Sniper
For the third and final character of the yellow team, I
wanted to take a different visual path than I had with the previous two. I had
already created two figures that were practically covered in brass and some
form of device or another, and from a compositional standpoint, it was time for
a bit of contrast.
Of course, no more brass and no more "gadgets"
meant that I could no longer make use of technology to indicate intelligence. I
had to do it another way.
So I decided to go back to the first principle of
visual-language I used and employ proportions once again. The mechanics of this
are the same as I have discussed previously: increasing the size of those body
parts representative of the required attribute and decreasing those of opposing
or otherwise unrequired ones sends the necessary visual message that makes us
perceive those figures as possessing an abundance of the attribute in question.
Thus, whereas in the case of strength, this implied large
hands, upper-body muscles and a small head, suggesting intelligence requires
almost the complete opposite of this: small or at least thin limbs and
unremarkable or even underdeveloped muscle-mass to draw attention away from the
physical component, and instead an exaggeratedly-large head to suggest a wealth
of the sort of activity for which the head is symbolic: intellectual.
With this in mind, I decided to create a small, sort-of
scrawny-looking bird. Not only because this permitted for a very large head to
look interesting and not too out-of-place, but also because it allowed for a
pair of extremely slender bird-legs which really helped with the overall mood
of the figure.