I'm pretty new to modding, so bear with me.

My game design class is creating a mod, and I have been assigned to make a new creature. They do like Ice Wraiths, but we want to make it a little different and possibly have different stats. The problem is, I have no idea how to change the look of it. I want it to be a different color and have it look different structurally.

How would I do that? (and sorry if something doesn't make sense, I'll try to clarify as much as possible.)

Color is easy if have used gimp/paint.net or similar product .. just retexture the dds for the existing ice wraith and give new name, then either apply this texture in nifscope or from within the CK (if familiar with texture sets). Not sure what you mean by structure, are you talking about mod'n the bones or just the look? This question has been asked a few times in the forum so you might also want to do search and see what answers info others got ... good luck with your effort if need more info feel free to send me a PM or ask here (if want to see some of the stuff can do look at my critters on nexus .. search for critter ... have a resource there were created meshes/retext of a lot of creatures to include some wraith variants).

Ah, okay. That makes sense.

Well, I thought about giving the creature horns, so I guess I want to do change the bone structure.

not totally as the horns really don't move separate from th head ... might be able to find something with horns and in nifscope do a copy and paste of a branch to put it in. The problem is finding the right item that can be used and with the wraiths that would be hard, say with horkers might be able to take a horned helmet and copy it's branch in and then bury in the mesh so only th horns are showing, Q in FNV did some work along these lines taking parts of items and assembling the branches into a complete item. I've done this in FNV but have not tried for skyrim so not sure if works same way or if have to tweak some other things to get it to work.