i've been really invested in the current arc, and after reading thunder i was excited to set aside some time to test out my designs for the protagonists! these aren't necessarily my final designs for them.
recently i've been wanting to take my art in a bit more of an exaggerated cartoony direction, inspired by watching a bunch of early 2000s cartoons lately (can you tell which one inspired these particular drawings? XD). warriors might be a bit of a weird muse for that, but i can't turn down the opportunity to draw some cats!
nightheart's basically an off-black version of my firestar with hair. i still need to actually draw my firestar design, but i know what i want, so i based him off of that. the hair is just because i thought it'd be funny. i'm not too sure about his eye marking though; i give most of firestar's kin some kind of stripe coming from their eye, but i might change how nightheart's looks. something to experiment more with!
frostpaw is based on what i have in mind for curlfeather - again, haven't drawn curlfeather, but i have a pretty decent idea of what she looks like. lots of little curls incorporated throughout her design. she's also all gray to me but still a colorpoint, and has three little "freckles" on the left side of her face. i'm contemplating whether or not i want to give her a TNR ear notch in the final design.
sunbeam is probably the wildest of these three, at least in my opinion, and the one i'm probably not going to change too much because i like that about her. i don't remember exactly what inspired me, but i came up with the idea of her having a single eye with dark sclera months ago and it's stuck in my mind since. idk, maybe i just thought it would make the diamond marking pop a bit? she also only has eyelashes on the eye with yellow sclera. her back marking is a sun and the white beneath it represents a ray of sunlight.
i also had extra space so i made a doodle making fun of sunbeam and the traveling cats eating a corndog from sky. the fact that nightheart brought it up again in thunder to be sad about how he's away from her cracked me up. warrior cats eating human food and being astonished is really funny to me.
you captured THE most iconic moment in warrior cats so perfectly i'm in love
sunbeam reminds me of an early webcomic character that's snarky but well-meaning
and i would like to hold frostpaw