Here's my final piece.
Name: Anthony Lever
Email: anthonylever@outlook.com
Website: https://www.artstation.com/anthonylever
Twitter: @ALever_Art
Jan 4, '20
Feb 23, '20
To kick things off, I've created a mood board to help inspire me. I'll be adding to this as I find new things and gather reference.
I'm mostly inspired by the bottom middle piece by Mateusz Majewski. I'm not sure how close I am to breaking the rules by using other peoples art in this way. So I'd appreciate it if someone could let me know if I'm breaking the rules at any point.
I've roughed out the body and proportions. I think it might still be a little to human, so I might try to push and exaggerate things more. 
Here are some rough concepts for the clothes. I'm going for something simple like a monks robes.
I like 8 the best, but I also like the exposed shoulders. I'll see what I can do once I start creating the clothes in 3D.
3 seems to be the one that looks like it functions and allows for unlimited movement while not obstructing the rest of the character too much. (I want to say keep exploring and or make an inspirational clothing group like you did above with the inspirational imgs.)
I would agree with @3dc 3 is the most functional. I also think you should make a reference board for the clothing as well. As far as being too human, I think you can push the facial structure some more as well. Similar to the people in avatar, you can make you character more cat like or take an animal you like make mix human elements with that. overall I like the idea. Look forward to seeing how you push this.
Thanks @3dc and @malcom. I gathered more reference and worked on a new costume based on 3, and this is what I've come up with.
I pretty happy with it, but I will probably change it some more once in 3D.
I've also sketched a bunch of hair concepts.
I like 11, but I'm not sure if it suits the character, and it looks like it might be a tricky one to pull off with hair cards.
The long hair of 7 and 10 work best for me. For the pose you have I think 7 might work best. The clothes are good and cool as well. I like the rework
26 days later
I've been pretty busy, and I've not had as much time to work on this as I would have liked, so I'm in a race to the finish line now to have something finished before the deadline.
Here's a summery on what I've been doing:
I started the clothes in Marvelous Designer.
Then I jumped over to Maya to retopo everything.
I wanted to try something a bit different with the arm topology, where it more closely follows the arm anatomy, but in hindsight I shouldn't have bothered. It just took longer to do and creates more issues than it solves.
I posed everything in Zbrush and sculpted all the extra details.
I think the pose is okay, but could be better, I'm just not really sure how to improve it. So if anyone has any tips on improving it I'd love to hear them. I'm a bit short on time so I don't know if I can afford to go back and change the pose but I will if I can.
I did try doing hair 10 (from the concepts above) but I wasn't liking it that much in 3D, so I went with 11 instead.
It's going to be tricky to do with cards, but if I run out of time she looks cool bald too.
Now I'm on to texturing in Substance, I'm hoping this is where it all really comes together.
I did a skin test in Marmoset which I think helps to show where I'm going with this.
All my bakes are done and here's my first pass at texturing.
I played around with the colours a bit and decided that white looks cooler than blue for the clothes. 
