Thar Shaddin

The other day I was working on one the species/races for the fantasy setting I'm creating. While it isn't so difficult to decide on general ideas for these species/races, I found that I had a lot of difficulty in coming up with ideas for their physical appearances, so what I decided to do is post here requesting the help of anyone who likes to draw or anything like that.

Basically, I want people to try to come up with their own ideas for what the species/races might look like, with rough guidelines given by me. Nothing is really set in stone, however, so anything you dislike and would like to exclude, or anything you think would improve the idea, feel free to discuss, ask questions, or simply use these ideas in your work.

Before I actually start sharing all the information I've come up with so far, I just wanted to see how many people are actually interested in trying this. It's not really like a contest or anything; I'm just looking for ideas and inspiration, and sometimes seeing what other people can come up with can really help.

So if you're interested, or have any comments or questions, go ahead and reply, or send me a pm. Hopefully it works out, but if not, it doesn't really matter. I look forward to seeing what happens.

Anything not mentioned already in the setting section of the website under races is fair game.

Whereas I'm not a great artist by any stretch of the imagination, i can do a decent job at concept art and i love drawing new things, keeping in mind stuff like practicality and feasibility of evolutionary logic (i.e. always imagined that dragons, like birds, would have huge keel bone or something to that effect in order to allow for the extensive musculature structure required for flight). I certainly would be interested in helping you out and concept art is fast, something i can doodle while sitting in boring ass briefs or whatnot. Shoot me a PM with your descriptions and we'll see what we can knock out!

Good, this is exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks for replying, by the way. I'll work on writing up a better description of the things I'm looking for and post it here, when I get around to it.

I don't mind helping out. If nothing else I think I can help toss ideas back and forth.

Aye, I'm down with being the creative bouncing wall too. I'm shite at drawing though.

That's really good as well. I enjoy hearing what others think, and as it's something that a lot of people will be involved in eventually, if it ever gets completed, I think it's important to get input from a lot of people while coming up with the ideas.

I'd just like to mention again though that I am mostly looking for people who can draw or otherwise portray visual ideas. I thought we hard more artists, heh... If you're worried about other people seeing your work, don't worry about that. You can just pm it to me, or whatever else. I'm just looking for some ideas.

Still working on the information for the concepts at the moment. Hopefully will be able to post that soon and people can start telling me where I went wrong.

Okay, so at the moment, since I'm still really unsure about what I want for this particular species, there's not a lot I can say to give you an idea of what I was thinking, so just go ahead and make up whatever you want and tell/show me what you're thinking about.

Firstly, I'm currently calling them drunes. Names are easily changeable, by the way, I just get sick of trying to figure things out when everything is nameless. Drunes are the main race in this setting as far as the main storyline sort of thing goes, and they're the species most like humans. So far I was thinking that they should be a little short than humans.

They are split into two groups, though this shouldn't affect appearances, at least not as far as genetics go. The two groups are more a difference of beliefs, while they're still the same species.

They are mostly herbivores, although they can eat meat, but that's more of a recent cultural development for one group. They originate from a forest environment, though I'm not entirely sure what kind of forest exactly. They're reasonably intelligent, not sure about what sort of strength and so on they'd have, and they are, of course, mammals. I suppose they're diurnal. I dunno what else though.

Whatever else you wanna ask, just ask. There's probably heaps of things I just haven't thought about.

P.S. Just in case I haven't already mentioned it, this setting is entirely separate from Thar Shaddin and is an original fantasy setting.

So some kind of bipedal, omnivore-ish... you said they come from the forest, but does that mean they still live there? how "advanced" are they? Are/were they canopy dwellers, forest floor types, or somewhere in between?

Based on these answers, i'll probably have more questions, but this is a good start.

The drunes were divided over a conflict some time ago, perhaps a few hundred years. Probably not enough time for it to really affect more than their separate cultures and so on. There are two groups of drunes, the Drukonn and the Drubant.

The Drukonn live in the original home of the drunes, on an island that is mostly covered in forest. They eat plants, both fruits and vegetables, and possibly some insects. They would be advanced enough to build shelters, but nothing more than perhaps small wooden structures. They would have some simple tools and weapons, but are mostly very simple in the way they live.

They can use verbal language, but this is generally quite simple, not as developed as what we use today. They use a lot of non-verbal communication, with possible use of body modifications, piercings or something like that, to symbolize different things. They wouldn't wear any proper clothing.

The Drubant have moved from their original home to the larger island which I am still unsure about in terms of environment. They have developed a lot more than the Drukonn, being influenced by humans to take on their ways of living. They farm, both animals and crops, and have built more complex buildings, as well as roads. They use transportation such as carts drawn by animals. They eat meat and plants from what they farm, but don't hunt.

I want to help somehow. We shall see. . .

So how humanoid are these "people"? Are you thinking something that your world's humankind would find attractive, repulsive, or are they just entirely too different to be compatible? Are we talking Star Wars universe, where diversity is large but species still mingle, or something more closer to typical elf-human-gnome type, or something totally different?

I mostly want them to be human enough to fit in quite well with humans, so that in comparison to other animals, they don't seem that different. I wouldn't think the two species would find each other attractive, in general. There would be more differences than between humans and elves and things like that, and they are different species so they could not breed with each other. Does that answer your question, or did you need to know more?

This is unrelated to the whole drune thing, but anyway, here's something I just scribbled down as an idea for another race, which I'll work on more eventually. It has two tails. Cute, no?

Not many artists about then, huh?