human perspective. Due to budget concerns, BioWare realized they would be unable to make both male and female versions for each of the races, which led to the creation of an all-female one. Rhodes recalled that a drawing for a male asari individual was concepted by a team member, but it has since been lost. Rhodes noted that the silhouette of the asari's fringe was originally concepted as a hair style, and the final design of the species' hair fins mainly arose from the designers' experimentation with different shapes. He indicated that the spiny fins hinted at the species' capability as a potential threat, as the asari would have developed over millennia of conflict and interactions with their environments. The asari's fins, also described as scalp tentacles, evoke the image of a woman "emerging from the water with her hair swept back". Inspiration was drawn mainly from sports-gear, such as climbing and scuba gear, particularly its "pliable, flexible" qualities. After the addition of the hair fins, the asari looked more aquatic, and thus their design was altered to fit with that; this also led to the writers altering the asari home climate to be more wet. Their clothing is meant to be both "alluring and sexy" while keeping a sense of "class and style", akin to a "Hollywood red carpet feel". Different silhouettes of clothing were made by the design team trying to find looks that a woman would wear, which would appear both futuristic but not "too far", while also keeping with the kind of clothes that would be worn in more aquatic environments. To help create visual variation for many of the alien faces, art director Derek Watts came up with the idea of different face paints and tattoos, which were added to many of the races. Like many other races, asari too use facepaints, which helped with diversifying the characters. The asari's anthropomorphic faces, derived from face scans of professional models as well as manual tweaks performed by team members, helped made asari characters distinct from each other. Attributes Biology The asari homeworld, Thessia, is rich with Element Zero, a fictional material which, when subjected to an electrical current, releases dark energy. Within series lore, Element Zero is so abundant on Thessia that the water and soil contain large amounts of it, thus life on Thessia has adapted and evolved to its presence, including the asari's natural