Yeah, the thing about concept art is that it's not nearly as structured as people would think. It's legit "take this idea all kinds of different directions and we'll see what we like and how we need to narrow it down".
The art we have seen is just a drop in a bucket of what they did. Hell, in the past art we've seen there's concepts of the viera looking like animal faced beast people, your picture, a version where their ears are on the sides of their head and so on and so on. This stage is very important and takes a good deal of time as it decides so much of what the race brings to the game. Animation is another factor in it, being that they have to give the race life and an identity yet allow for others to express them in different ways.
The quote is "There was fear about how we would approach that. Perhaps an elezen body with a miqo’te face and bunny ears. Would this be the right way to add this race to the game?"
In another interview he said "We thought: “Why add more handsome races… even if we do, the biggest difference will be the ears…”. So seems like he thinks they would just be Elezen with bunny ears.
		
		

			
			



			
 
			

