Great start here. Do you have any sort of style guide you are following? If not its okay you are probably kind of making it as you go.
The line work is all the same width all the way around, and your stage 2 looks more dynamic than the line work because of that. Especially in the face.
The arms and hands need some more perspective and anatomy love. But for a design sheet this gets the idea across well enough.
The highlight on the dress is not necessary. You've also tried to do the form with the shadow shapes but it isn't working very convincingly right now.
I think you could get away with not doing that. Spend more time on designing instead of shading that way. The form will be implied by the direct shadow shape made from the light source. Make sure it is consistent with the light source, ie," shadow on the same side of all objects opposite of the light source"
The future of the project must always be considered. If it is going to be hand drawn then the bottom of the dress is going to be the most time consuming part. It's cool, dont get me wrong. But if it was 3d animation may be the only way it was feasible with a time line of production. The motif could be worked into the character more simply, which would be feasible for a hand drawn aspect. Find the essence of the character shape and design. Here is a video I always show people that is short, informative, and the jpegs are always really helpful to have on file.
It really opens your eyes up to why our animation style looks like it does today.
ArtStation - SDC Talk - Techniques for Stylisation in Characters
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yJmel8
