updated design, less gradients but more colors to compensate ha.

This is not a cat lol, but I went ahead and finally made a sona for the “harrier” part of my YouTube username. This also could double for a basic Marsh Hawk design, if needed for like, idk cat animation reasons.

I... did not know that 6 month old cats were that big I kept imagining them as the size of slightly bigger kits

Yeah man, this is the lie that the warriors animation community has been perpetuating for a while. Mostly out of ignorance haha Here is a growth video of a kitten to ten months old which is about the time between kit to warrior in canon (though it might be more like warrior at 12 months, but it varies quite a lot), and here is a picture of that cat at 6 months old, seen at 0:16 in the video. It starts to make a lot more sense that this is the age that kittens are allowed to start battle training and even participating in defending their clan, because they are at six months old physically capable of doing so. Many breeds of cats keep maturing in their density and weight until 3-5 years of age, but the bulk of growth always happens in the first six months.

Truthfully I think a lot of people depict apprentices as tiny children because that is easier to differentiate on screen, especially if animation designs are exaggerated where certain characters are huge for dramatic effect (think often tigerstar the first and characters like lionheart). This isn't actually wrong to do, and can be a very effective choice in communicating the age of certain characters without having to tell the audience in neon lights that this character is an apprentice.

but it should be a choice, and some discussions I have seen about the warrior cats online makes the assumption that all apprentices are tiny and helpless (maybe based on these depictions? unkown) when the reality is that at six months old, non-fictional cats enter adolescence, they are almost always desperate for independence and 'leave the nest' so to speak, and can in fact raise their own litter of kittens (not an uncommon occurrence in wild cats, but I do not recommend this for the health of the animals and discourage owners from this practice). I'm not sure that there is much point in comparing the physical development of cats to people especially regarding a fictional series, (and granted I'm just a fan and not an expert) but If we are talking about real-live physical cats at six months old, they're more comparable to 14-16 year olds than tweenagers 11-13, by ten months we're talking about late adolescence, maybe 18 year olds. Think about it, plenty of people in high school get misinterpreted as adults, that's the age range we're talking about. I understand that this is a hot debated topic in fandom as apprentices are often interpreted as younger characters, but I find it more interesting to depict them closer to a feline's realistic development, at least in an artistic sense, and probably will continue to do so.

Feel free to ignore this because I know your inbox gets flooded but if I wanted to commission you to make more canon warrior designs (paying you to post more I guess) is that something you would accept?

I don't know to be honest. I really like that I do these out of driven interest in the series, and while in concept compensation to continue that sounds beneficial, in practice I have a lot of difficulty when it comes to commissions to work out of guilt and obligation (always doing my best work of course) but involving a specific monetary attachment to art I make changes the motivation for me significantly. In full disclosure, paying me for specific canon designs may make this project feel daunting at best, or drive me away from working on it at all at worst. Some people out there will have experienced this phenomenon before, but as an adult newly diagnosed with ADHD I am just figuring out what works best for me in terms of financial compensation, and just employment in general. It turns out, I don't work that well as an independent contractor artist! Just functionally, getting work out when the motivation isn't out of interest, passion or fun, has been really difficult in the past. That does also mean that sometimes the interest is preoccupied by other things, and uploads on this blog lag for a while. I have run a queue in the past but once the queue runs out as it always inevitably does we all just have to wait until my interest swings back around again. And it will, I've been hyperfixated on warriors for a long time now, and despite how many times I say 'this year I'll move on' I just haven't yet lmao. There are too many things that I still want to make that outweigh the negative downsides this specific fandom often has, so I am pretty sure I am in cat hell for the long haul.

This is also not to say that no one can ever request canon cats from me, they have, and I have made lists for requests in the past and completed some of them as inspiration strikes. But I prefer to keep it as a suggestion box and complete those as I get ideas for them, as I think that's how I do my best work on this blog.

All of that said, I do have a patreon that has been functioning as a tip jar for animation related expenses that I accrue as an independent who buys all my animation stuff out of pocket. That includes software licenses, hardware replacements like new tablets, maintenance and unfortunately now that patreon is also taxed, taxes. If you still want to help someone who is neurodivergent, making cat art, and still despite a lot of struggle effectively jobless, I always welcome people who want to contribute to the patreon. I used to try to do rewards, but as this post has already described, that became problematic pretty fast, as I was promising things that I am functionally unable to keep up with in a way that is also healthy for me. So there are things that I upload there as part of my workflow that are behind the scenes works in progress and early uploads, but when it comes to rewards I know I am not the most exciting patreon to subscribe to and I just want people to know that up front. It works best when the monetary compensation is as removed from the final product as possible, otherwise I just get locked up in too much shame.

That was a longer post than I anticipated, I hope that answers any questions regarding commissioning canon designs!

These are kinda, not like other posts I have made but I needed a couple character specific age charts for the project I wanted to do so here they are lol. I want to do a generalized chart talking about development and size and like, when kits open their eyes, and when they gain color, when they teeth, ect ect. this is not that, this is just to give me some idea of size and shape across a few different ages.

goldenflower 2.0! I revisited her because I felt like I wanted to capture more of a family resemblance with her kiddos, and also just look, in general more kind and caring. I had done a design last year for a goldenflower in my rut part, so I took a lot of ideas from that and brought them back into the first design. the chest flower is completely new, I kept trying to get a little flower in there somewhere but tiny ones just were looking out of place so now she gets a fluffy pillow at her collar lol.

Hey if we use these can we change some things about the designs, as long as we still give credit? (eg. add more fluff to your Spottedleaf design :o)

I mean within reason. At some point changes to a design make it not my design anymore, and it would fall more into a design based on or inspired by my design which. also depends on how much it resembles the original for me to be comfortable with people altering and then claiming designs I worked on, if that makes sense.

I would say in most cases I would prefer if people want to use a design to not alter it, there are many designs available for cats like Spottedleaf that I am sure fit the fluff quality better, but for less common designs Idk I'd be willing to be more lenient on that I guess.

re re updating my Tigerclaw-star design because I want to do a project with Tawnypelt and felt like the colors on the most recent version needed a touch up. I also went through the trouble to do a turnaround, because I wanted to make sure I was giving his 'tiger nose' the right amount of depth without flattening his face. The only other major change is I took his tail fluff level down dramatically, which I actually like a lot better. It really solidifies the tiger silhouette I was going for. Plus this time I gave him a charismatic smile, which I feel like is much more in character of the early respect that his clanmates give him.

Scorchfur! He has gotten more attention recently because people started to realize that being named Cloverfoot Berryheart and Buster(Rippletail)'s father means that he was mates with Snowbird as an apprentice, which while being funny at least, I'm pretty sure was just an accident with the Erins not paying more attention to the timeline. His first appearance is in Eclipse, during the battle of the eclipse when Hollypaw brings Shadowclan cats to aid Thunderclan in the battle he and his mentor Snaketail jump in beside her, The same battle in which Snowfur stays behind in the nursury with Tawnypelt's kits. He tends to be a hothead in his early days, quick to end disputes with claws, he jumps into a boarder skirmish with his mentor against lionblaze, while the rest of the patrol remains with their claws sheathed in long shadows, and during the final battle though he is injured severely he tries to jump back into battle while Littlecloud treats his wounds, saying 'I'll fight to the death if I have to."

Scorchfur is actually an interesting guy, since he’s almost like the B-list Actor version of a warriors character in A Vision of Shadows, with more on the page than your average cat but very specifically lacks the autonomy and notoriety that most main characters, or clan leadership gets. And this is true of many characters in that arc, I was going to summarize all the things he did but it ended up being a lot and I was starting to feel like I was yelling in font of a conspiracy board of why didn’t I notice that this guy existed when I read these books, he should have been as memorable as Brightheart or Mudclaw but he just wasn’t for me. And I think it’s because the narrative itself doesn’t treat him like a noteworthy individual, he represents shadowclan, not his opinion, and when he speaks characters reply to him as if he’s one of an entity of shadowclan cats who don’t like leaders and not as Scorchfur. This is true for all of shadowclan at the time, Spikefur, Ratscar, Snowbird, Grassheart all have speaking lines and opinions, but they’re treated like a personless group instead of individuals.

Anyway list of things he did During AVOS include: Distrust Violetpaw for being non-clanborn yet defends her in front of Onestar, be extremely critical of Rowanstar and eventually Crowfrost for the sickness in shadowclan and rogues hunting on their land, be extremely distraught over Snowbird catching the incurable yellowcough, come up with the idea to use Twigpaw as a hostage to try to convince Windclan to give them Lungwort, Tell Rowanstar that he can forget about coming back from a gathering because the clan wasn’t participating with clans that abandoned them and Rowanstar was too weak to lead them signalling the entrance of Darktail and the Kin, Jump first into the battle against Riverclan starting the fight, argue with Darktail about feeding their prisoners and almost loses his standing (and ability to protect/ feed his family) over it, Help puddleshine cure cats instead of fight during the liberation of Riverclan, Feel immediately dissappointed again by Rowanstar’s indecision in the six toed cat prophecy and throw claws with tawnypelt about it, argue with Rowanstar/Puddleshine about annexing with Skyclan because the clan wasn’t consulted or warned and only decides to comply for the warrior code of it all, lives peacefully in Skyclan until Leafstar refuses to allow his pregnant daughter to return igniting what will become a grudge, conspires to hide her in the old shadowclan camp until she is discovered and allowed to stay, assists Juniperclaw alongside his mate in Junipers attempt to poison skyclan by distracting the clan destroying dens, Is not included in the blame for that event (not even mentioned at all!) and in fact escorts juniper to captivity and guards the den, cheers for his daughter Cloverfoot when she is elected Deputy.

Many characters accuse him for wanting power but He Doesn’t, he just thinks everyone else is doing it wrong until Tigerheart and Juniperclaw Cloverfoot are elected. In the next arc his spirituality is defined as being dogmatic and easily swayed by the atonement narrative, partly because he’s led to believe an injury he sustains that also kills his clanmate is a sign that they must atone. Once that’s clarified as being false he is supportive to the rebellion agains the imposter. In the Starless clan arc he is still a warrior, and has been seen doing warrior things (he was on the patrol to riverclan in sky to retrieve catmint) but otherwise has taken a back seat.

Ratscar! He is Snowbird's brother, but due to the timing of their life events, Snow having kits through the Vision of Shadows Arc while Ratscar was in the elders den, he seems quite a bit older, which is supported by his inclusion of the narrative of the prequel novella Tigerstar's Fury, despite Snowbird saying they were littermates. This makes him older than Oakfur, who was an apprentice during the novella, while Snowbird seems like she's just coming into her Senior warrior age with the Starless Clan arc. Sometimes the writers use littermates interchangeably with siblings, but it's hard to know what exactly they meant, if snowbird is supposed to be an older queen or if they in fact are from different litters.

He is kind of contradictory, He is an allegiances only cat through the later half of Power of Three, and then he gains characterization through Omen of the Stars. Through Flametail's eyes in Fading Echoes he's a genuine senior warrior who offers to lead the medicine cat back to some borage, and who plays on the Ice with Redwillow and Crowfrost. The next we see of him Ivypool watches as he 'greets' Blossomfall into the dark forest with a fight of teeth and claws. He always appears loyal and protective of boarders, several times identifying thunderclan scent where Dovewing crosses to meet Tigerheart, and even fights Lionblaze drawing blood when the thunderclan cat tries to cover her tracks. In the final battle it's clear by his conversation with Shredtail, a dark forest warrior, that he had always been loyal to Shadowclan, and spends the battle fighting against the dark forest. The thing about retroactively including him into Tigerclaw's Fury as a cat on the patrol that kills Runningwind, he would know then, how disloyal Tigerclaw can be, and I would imagine not be one to be so naive about the dark forest, but I guess the writers weren't thinking that hard when they pulled him back in the narrative that far two years later.

Anyway currently he is an elder, who was part of the Kin in the Vision of shadows arc, as he felt that Rowanstar's leadership lacked the power of 'old Shadowclan' days. He becomes a refugee to Thunderclan after being forced on the front line in the battle for Riverclan, and realizes that he had been wrong about his leader. He remains in the allegiances through the end of that arc, but hasn't been listed in the Broken Code or Starless Clan arcs with the exception of Spotfur's Rebellion, so, it's possible he hasn't died yet.

Snowbird! Her first appearance is in the Power of Three arc, as an expecting queen who takes care of Tawnypelt's litter while she goes to the mountains during Outcast. She babysits again in Eclipse, when the battle of the eclipse occurs. She next appears in Omen of the stars raising her first litter, who were Cloverfoot, Berryheart and Buster (who was previously Rippletail). She is also seen briefly at a gathering in which she sits next to and gossips with Redwillow, who she fights in the Great Battle after saving her brother Ratscar from the Dark Forest warriors saying that the Warrior Code is more important than any cat's life. She has another Litter by the Vision of Shadows arc, which included Yarrowleaf, Beenose, and Bluebellkit. She is absorbed into the Kin when they take over Shadowclan and has her third litter, Frondwhisker, Gullswoop, and Conefoot, but doesn't appreciate the way that the Kin operates and flees with her kits to Thunderclan, where she befriends Cinderheart and Blossomfall. She rejoins Skyclan first, where she begs Leafstar to allow Yarrowleaf to return to clan territory to have her kits, and gains a grudge when Leafstar refuses. She helps Juniperclaw by distracting skyclan while he poisoned their fresh kill, but her involvement is never addressed critically. In the Broken Code all her children are now warriors. While out on a patrol she slips and breaks her front paw, Which Shadowsight heals, but she still has a limp. She is a warrior still in the Starless Clan, and does normal warrior duties.

Smokefoot! He is a Shadowclan warrior that shows up in the Power of Three arc. Mentor to Owlclaw, he first appears on a boarder patrol in The Sight to claim land from Thunderclan, and is kind of a jerk, mocking the Thunderclan patrol for having a blind apprentice. His appearances always have him as a sour opinionated cat who says what he thinks people aren't saying, which is usually rude or based on stigma. He leads the Shadowclan patrol to Thunderclan camp before the Great Battle that fights alongside Thunderclan when the Dark Forest attacks. When an apprentice says that Shadowclan needs help, he leaads his patrol along with Lionblaze and Greystripe back to Shadowclan, and tries to tell lionblaze to help Snaketail but the warrior tells Smokefoot to do it himself. He retires to the Elders den for the next few Super Editions and hasn't been in the allegiances since, though we don't know his official cause of death.

Tallpoppy's third kit, Marshkit! He gets snatched by an eagle on the great journey, but Brackenfur is able to knock the kit back to earth without much injury. After they get to the Lake and disperse, Marshkit goes with his family to Shadowclan and then disappears from the narrative completely. Funnily enough Kate admitted on her blog page for leafpool's wish that they may have forgotten about Marshkit and that he probably wouldn't be making an appearance. While i was researching these three i realized the sadness Toadfoot feels when asked about his kithood friend could have been for the passing of his brother and not for Birchfall, but that's probably not what was intended. There is no official death for him written into the narrative, but it's been such a long time and we've had some pretty Shadowclan centric books it would be odd for him to reappear at this point.

Toadfoot! Another of Tallpoppy's traveling kits. He becomes the closest to Birchfall, and is the most regretful to say goodbye. He disappears for four books completely until Outcast, where he is part of a boarder patrol as Toadfoot. Lionpaw relays a greeting from Birchfall, and the tom looks a little sad but says they were friends on the great journey and now he's a shadowclan warrior. In long shadows he follow's Hollyleaf's scent trail to their fake starclan sign before they can retrieve Blackstar, and has to be restrained by Lionblaze and Flamepaw while they carry their plan out. Once the starclan cats Raggedstar and Runningnose appear he stops struggling in awe, and agrees to keep the secret of their involvement once it's all over. He then is among the Water Patrol against the beavers, and leads the way out of clan territory through shadowclan. in general through all his appearances he comes off very serious, but with a thoughtful center that pays attention to his clanmates and makes bonds with cats from other clans even if he pretends otherwise. In passing appearances he spends a bit of time with Ivytail, enough you could consider them mates imo, sharing fresh kill and patrolling together. He is also seen fixing the nursery wall on his own volition while Ivytail is a queen,,, idk could be something. He makes a few more appearances on patrols but perishes from his wounds in the great battle.

Applefur! Specifically Tallpoppy's daughter, She is one of the few kittens who make the great journey, along with her brothers Toadfoot and Marshkit. They become good friends with Birchfall who was also a kit on the journey, and have a hard time saying goodbye when it's time to separate into clans again. She disappears for Power of three, but in Omen of the stars she is training in the Dark Forest. Though her motivations for why aren't explored, she remains stubbornly lawful and kind, talking back to Mapleshade and Brokenstar about killing or breaking the warrior code, and encouraging beetlewhisker to stay in the dark forest for his friends. In the last battle she has a brief encounter with Ivypool, who encourages her to fight for the clans. She is slain in the last battle, but seen among starclan cats slain in the last battle during a vision at a gathering.

wasn't Talonpaw's mentor Rowanclaw?

You're right lol. That's what I get for trying to type descriptions from memory haha.

Talonpaw! Showed up in the Allegiances under his mentor Rowanclaw with Smokepaw In Midnight, but didn't make a written appearance until starlight on a boarder patrol, and even then was only part of the group. the next thing we hear about him in Twilight is that he's been hate crimed off page by a couple of kittypets while hunting on his own, and was able to drag himself back to camp only to succumb to his wounds. We dont know who his kin or mentor were, but Cedarheart was pretty affected by the loss, possibly because he was also a victim of the kittypets and their twolegs, but I headcanon that the tom may have been his relative.

Smokepaw! Exists briefly in The new prophecy arc, specifically during dawn. He stands frozen in shock as Shadowclan camp is torn apart by deforestation machinery, and has to be dragged away by Squirrelpaw. He comes up again on the great journey when a section of the path crumbles away while the clans are traversing some mountain cliffs, and he managed to cling to the edge for a moment, before Nightwing another shadowclan cat tries to reach him and the rock gives way under their combined weight. Nightwing jumps back but Smokepaw tumbles down into the ravine presumably to his death. Its speculated that due to the Queen's grief at the apprentice's demise Nightwing was his mother, but that's not confirmed. In the Power of three arc a warrior appears in Shadowclan with the prefix smoke (-foot) , and the authors have admitted that though the cats are not the same they may have mistakenly added a Smoke- cat back into the books based upon the previous allegiances. Due to the travelling of Starclan it's unknown whether his spirit meets their ancestors, though the authors think that he would reside there.