SANKARA
An original animated fantasy series by Ladi Emeruwa and Upapan.
A conflict as old as time. A power that should not exist.
After a suicidal Londoner is pulled into a hidden war against monsters born from human craving and aversion, he discovers he can destroy what three ancient orders have only ever been able to suppress.
They think he may be the key to ending suffering. They may be right.
Today is the day Uche Daka decided he was going to kill himself.
Uche has always felt uncomfortable in his own skin: as though he had been handed the controls to a game everyone expected him to win, except he had never held a control before, let alone heard of the game.
He has spent his life in the background. This morning, he intends to disappear completely.
Then a woman falls from the sky.
"Did I jump to jump or to catch her?"
Uche is standing on Westminster Bridge, ready to step off, when Maya appears above him. Instinctively, he leaps to catch her. Their eyes meet. The world will call him a hero. Uche is left with a more difficult question.
Contact changes everything.
Uche catches Maya in the physical world. In the same instant, they emerge in another: a vast desert of freestanding gates, open storms and sealed silence. The Mind Matter Nexus.
Mind and matter have met. What was hidden inside Uche can now step into the world.
A higher plane of existence where the condition of the mind becomes physical fact.
Every person is connected to the Nexus through Sense Gates. When the gates are sealed, the space can be controlled. When they crack open, conditioned forces escape. The present outcome of this hidden conflict is responsible for the state of the world above.
Artwork Beat · In Development
[Crop/reuse] New artwork 1 plus the reusable Sense Gate motif.
The immortal army of suffering.
Sankara are craving and aversion given form. They emerge through the senses, pursue completion and combine into increasingly sophisticated Composites. Left unchecked, they feed the infinite power of Raga and Dvesha: the originators of Greed and Hatred.
They are not random monsters. Every one of them has a human cause.
Mother Earth’s last line of defence.
For generations, the agents of order known as Evangelists have entered the Nexus, subdued Sankara and sealed them behind the gates. The more Sankara they contain, the more power they can turn against the enemy.
The world does not know they exist. It only lives with the consequences of whether they win or lose.
Three answers to the same problem.
Muscle turns bodily discipline into overwhelming force. Chanters use voice, resonance and mudra to immobilise and seal. Intellectuals analyse, dismantle and reconstruct the forces inside the Nexus. They fight together. They do not agree on what power is for.
Artwork Beat · In Development
[New artwork 2] Maya, Swap and Daughter fighting the same escalating Sankara.
Pain is weakness leaving the body.
"Watch and learn mate. Let me show you why Muscle is where it’s at."
Muscle Evangelists remake themselves through physical discipline. Their strikes stop short of contact; the force alone can shatter space, repel Sankara and hold the line when every other system fails.
The right resonance can bring chaos into harmony.
"Keep your eyes closed and repeat after me. Do as I say and you’ll live."
Through voice, breath, mudra and concentration, Chanters incapacitate Sankara and draw them back behind the gates. Their power is beautiful, disciplined and exact. Maya’s voice can calm a monster - or a terrified man.
If suffering can be understood, it can be controlled.
The Intellectuals treat the Nexus as a system: analyse its structure, simulate its outcomes, dismantle its threats and construct a better response. From the Library, they turn the world’s data into a map of a war humanity cannot see.
Their ambition is simple: absolute accuracy, absolute control.
Or at least, we thought they were immortal until I met you.
"Total Annihilation."
Every Evangelist can weaken, dismantle or seal a Sankara. Uche can erase one completely. No gate. No residue. Only blunt white and impossible absence.
Uche has no training, no recognisable sectarian markers and no idea how he did it.
The first person who can make Uche feel safe.
"Nothing bad is going to happen to you. You’re safe."
Maya is a gifted Chanter: composed, compassionate and able to restore order through resonance. She is also the woman Uche tried to save, and the person onto whom he begins to place every hope he has for the life he might become.
Her discipline is real. So is the pressure beneath it.
Strength wants to remake him. Intelligence wants to understand him.
Swap is the exuberant leader of London’s Muscle Sect: warm, fearless and certain Uche can become more. Daughter leads the London Intellectuals with precision, authority and a habit of counting every variable - including him.
Both want to protect Uche. Both also see what his power could mean for their sect.
Artwork Beat · In Development
[Crop/reuse from artwork 7] Relationship-led portraits of Swap and Daughter around Uche.
Three months. Three sects. One impossible choice.
Every morning Uche trains at the Gym with Muscle. Every afternoon, at the Sanctuary with the Chanters. Every evening, at the Library with the Intellectuals. At the annual inter-sectarian conference he must choose where he belongs - and decide who, if anyone, should inherit Total Annihilation.
Training, missions, sect rivalry and the mystery of Uche’s power drive the story forward together.
Artwork Beat · In Development
[Deck-design graphic] A triptych built from sect motifs and existing development art; no new illustration.
Yesterday he wanted to disappear. Today, everyone is counting on him.
"Your future starts now."
Uche begins as an accidental hero and an unstable anomaly. As each sect trains his body, voice and mind, he dresses like its members and becomes the person he thinks its London leader wants. Muscle Uche, Chanter Uche and Intellectual Uche are all real - and all borrowed.
From accidental hero to apparent saviour.
Leap or Fall introduces the man and the hidden war. Sect Select gives him three identities to inhabit. By the summit, he has synthesised the disciplines into one seductive answer. When that promise breaks the system and the people closest to him, the apparent ending opens into a final movement that unfolds across years of practice.
The war outside Uche leads toward a more difficult way of seeing within.
Artwork Beat · In Development
[Deck-design graphic] A movement map built from type, lines and crops of artwork 5; no new illustration.
The world has always appeared muted to Uche. Like looking at a painting through frosted glass.
Sheep reality is grounded, contemporary and emotionally compressed. The Evangelist world is heightened, idealised and seductively coherent. Maya’s fall brings life into vivid focus. As the story escalates, the two visual realities begin to contaminate one another.
Craving burns warm. Aversion gathers cold. Annihilation leaves only white.
Artwork Beat · In Development
[Crop/reuse from artwork 5] Sheep Uche beside his borrowed and synthesised Evangelist identities.
A coming-of-power story for the audience that grew up with serial animation.
Sankara combines the adventure architecture, factional clarity and long-form promise of Avatar The Last Airbender with adult emotional stakes: suicide, projection, shame, power, intimacy and the hunger to become someone else.
Mythic but contemporary. Funny through character. Beautiful, bodily and increasingly dangerous.
Artwork Beat · In Development
[New artwork 7] The core ensemble against the scale of London and the MMN.
Because thought, sensation and identity must become physical action.
Animation allows a London street to fracture into the Mind Matter Nexus; human bodies to become idealised Evangelist forms; emotion to become creature, colour and combat; and three incompatible disciplines to remain visually precise inside the same battle.
Artwork Beat · In Development
[Deck composite] Separated figures from artwork 5 with the effects from artwork 6.
The fall becomes the page.
The existing one-shot uses vertical distance to control suspense and revelation: Uche’s ordinary London life, Maya’s fall, the descent through the gates, Sankara emergence and the return to the Thames. The scrolling pitch will use the same language to make entering this world an experience rather than an explanation.
Artwork Beat · In Development
[Crop/reuse] Selected vertical beats from artwork 4 and the existing one-shot.
One story. Two ways into the world.
Sankara is being developed as a serial animated fantasy for an adult global audience. The project currently includes a completed vertical-scroll one-shot, scripts for Chapters 1 to 9, an integrated long-form story architecture and an expanding visual development package.
The pitch will exist as both a standard document and an online scrolling experience, with story by Ladi Emeruwa and art by Upapan.
Artwork Beat · In Development
[Existing materials] One-shot imagery, character development art and a restrained production overview.
Only yesterday morning I decided I was going to kill myself. And today, I’m the hero who is destined to save the world from destruction.
The world thinks it has found its saviour. Uche is beginning to believe them.
SANKARA
Artwork Beat · In Development
[New artwork 8] The uneasy victory: beautiful, apparently complete, with one quiet visual fracture.