Got a lot done tonight.

First, here's a custom design + reference sheet for Mosstalon! We did a design swap. She designed and made a reference sheet for my own beautiful Maye, a character I plan to use for an upcoming project, and I created this lovely girl for her in return. I'm pretty happy with it, especially the amber orbs up at the top. Those took some trial and error, haha

I spent literal days on this thing, so, please, nobody steal it. Please just don't 😞

If you're curious, here's what Mosstalon came up with for me:

Look at my pretty girl ;w;
Sghksnsicndkskx I love her so much ;w;

As soon as Moss sent this to me I started drawing her.

She's got her little cactus plushie
S o  p r e c i o u s

Then I designed a few other characters for the same project:

I ADORE how Rex came out—his design is a bit more complicated than I'd like, but I fell in love with it so I kept it that way ;w;
Rex is my tall tough boy who's dying of illness like the rest of the world but still not standing for anybody's bullshit.
Stone is my tired man who just wants everybody to get along, if only because he can't snooze through their bickering.

These two are bother suffering from the plague, which is why Rex is so skinny, Stone's nose is bleeding and he looks really old (he's pretty young, actually) and both of them have bloodshot eyes. They're both fortunate enough to not have developed any sores or boils like some other cats do, but they're still dying like everybody else. Stone has mostly accepted it, but it still bothers Rex greatly. He's terrified of dying.

(Spoilers for my comic ahead, just in case you don't want to know about it until I actually start substantial work on it ^^')
Because they are sick with the plague, they're in one of the quarantine facilities along with numerous other cats. Since the society doesn't have the manpower or resources to provide for those in quarantine, the sick cats are assigned into hunting groups and are sent out every few days to catch as much prey as they can. If you are for any reason unable to hunt, another cat in your group can try to pick up the slack for you, but sometimes it's not enough. Rex and Stone are the only ones in their hunting group when we first meet them, as their former two other group members recently passed because they both were unable to catch enough to support themselves.

Rex appears almost cruel sometimes because the world has screwed him over so much in his life, and he admittedly does some really, really bad stuff and makes some incredibly poor decisions, but I think Stone would get along with him anyway, since Stone finds 'ordinary' people to be boring. Plus his own coolness would be able to counter Rex's hotheadednesses. They'd compliment each other very well, I think. I'm even considering having them be lovers, but lowkey, on the down-low kinda lovers—like the reader wouldn't know unless they were looking for it. (I just feel like there ought to be some ships. There are no couples whatsoever so far.) Wouldn't it be so sad, though? They're the only ones who can get along with each other, but once they finally discover that they're in love, they're already dying.

Poor boys.