Warriors Designs by Someone Who Hasn't Read the Books in Years

Hey there! My name's Ald and I haven't read the old battle cat books in a good long time-- but I really love them, so I figured I might as well design the characters anyways! For now I'm only designing arcs one through four characters-- I haven't read DOTC and I actually did recently read AVOS and am currently up to date with TBC, so it would feel wrong to design characters from those books before finishing out the ones I haven't read in years. These are super self indulgent, so they might not always be book-canon. Feel free to use these designs-- tag me if you do, I want to see! DA: AldaraCat Main: @AldaraCat

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an update

im going to be putting this blog on hiatus again for an unknown amount of time. i came to some realizations about warriors and how i interact with warriors media tonight that have hit me in ways i couldn’t have imagined. it’s nothing particularly bad its just really. i don’t feel comfortable creating warriors content until I work through this rut. the same is true of wings of fire content.

i can’t say when or even if i’ll be back. if i do come back, i’ll probably be completely overhauling this account and starting fresh with both warriors and wof content. if i don’t, well, you can find me at AldaraCat on deviantart.

sorry to anyone disappointed by this news. i just need to work through some stuff and get myself figured out before i can keep making this content. thanks for everything, yall.

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plus aroace longtail icon if anyone wants it

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my son my son my son my son my son

he’s aroace and you can fight me on that

No specific notes here, beyond just noting that the spots on the back of longtail’s ears are not starclan clusters, but rather just spots that exist behind his ears.

he’s also like. one of the tallest cats in thunderclan. he’s all muscle and its all lean muscle and cats often wonder if he’s maybe part windclan because he does Look Like a WindClan Cat but no. he’s just like that.

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send me an ask about aroace longtail thanks

im doing longtail’s design next exclusively so i can go ahead and make my icons everywhere aroace longtail thanks

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firestar 2: electric boogaloo

I like this design a WHOLE lot better than the last time i designed him. He’s less cluttered now. I think he feels more like himself.

firestar is small because squirrelflight is small and also because he absolutely has to be smaller than graystripe. 

firestar has a heart on his chest for what i think are fairly obvious reasons? i just like that character design bit

there are four fluffs on his tail, one for each of his pelt colors.

his eartips only go white after the leader ceremony. All leaders, in my mind, have some kind of “white spotted” marking that helps signify their connection with starclan. firestar, as he has a closer listening relationship with them, has spots on his ears.

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Before I get my new designs done, here’s uhhhh my new bread and butter: deputy longtail au

he deserves it lets be real here

I might even expand it to be longstar au because fuck bramblestar

anyways its good to be drawing the battle cats again >:3c

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Going to be rebooting all my previous designs and starting over ! My style’s gotten better recently and so has my designing ability so I’m just going to. Start over.

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Firestar!

Design notes under the cut.

He’s. He’s Firestar. He’s our good vanilla protagonist. What more is there to say?

All joking aside-- I don’t have very many design notes for him, and the ones I do have are littler things. It was interesting to design him-- the vanilla Warriors protagonist who’s existence is the standard for all protagonists later --after designing his daughters. I’ve always wanted for my designs to have some form of family resemblance between close-knit families-- and so I had to base Firestar’s design fairly heavily off of Leafpool and Squirrelflight’s designs(NOTE: The same will not be true for Cloudtail because he’s got a whole other parent I can just say he takes after).

I decided my version of Firestar would look mostly like Squirrelflight, with some Leafpool mixed in. The paws, for example, are from Leafpool-- as is the dark stripe running down his neck, but the white spot on his nose is Squirrelflight, as is his general size and shape.

Rusty is rounder and softer than Firestar-- I like the idea that when leaders become leaders they have small physical alterations-- for Firestar, he got more angular, with his ears tilting back and out slightly while he just gained an air of authority.

Firestar has a more realistic cat nose than Rusty/Firepaw/Fireheart do.

A good couple of his colors are colorpicked from Squirrelflight, and then saturated a little bit. I just felt like they always looked really similar to me, but Firestar’s got to be the neon bright popping color in the forest to get that fire across, yknow?

 As always, requests are open!

Next up: Sandstorm.

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Apologies for the lack of designs recently! I currently cannot do digital art, and won't be able to for around a month, but feel free to put in requests anyways-- I'll need a backlog when I get back on my feet! Sorry again for the inconvienience. Next on my list are Firestar's and Sandstorm's, and they should be getting individual pages.

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Dovewing and Ivypool!

Design notes under the cut.

I am aware of how similar their body types and the differences between them are to Squirrelflight and Leafpool! That’s completely intentional as I’ve always seen a ton of parallels between the two sister pairings. I like to imagine that Dovewing and Squirrelflight have a soft fluffy cuddle pile with kits any time they can.

Intentional similarities: Full-tail color, socks and toes, under-eye spots!

I wanted Ivypool to look tall and lanky like Leafpool but still retain a lot of that spiky flashy attitude that she has; hence the spiky uptufts of fur.

The stripes on Dovewing’s neck, though barely visible, are on the second rung of fluff down! They are based off of a real-world dove.

Dovewing has,, wings on the sides of her paws.

Ivypool does not.

I included all the eye colors I could find for these two! Dovewing has heterochromia AND sectoral heterochromia; while Ivypool just has sectoral heterochromia. Dovewing’s eyes, when she uses her powers, glow amber. Ivypool’s, in the dark forest, become bright red.

Originally Ivypool’s design was going to be a lot more complicated, but I toned it back so that she would be easier to draw repeatedly and replicate.

Ivypool, at any given point in time, could be given more or less scars. Depends on how the artist chooses to draw her.

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Leafpool and Squirrelflight!

Design notes under the cut.

I wanted these two to look pretty different while still retaining some similarity in order to keep them clearly related. For Squirrelflight I took a TON of inspiration from other designs I’ve seen-- off the top of my head the Five Bells design has always had a special place in my heart and as such has a lot of weight here.

I also wanted them to sort of mirror a lot of designs I’ve seen of Ivypool and Dovewing! I always felt like the two sister pairs had a lot in common thematically and story-wise, so I wanted that to be reflected in their looks. 

Yes I know Leafpool canonically has white paws. Look at that, she’s got two of ‘em. I wanted to sync her and Squirrelflight’s designs together better-- the dark back paws give them sister similarities. 

Squirrelflight’s tail is always curled like a squirrel’s

Squirrelflight is one of the fluffiest cats in the Clans-- and yes, her fur is as soft as a cloud.

Leafpool, meanwhile, has nearly no fur. Squirrelflight makes Leafpool let her cuddle in the winter so that she doesn’t get cold.

The tuft on Squirrelflight’s head is 100% inspired by the Five Bells MAP’s design for her. I just. I really like that MAP and it’s design, okay?

Yes, Squirrelflight has a heart nose.

Yes, they both have freckles.

In my envisioning of the books, medicine cats always have sort of galaxy eyes when they’re recieving a vision or when they’re at the moonpool in StarClan-- I just love that aesthetic. The galaxy eyes glow! I just didn’t show it in this drawing.

Next up - I dunno! Probably Ivypool/Dovewing or Firestar/Sandstorm because those are the ones I have in my mind-- I plan on releasing a few in batches like this one and a few individually(ex. Firestar will probably get his own design sheet, but Ivypool and Dovewing will share one). 

Requests are OPEN!! Please request smh.