The Volus! Good google moogly I've had these designs since like 2013? I thought I'd upload them as I'm re-playing the mass effect series and been doing new doodles including Volus clothing and what not.

I'm a big fan of the mass effect series. But it can be a hit or miss with its alien designs. For the most part the aliens are all unique but also hit established sci-fi cliché with its aliens.

They have two 'masked' species that keep themselves covered as they can't survive in other environments; one being the Quarians who have compromised immune systems. The other being the Volus who usually live on high pressure worlds and have an ammonia-based biochemistry.

Bioware had made a small reveal of the Quarian face to much disappointment as it suggested they were just purple humans (the game already did the 'different coloured human' cliché with the Asari being blue ladies with tentacle hair so this was a super lazy concept). I'll be uploading my own Quarian concepts later with more in depth analysis as to what they could have been and why.

But this is about the Volus and as so far have their physiology not been revealed. I could have been all out wacky with their design which I may play with later, but I wanted to keep within the games style of having most aliens hominoid. For the most part I wanted to get the head down as in game that's mostly what you would see. However I plan to revisit the body later on to try and add more unique forms. There isn't much information about the species asides form their merchant-like culture and the fact they live in high pressure worlds. Deep sea animals are one inspiration but I wanted to avoid the blob fish look. I also tried to model their face son their masks somewhat thinking that they would make their masks resemble their faces.

I'll upload my first draft concept later and hopefully more ideas to come!