Probably not an Elarna

It's been a long time since I actually tried to do a 'proper drawing' sort of thing, and annoyingly, I don't feel that I've improved in the way I approach it despite several years of learning! So this looks similar to things I did years ago.
Oh well; I suppose *practice* is the most important thing.

When most people design alien characters or races for their settings, I've noticed that they seem to either go with the 'man in a suit' approach, where the aliens have basically human bodies but have certain features here and there exaggerated or altered (big eyes, long arms, savage or tiny mouths, etc), or maybe some people base them on earth animals...

From an early age, it's really bothered me to see bipedal humanoid sentient races from entirely different planets, because it's always made me think 'but they wouldn't evolve to look just like us!'

I understand why people do it though. For one thing, it's a lot more relateable... It's easier to empathise with things that look like us.
Then there are concerns like... how would the creature move? How would it dress itself, or wield tools? Would it wear things at all?
If you've spent a lot time studying real human bodies and tools and clothing, much of that knowledge probably becomes a lot less useful when you're designing some bizarre monstrosity which has little in common with us.

Anyway, the plot of Miasmon takes place on a world that was once home to a race of aliens known as the 'Elarna'... which I've avoided actually designing for months, despite including monsters which are meant to be based on them in some way.

I originally planned to just make them basic 'lizardmen' sorts of aliens, similar to the 'reptoids' from my other games, but I thought maybe it'd be interesting to try and come up with a properly alien design instead...

When designing aliens like this, the details are not my concern... I'm more interested in the general *body plan*, where the limbs go, how many there are, etc.

The world of these Elarna was frigidly cold, and they are adapted to those temperatures. They have skeletons made of ice, for example; their 'feet' are made of these icy 'bones', extending out like horns do in some Earth creatures.

They're asymmetrical. One of their 'heads' is a grasper, seen here wearing a 'gauntlet' used for summoning and controlling monsters.
The other is equipped with sensory organs and a devouring mouth. It also has horns which can be used as a weapon.
Both are attached to the body by very flexible 'necks' which can twist and turn very freely.

Their brain is in the body, not the sensory head.
They have 'bellows' below the folds on their 'chest', which are used to produce sounds for communication; the devouring head isn't used for talking. So it's possible for them to talk and eat at the same time!1

Anyway, I probably won't use this design for the final game. I'll probably come up with something a lot more humanoid instead, which is boring, but massively more practical.

One worry about using something like this is that it's hard to do variation, to make characters with this design as a base. That's a challenge that I can't be bothered worrying about! o_O