Inspiration from Glen Keane's work to change Gloria

I haven't been happy with The Detective's face (- we've decided her name is 'Gloria Kendrick'). She's meant to be clumsy, enthusiastic with slightly misplaced over-confidence - so in a sense quite innocent looking. She doesn't realise the amount of work she'll have to put in to become who she wants to be. At the moment she just seems incredibly doll-face looking, as mentioned earlier this is probably also due to my drawing style.

In general we're also aiming for a slightly stylised look as this will allow us to mess and manipulate proportions (for example Gloria has incredibly long legs - easy to fall over). Siobhan has been working on some designs for our second character, and they illustrate enhanced proportions well. Seen HERE.

It's important the design of both characters correspond and compliment each other, we've thought of this to an extent (he is short and built showing he won't fall over - and also to add comic value at the contrast to her height) but I still think the current design of Gloria needs to be tweaked in order to 'fit in' with the overall style of our cinematic.

With this in mind I've been looking through 'The Art of Tangled' book I bought over summer. It's full of beautiful concept art, sketches and character development. More specifically to my design problems at the moment though, are the drawings of Rapunzel by Glen Keane.

Glen Keane - Rapunzel

With just a few lines Glen Keane manages to create a character full of expression and charm. In these sketches the eyes are quite rounded and wide giving Rapunzel quite a young innocent feel. In general her face is quite round, the lack of sharp edges giving her a cute, non-threatening look. Influenced by this style I've doodled and sketched a little bit, trying to make the eyes of our character - Gloria - more innocent and wide-eyed, and taken into account the fact her mouth should probably be less pouting and instead wider and expressive. The below image has the face I'm happier with, i still think some things, such as hair, needs to be tweaked, but overall our character Gloria's face is less harsh and 'made-up' and more innocent and expressive.

Face sketches and a better look for Gloria