How do you work around the single body type constraint when designing characters?
TL;DRArmor and clothing silhouettes create variety on a single body type, with concept artists drawing on varied references while considering movement and anatomy, and riggers handling big shape changes.
Silhouettes are the biggest thing for me. You can do a lot of crazy things with different kinds of silhouettes. But we also have to consider movement, the anatomy of the body, so we can't just go crazy, right? So it's a lot of research, and trying to stay away from generic reference, like body armor, where you're just like, oh, I'm just going to do another one of those. Getting references from outside sources, like maybe nature or just some weird pattern that you've seen, as an inspiration to come up with new shapes. But for me, silhouette is the biggest driving force to come up with different ideas on the human body. And you can come up with some crazy, crazy things. And then normally when I do something crazy, I walk over to Gage's desk and apologize to him. I'm like, I'm sorry, you've got to rig this, man. You've got to skin it. So be ready.
So if I'm understanding you correctly, what you're talking about is designing armors and clothes that change the silhouette of the same static character in order to provide the appearance of variety.
Armors do a great job of that, especially when you go from, let's say, the base male to light, medium, and then you go to heavy. There's some intense shape changes that still work pretty well.