I would recommend building off of vanilla races or using a race template such as http://community.playstarbound.com/resources/race-base.3537/ It's a good guideline for showing you where to put everything! You already have the assets, too, which makes things a lot easier.
This might help community.playstarbound.com/threads/1-0-update-its-going-to-arrive-sooner-or-later-so-lets-prepare-for-it.116471/