable fingers and a thumb, and the last joint of each is mostly made of hard keratinous material. The other two tough nails are set into the heel of his palm.

Other Notes
Ohoa has a very long and dextrous blue-black tongue like the true okapi, the only mammal that can lick its own ears.

His Changed biology means his diet is mostly limited to vegetables, and he can reasonably survive ‘in the wild’ for a while eating grass and leaves. He takes supplements to ensure a proper intake of minerals in his diet, something true okapi achieve by eating sulphurous riverbank clay. His senses of sight, hearing, and smell are more acute than those of unChanged humans, making being abroad in cities a dizzying experience for him. Ohoashinbo is accompanied wherever he goes by either Moonface, or what appears to be a pair of spherical floating jingle-bells that toll out little slices of silence whenever they ring.