Character designer

The characters will be for a short, hand drawn, animated student film, set in Arizona, with focus being on the comedic back and forth between the two characters.
Work will start in December and deadline for submission is 20th November.
You will be working under the director creating a visual style for the world and characters. The characters should have a distinct/interesting visual style, without too much exaggeration.
Characters MUST be simple enough for animation but expressive. We are looking for western style characters in the vein of The Road to El Dorado, King of the Hill and Disney 2D animated features.
By the end we are looking to have 2 characters designed and 2 extensive model sheets for each of them. The design process will involve a lot of feedback and changes and will be what takes up the most amount of time.

I am a professional animator working in Cambridge, currently all films are under the name "Grumpy Bunny Productions" which is aimed at producing traditional hand drawn animations.