Ya know what forget it

major wip of powerdag's character
I plan to change a few things while I'm still in the early stages of the piece
I notice that you've already finalized the rendering on the eyes, yet you say this is the "early" stage of the piece.
Try this: Put down a simple basework first; just a basic stick figure, nothing more. Pose it however you like. Don't even bother with things like hands, eyes, or ears yet.
Next, make a new layer, and start building off the stick figure by blocking out the basic shapes of the form. Again, don't even bother with things like ears, eyes, or hands. If something looks off at this point (arms too short, head too big, torso too small, anything), go back to the stick figure layer and adjust the proportions, then draw the blocking again.
Repeat this process until the primitive form looks solid; until you have nothing that looks "off" or "wrong". THEN you can move onto the fine details like fur, lineart, eyes, and things like that. This way you won't get too far ahead of yourself and your finished works will almost invariably start looking better, by a wide margin. If you go over something and make it "perfect" prematurely, then discover that you messed up something in the basework, it's going to be a lot harder and take a lot more time to fix it than if all you've gotta do is scribble down a differently shaped tube.
I have some other suggestions, but I won't give any further criticisms on the piece itself unless you explicitly ask me to.