4 Riders of Apocalypse

Well, i guess the main idea of my drawing is that the Apocalypse will not look the way you imagined it. It's going to be something you see, feel, hope for the first time.

Now some stories behind these characters. I coupled the four horsmen to the 4 elements, then to what animals these elements reminded me, and then to hystorical periods that came to mind considering a concrete horseman.
The results were:
Conquest - air - bird - middle ages
Death - earth - dog - Baroque/Napoleon times
War - fire - scorpion - nowadays/IIWW
Famine - water - fish - future.

And the details on the characters just came while drawing.

Now the most interesting character is the dark guy in the middle. He's behind everything, and symbolises that theres allways someone, who knows more, and that theres more to things than just the interesting facade. My characters are just clowns, minions of the guy noone knows... I don't think it's god, by the way. Maybe it's us? Maybe it's knowlidge we have? I realy didn't think about that, everyone can make up their own story.
I also wanted 4 different riders, so theres a woman, a dead guy, a man, and a child - different stages, diferent ways of life.