Getting a Stride

A couple days ago, I posted that I felt like I was finally reaching the personalized style I was striving for.  Now I'm feeling a lot more confident in my designs and have created a few sketches I am quite happy with.
First, I have a posed sketch of the design I displayed in the last post:

I just want to note that the shading looks really nice in my sketchbook.  Once again, my scanner has washed about a bit more than I would have liked.

Next up, a new design:

And once again, the previous design posed and shaded:

Now for some extra information, i.e. references/inspirations.
The first design (Nelia) was mostly inspired by Talim from the Soul Calibur series.  Small bits of inspiration for her also came from assorted images that came up on Google when searching for things along the lines of 'amazoness' and 'female monster hunter'; I don't remember if those were the exact queries.
Rick, on the other hand, is mostly (and perhaps a bit obviously) inspired by designs found in both the Street Fighter and Dragon Ball franchises.  He also has a large, strong jaw reminiscent of Batman (or superheroes in general I suppose).

When I get all of the designs for the main characters of this project ready, I plan to do thorough digital clean-ups of all of their original sketches and composite all of them in a large group shot.
As for the 'project' itself, I don't/won't give much detail on it, at least for the time being, because I still have a lot to work out.  I have a vague premise for the story and plan on it probably being a graphic novel.  There's really not too much else to say that wouldn't just sound silly/weird since I have so little of the context worked out.  Regardless, I hope you enjoy the artwork I'm posting.