Character Designing

I've been trying to get the hang of drawing more interesting characters lately. I sometimes feel like a lot of my drawings sit on an uncomfortable middle-ground between realism and stylization, not really fitting into either category. So for the past little while, I've been working on pushing the stylization, exaggerating shapes more, and generally just making more appealing characters. Please give me some feedback, since I'm not really sure yet how this whole character-design thing is supposed to work. At least let me know if I'm going in the right direction.

So first off is an extra-beefy lion I drew a few days ago and decided to color tonight. I'm actually really pleased with this one.

I drew this raptor when I went to work with my dad this last week, using a statue of a roadrunner in the same pose as reference. My dad had been given the statue by some university clients of a school whose mascot was the roadrunner, and I thought it looked rather dinosaur...ish.
And this has nothing to do with character design, but is just so everyone will know that I have the coolest Iron Man action figure ever.
You know you're jealous.