Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Well, the boots, the pouches, and the blade are all external visual cues. I’d argue the book looks kind of oversized too, which is also external. Her clothes are tailored kind of oddly too - everything fits her very loosely, and the sleeves come down pretty far.I agree. A couple of things stand out to me about the equipment and clothes. The boots are extra tall, almost oversized. The pouches are also oversized, the blade feels extra wide, the hair is voluminous. All of that with a slightly exaggerated head size gives you the sense of a small person without relying on external visual queues.
The cues that are inherent to the character’s body are pretty effective though. Her shoulders and limbs are quite broad compared to her torso, which is very slender. Her right arm is a little long. Her head is very round, and her facial features small and pursed, with her eyes rather wide-set. It looks like she’s narrowing her eyes, but that if she opened them wider they would be pretty big. Her feet are a little large too, though not unrealistically so. Hypothetically that could be due to the boots being too big for her though.
Overall the effect definitely communicates her size well, but I do wonder how effective it would be if her equipment wasn’t quite as exaggerated in size. Not that I mind her equipment looking the way it does, I actually rather like the approach, especially since 5e doesn’t have specially-sized equipment for Small characters. The piece overall definitely works for me. I’d prefer an approach like this over what we ended up with in the PHB.