Raksura

portraits of Token, Mellow, and Charm, colored
LTR: Token, an Arbora Teacher; Charm, an Aeriat Warrior; and Mellow, an Arbora Mentor

This has been a long term project to try to work out what the Raksura from Martha Wells’s Books of the Raksura look like for me, and my friends, and I created fan OCs as well that I’ve had some fun designing. They’re shifter characters, so the first picture is their shifted forms, and below is them as humans.

Mellow, Token, and Charm, having a discussion
Mellow, Token, and Charm, showing off some Raksura clothing designs

And I’ve put probably a little too much time attempting to work out species design so the following are some process sketches of general Raksura designs

  • Raksura head turnaround to show the back spines
  • Raksura body details
  • silhouettes of different types of aeriat and arbora, playing with the idea that arbora have some gecko shape to them
  • sketches of aeriat flying based on the flight of bats