How to Make a Compelling Warriors Character Design by Eggpaw

Eggpaw teaches you how to make a Warriors character!

Art is a way many Warriors fans express their love for the fandom. Some art pieces are beautifully detailed, while others, not so much. Wherever you are on the spectrum, there’s a common thing about every art piece and every character you create through art. Design. The colors you put on your reference sheet will be used for every drawing of that character. The amount of fluff, the size and shape of the muzzle, all of this goes into a compelling Warriors character design. So, how do you make one? It’s not as easy as it seems. In this article, I’ll show you how I, Eggsnake, make my Warriors designs and how you can make yours in your own art style!

First of all, you’ll need to look at your character’s personality. A character’s personality can be revealed in their design. Dainty and delicate? Maybe that means making the paws and ears smaller and the eyes bigger. Bold and brash? Maybe that means making the muzzle bigger and the overall build more muscular. All of this depends on your character and your art style. For this example character, we’ll make them rude and arrogant (because, you know, Jayfeather).

Then, decide on the overall build and work your way up. Different builds can say a lot about a character. Is the character scrawny or lanky? Or are they muscular and huge? You wouldn’t use a scrawny cat for the strong, evil villain, and you wouldn’t use a huge, muscular cat for the anti-hero. These are things to keep in mind. For this example cat, we’ll make them scrawny and weak (again, Jayfeather).

After you decide on the build, you get into more specific stuff on your character. You should be able to tell who a character is just from their silhouette. You can change things like the amount of fluff, or the tail shape, or the shape of the muzzle, and the list goes on and on. You can also incorporate this with the personality, too—design and personality influence each other! So, more muscular cats might have more broad muzzles, and more cute cats would have more fluff. Of course, just based on sterotypes, but you’ll be surprised at how well this works. For the example character, we’ll make them have thin fur, a thin, tapering tail, angular ears and face, and thin legs and small paws (Jayfeather, or maybe Crowfeather).

Once you have a distinct silhouette for your character, you can get to the most minor details of all. Depending on your style, you should be able to change things like the eye shape, the amount of eyelashes, etc.. So, how do you do that, exactly? Just follow your gut, of course! Is it a more evil and bold character? The eyes should be more slender and intense. But that’s just my style—you could do it a completely different way if you wanted! You can also change the number of eyelashes, the shape of the eyebrows, and even the amount of fluff in the ears! There’s a lot you can change here to really make your character stand out. For the example, we’ll give them slender, angry eyes, a bit of ear fluff, and no eyelashes (once again, Jayfeather).

Now you can decide on which special features your character gets. A collar? A torn ear? Leaves in their fur? Though small, these can tell you a lot about a character. A collar means the character is a (sterotypically) soft kittypet. A torn ear means the character is brave and goes into many battles. Leaves mean the character is messy and unorganized. Whichever you use, make sure it fits your character! For our example cat, I’ll give them a torn ear (wait, Jayfeather didn’t have that).

Finally, you can do the fun part—coloring! The colors should not only make sense, but fit your character as well. The antagonist usually has a dark pelt color, since they’re more sinister. But you could change this, of course! You can always just color how you’ve been imagining the whole time. Have you got a specific breed in mind? Try searching up pictures of this breed and coloring your character how the breed is often colored. Even color can tell a lot about a character! For example, tints of different colors like white and black. Blue-tinted white gives off a nice, calm vibe, while red-tinted white looks more lively and energetic. To me, at least. While they both look white at first, when you put them together, you can really see the difference! I’ll make the example have blue-tinted gray fur, dark gray stripes, and jay blue eyes (yep, Jayfeather).

And, there you have it! A good, interesting Warriors design! Because of the way I design each character to have a distinct silhouette, no-one will get confused when a character changes accesories or gets mud in their fur or something. It’s a good idea for you to do this, too! That’s all I have for you! Goodbye, and have fun designing!