Character Design for Animation Research

I found this book, "Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950's Animation" by Amid Amidi at the public library. I really enjoyed this book and it helped me take a good hard look at my character designs to see what I was missing... Style!

This book covered animation from the 1950's and I loved the simplicity of everything. The following designs were created based on what I observed. 

 I like to start with head shots, its important for me to get the character's personality this way before I tackle the rest of it.