Progress Post - Judgment Day

My first piece this year is another character-based one, this time revolving around the oldest storyline that I still work on. In it, I'm depicting the four most prominent characters and the manner in which their lives pull them in disparate yet related directions.

Even just getting into this piece, I'm already so happy with my direction. My only real concern has been the depth, as I really don't want to fall back into having my goal be composition when I've worked on that aspect of my work for so long. I think the real make-or-break will be painting.

I can already see the colors coming together well just because these guys all have very unified designs. This universe has three colonies, all of which I draw differently, and the characteristics of the Colony of Setting Sun (these guys' place of origin) are saturated, opaque colors, long legs, and feathery fur. Each cat has a color that they lean into. Beech (left) is orange-yellow, Birdie (top) is blue, Buzzard (right) is green, and Bristle (bottom) is purple. When I draw Suncats digitally, there are no gradients, so I'm going to do my best to stay true to that while still working with the texture that paint provides.

My only concern is how I'm going to adequately convey the full story going on during my critique! It being a solo critique makes this process a lot easier.

Bird "Birdie" - Died young to a hawk; grew up in the Stars (this world's afterlife). She watches over and guides her siblings, serving as a symbol of the unreachable purity each one chases. She is the eye of an increasingly corrupt spiritual body. She is depicted as ethereal and winged (wings in progress) and with water hemlock, the ultimate symbol of judgment day within this universe.

Bristle - Haunted by the ghost of her battle-hungry father who died with grievances left to fulfill, Bristle becomes a healer to avoid the prospect of living under his clutches. Even still, she becomes a cog in a freak accident he orchestrates and winds up with blood on her paws. Exiled and scorned, surely never to live up to the standards of the Stars, she turns to the Colony of Towering Pine for refuge. She is depicted with symbols of sleep and dreams.

Beech - The result of an affair between the healer of the Colony of Towering Magnolia and the father of the other three. His mother brought him to the Suncats once weaned to protect him from a plague enveloping her home colony. Since he was the same age as his unknowing half-siblings, he was taken in alongside them. His adoptive mother favored him due to the incorrect yet reasonable assumption that he did not share the same tyrant of a father with her own biological children. He consequently climbed up the ranks while shouldering the weight of being expected to grow up quickly and maintain order. He is eventually left as the colony's head.

Buzzard - Lives the most outwardly "normal" life of her siblings, all the while experiencing increasingly bizarre delusions and crumbling mentally beneath the weight of her mother's favoritism, her sisters' absence, and her seeming invisibility within her own colony. She grows rabid with anger toward Beech, blaming him for her family having been ripped apart until not even the soothing voice of her mentor can stop her from doing what she deems necessary. In her eyes, she is Beech's judgment day.