Female Viera are what Au Ra should've been...

[Tsiron]

My art style does not really match what FFXIV is going for (at least as far as playable races are concerned, most of the monsters look absolutely wretched...), so these'll probably look off-putting and I'm not doing myself any favours by posting them, but I've spent so long thinking about Au Ra and how I'd change their design if it were up to me that I might as well. As I've said several times in this thread alone lol, my primary grievances are, yeah, female Au Ra being the way they are, I wish their tails were longer and their scales looked more natural. The ears/horns are... weird, but I'll get back to that in a bit.

Attempt #1 was kind of half-assed (in case you couldn't tell by the quality), but a lot of that stuff's addressed. I thought the tiny ears+horns combo we can see in some of the female would've been preferable to what we got, but honestly it's just an awkward spot for horns to grow out of. Them being digitigrade was a stupid thought I had that the devs would only need to animate them standing on their toes, without changing the base model and thus complicating equipment unecessarily. I've given up on the idea though, it would look odd with most footwear and they would have to change the default animations to match.

After a while I started sketching them on and off again until I ended up with this, which I thought looked promising! I mostly based the scales on pangolins, though in certain parts they're more reptilian. The horns were a compromise: weird, spiraling hollow structures growing at the end of their ears, made of the same stuff as their scales (keratin). Not that different from (some of) their current horns, but having actual earholes feels more natural to me.

Everything culminated in this art I gave up on, and thank goodness for that, right?

[Skivvy]

My art style does not really match what FFXIV is going for (at least as far as playable races are concerned, most of the monsters look absolutely wretched...), so these'll probably look off-putting and I'm not doing myself any favours by posting them, but I've spent so long thinking about Au Ra and how I'd change their design if it were up to me that I might as well. As I've said several times in this thread alone lol, my primary grievances are, yeah, female Au Ra being the way they are, I wish their tails were longer and their scales looked more natural. The ears/horns are... weird, but I'll get back to that in a bit.

Attempt #1 was kind of half-assed (in case you couldn't tell by the quality), but a lot of that stuff's addressed. I thought the tiny ears+horns combo we can see in some of the female would've been preferable to what we got, but honestly it's just an awkward spot for horns to grow out of. Them being digitigrade was a stupid thought I had that the devs would only need to animate them standing on their toes, without changing the base model and thus complicating equipment unecessarily. I've given up on the idea though, it would look odd with most footwear and they would have to change the default animations to match.

After a while I started sketching them on and off again until I ended up with this, which I thought looked promising! I mostly based the scales on pangolins, though in certain parts they're more reptilian. The horns were a compromise: weird, spiraling hollow structures growing at the end of their ears, made of the same stuff as their scales (keratin). Not that different from (some of) their current horns, but having actual earholes feels more natural to me.

Everything culminated in this art I gave up on, and thank goodness for that, right?

Were you a fan of Gargoyles way back in the day by chance? The female in #1 reminds me a bit of Demona (not a bad thing)

I don't really mind the tail options we ended up with, but I would totally take that long version as well.

I will admit, I've not actually given much thought to their horns outside of the usual "I wish they were separate from the face", although you've now brought to my attention that the horns are actually in a bit of a weird spot, and would probably cover any sort of ear-holes (thinking like a bird's here..) would be. So now that's in my head! Going to be judging horns in a whole new way.

Also a big fan of the more natural scales vs. the glued on variety we ended up with. Obviously no race is going to fit everyone's perfect ideal, but we can dream :3