Sketch of the day (January 24th 2018) - Westwind! I needed to draw a new full body reference for her since I only showed her head on the last page; her mate Northwind looks pretty much the same, just a bit darker in pigmentation, gold eyed instead of green and obviously different spots and facial markings.
Anatomy and marking inspirations:
Snow leopards, which share the same habitat as these guys.
Blue merle dogs. (I have a ‘no rosettes’ policy on Rimarian animals... stripes are fine because stripes are freakin’ everywhere in the animal kingdom, but rosettes are pretty exclusively a cat thing. Plus I feel like it would be super dumb to make an alien canid looking creature have leopard rosettes.) Merle-like patterns are seen on seals as well as herding dogs.
Maine coon cats - dat tail bush and the dark pigmentation comes from grey tabby maine coons, which have some very impressive tail floof.
Mountain people would actually be extremely huggable... if they let you hug them without deciding to make you their dinner. (Just kidding, they are more likely to talk to you than eat you, although if they are around you probably won’t see them at all since they usually avoid other sentient species, unless they are starfers.)
On that note, starfers don’t eat these guys; there’s a weird truce between the two predatory species even though they share habitat and technically hunt the same things. Starfers and mountain people often pause to share news and there’s stories of them protecting each other from other less friendly predators. Mountain people tracks have been documented around starfer kills and vice versa. In opposition to this alliance, while mountain people seem to also coexist peacefully with falcolfs, starfers (being logically very leery of death from above,) usually can’t stand them. (Kazik is a freak.)