Character research

I have taken some time to re-design my main Fox character, and also finally got started on the other characters. I knew I wanted something really quite stylized  but my first point of reference, when I design a character is to look at some images for inspiration. I have sketched, therefore, some real animals, foxes, bears and some chickens. I've just used reference images from Google, and the point was to pinpoint what features make those animals recognizable  which combinations of shapes make a fox’s face look like a fox and etc. Here is some of the research I've done prior to my designs.