Concepting Upgrades for units - Grunt

As part of both feedback and the progression of the game, I've started concepting upgrades for units, way of altering units already in the game, but with distinct differences so that they can be both tougher units for the players to watch out for, but also some visual variety.


These were alot of fun to do, as the specifics of what i could change were left up to me (to convince my team that it was pure genius) i started off with small and cute changes;
First thought was some sort of hat or helmet and what a child could use for them, so i came up with the thimble helmet. Its helmet shaped and looks fancy enough that a child would put it on a small toy or the like. To expand on the hat idea i also took some more traditional helmet designs, with a standard soldier helmet, which is perched sideways on the grunt due to the shape of the head not matching up. The second helmet is a more vikings themed helmet, the horns giving a more intimidating feel to the silly looking grunt design.

Moving onto the more intensive changes, the large full plate helmet was a simple but effective design, giving a drastic difference in head shape and contrast with the rest of the body. something like this would be sure to look tougher to both a child and to the players.
Then on to the full scale knight look, it might be too radical a change, but the overall silhouette with its round and short stature remains the same so it might be something that comes down to playtesting. giving them shields and swords that they could have gotten from the human soldiers would also add to the impression that these are tougher units.

finally a little of a silly off shoot design is the bush grunt, a grunt that has covered itself in moss, leaves and other forest goods in order to camouflage itself, i got the idea from gillie suits, but liked the idea that the grunts were kinda stupid and didnt apply this properly and so have to lurch around because they cannot see through all the junk.

either way i wanted to either imply or rationalise a increase in health or power or speed for the unit, so that on inspection a player could hazard a guess at how the unit is tougher. e.g. armour = more health 

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