The bounty hunter in my animation is not as 'cool' as I initially imagined in my head, especially now that the protagonist has changed to the Assistant. If she is the one that wins in the end, then she should be the cooler of the two characters, or at least the more interesting one, as that would be much more satisfying for the audience. With that idea in mind, I've decided that I want the bounty hunter to be much shorter than the assistant, as I feel like that will half add to the idea of him being a little less intelligent, as well as make the assistant look more elongated and sophisticated. Using softer shapes than her would make him seem a little friendlier, which I don't necessarily want, however I think that his actions and body language, with perhaps snobbishness and rudeness could help to reverse this. Despite the assistant ultimately being the 'main character' of this, I want to keep her very angular, as that is much more synonymous with the trickster archetype which she fits into, meaning that it would work best if the hunter contrasted this. More rectangle shapes would maybe work best with him, and I wouldn't have to make the edges as soft so long as I didn't make them as extremely angular as the assistant.
I like this design as it very much goes for the less-than-intelligent kind of personality, but also shows that the character probably has the physical strength and toughness if he needs it, which is important for my character since he needs to be believable as a bounty hunter.
After talking about my ideas, someone brought up the idea of my using Danny DeVito as inspiration for part of this character, which I found interesting. Animation-wise, he could definitely be good reference for movement etc but he doesn't have quite the build I'm thinking about for this character (which I'm mostly considering in my head to be 'tanky but tiny').
Salvador from Borderlands 2 is also a character that I always think about when talking about smaller, buffer characters. the above illustration shows both him and the more normally proportioned Axton, which makes the comparison easier. Most of Salvador's design is his torso, with his legs only taking up a bit of space in comparison so that his chest and arms are the parts of his design that stands out the most. I think that this keeps the emphasis on his strength, which stops him from looking quite so silly.
Heavy from TF2 isn't quite as small as my other research, but still has the strong but not so intelligent look about him. I think that it's important to notice that even though his proportions are more realistic to the other characters that I've looked up, his body is still at least as long as his legs, if not a little bit longer. Not a single one of these designs has legs that are longer than their bodies, which really helps add to the top heavy feel of the character. I need to make sure that I incorporate this idea into my character so that his proportions work for his personality.
It is interesting to think about how the bounty hunter is usually the morally dubious kind of character, and so could fit the trickster archetype in some situations depending on their methods, but I suppose this time I just have two characters that are dubious in their own ways, and so the bounty hunter may just be getting what he deserves anyway.
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