Unit Pictures

[Robear]

Well, I don't recall stairs on any modern Protoss structure, but the Jungle tileset based on Aiur does have stairs as ramps for its temple tiles, and their aesthetic is similar to that used for the Protoss Temple that marks the Xel'Naga landing site, so maybe those stairs are an homage to a more ancient style? Like Protoss neoclassical architecture?

Yeah, I like this explanation, I'll go with it. :P

One thing I screwed up: even if the Nexus is this big...



The doorway and stairs are terran-sized; they're too small for the Zealot to use! :X

The doorway I could just scale up, but the stairs are a little harder... I guess I'll have to try anyway. Oops...

I'm gonna try to get back to drawing HotS units for now— anyone have any clue how big a Widow Mine should be (given that it manufactures an infinite supply of rpgs that can hit air units o_O )?

[Quirel]

I'm gonna try to get back to drawing HotS units for now— anyone have any clue how big a Widow Mine should be (given that it manufactures an infinite supply of rpgs that can hit air units o_O )?

Missiles. It manufactures missiles.

As for how big it ought to be, keep in mind that the Marauder's shells are apparently manufactured by its armor. Probably shouldn't be too much bigger than an arclite.

[topsecret221]

I think it should be hellion or Hellbat sized, personally. If it got too close to tank sized, it would just be strange.

EDIT:
If you look at the Widow Mine's unit page, the concept art at the top shows an old beta widow mine flying towards a mutalisk... Considering the size, I think Hellbat size would be almost generous. But, disregarding this concept art and under the assumption that it has to be large enough to create these missiles (and the missiles are marine sized, simply for posterity's sake), I would say an overall size of 4 meters tall, 7 meter diameter, including legs, 3 meter diameter of the central launching/maufacturing body.

[Robear]

I think it should be hellion or Hellbat sized, personally. If it got too close to tank sized, it would just be strange.

EDIT:
...Disregarding this concept art and under the assumption that it has to be large enough to create these missiles (and the missiles are marine sized, simply for posterity's sake), I would say an overall size of 4 meters tall, 7 meter diameter, including legs, 3 meter diameter of the central launching/maufacturing body.

I guess Hellion seems reasonable to me. I don't think the missiles should be marine sized since Banshee and Viking missiles are smaller. Anti-groups-of-zerg-units-missiles shouldn't be bigger than anti-spacecraft missiles, imo. But, I dunno.

Since, according to the game guide, the Widow Mine was in some sense still "constructed around a modified version of the Spider Mine," having them be 4 meters tall is just too much of a stretch. :/ They really screwed their lore for it over when the made it not actually be a mine, though, so, of course, mine is large enough to practically make its own Spider Mines.





Do you still think this is too small? It might be.


Also btw Valkyries are as big as command centers, haha.



Which I still feel fine about, Serenity from Firefly is still bigger (82m long), for example.


I also did an Impaler lurker.



This is almost definitely going to be the only HotS evolution unit that I do. I'm justifying including it because, since my old Lurker included influences from older lurker designs, this new, purely SC2 one is more than just a palette swap.


Edit: The new short story provides an official height of a (prototype) Warhound! 7 meters is the word. Haven't drawn mine yet, but, as you can see, it's quite reasonable. I might've gone a meter bigger, but this keeps the cab size in line with the SCV and Goliath.

[topsecret221]

May I ask why you decreased the size of the air units in the updated ground units on the main page, especially the banshee? The banshee was 5 meters tall prior, and in your updated picture it's only 3 meters. The other Zerg unit's sizes were also significantly decreased. I also notice that the colossus' size was bumped up about 10 meters

[Robear]

Eh, just ignore that tiny banshee/mutalisk, that 'update' is a month old now. I don't know what I was doing there. The current sizes for those are looking like this.





Some of the zerg air units are a bit smaller than my Wings of Liberty edition, but not as much as in that picture you're referring to. I just don't update the whole image very often because, since it's so incredibly wide now, I have to save it out as a bunch of separate segments and stitch them together, and it's mildly annoying/a waste of time to do it often.

I don't remember when I changed the colossus' size, but it was probably to further differentiate it from the buildings. Just to make colossus slightly more significantly taller, since anti-air fire works on the colossus but not the nexus.


I've also decided not to include the extractor, even though I love its picture. It looked weird to just have one race's gas, and drawing all 3 would have made the building section of the picture take up more space than the actual units. So, just the mains, and maybe spine crawlers/spore crawlers/missile turrets, since they're kind of like units.

I've also sketched the Warhound; I'll edit the proportions a bit and color it later.

[topsecret221]

Looks good to me. You still got it Maybe we can squeeze in a Barracks or a Gateway?

So that would put the colossus at 80 or so meters?

[solidsamurai]

And do you have any intention of doing the Zerg eggs? Their size always baffles me.

Just assume that zerg are contortionists, or that the skeleton assembles itself fully as the creature hatches out. So yeah, an ultralisk compressed into an 8ft. tall egg. That's how I imagined it - sort of a cartoony growth thing going on that is horrific at the same time.

I'd say the collossus is probably like 40 meters at most. It's a ground unit - 40 meters lets it shoot pretty everything and it's height exposes it to anti-air because of trajectory physics (anti-air projectiles refuse to pitch their angles downwards and advanced friendly fire avoidance mechanisms screw with the precision needed for hitting ground targets - that's how I imagined the long bolt missile worked anyway).

Just to make colossus slightly more significantly taller, since anti-air fire works on the colossus but not the nexus.

Nexus has force fields that draw away anti-air missiles or anti-air is penetrative and doesn't really harm the actual structure of a building (unless the building is floating, in which case, it can seek out the engines and eventually dig into them with enough volleys). Spore colony spores only seek out moving targets, and force fields or armor mask these 'psychic' signatures (unless, again the building is floating, in which case it generates too much energy to mask itself). The only ground to air anti-air is the longbolt (from terran missile turret) and spore colony right? Easy enough to handwave those.

So yeah, 40 meters (or whatever you had before) is already pretty darn tall.

I've also decided not to include the extractor, even though I love its picture. It looked weird to just have one race's gas, and drawing all 3 would have made the building section of the picture take up more space than the actual units. So, just the mains, and maybe spine crawlers/spore crawlers/missile turrets, since they're kind of like units.

Including photon cannons and pylons would provide the perfect protoss perspective too.

Maybe you should have your own section for buildings, and just match up collossal units with collossal buildings (command center, nexus, etc.) and smaller units with smaller buildings (pylon, photon cannon, etc.).

[Robear]

About the zerg growth stuff— I agree completely, well put.

About the Colossus, I'm gonna keep it more in the 80 meter range for now. I just don't see a reason for it to be so small when Protoss ships can be so large.

I don't really want to buy into your anti-air handwaving. Yeah, it could be done, but it just makes everything more... lame. Spore colonies/crawlers unable to attack stationary targets makes no sense, what if a battlecruiser were hovering in place 5000 feet off the ground, and a bunch of spores were rooted underneath it to defend the hive? "Oh, nope, it's not moving, sorry Overmind, can't attack." And there are quite a few more surface-to-air attacks: in addition to longbolt (missile turret) missiles and seeker spores, there're hellfire (goliath) missiles, javelin (thor) missiles, the HotS thor's cannons. And the SC2 Queen and Warhound used to have air-exclusive ranged attacks. Not to mention air-to-air attacks like the phoenix, corsair, corruptor, devourer, viking, wraith, etc. being able to hit collossi and not buildings. Right now I have the Nexus at over 40m tall, so I still think the colossus should be taller.


Here's the 7m tall Warhound.



It's fine, though it looks a bit scrawny. I think the size worked better before they redisigned the cockpit, the tiny windows in the new one make it look like it was supposed to be bigger. Oh well, it's still huge compared to a marine.

[Robear]

Terran fighters!

Tac Fighter:



Griffon:



SC2 Valkyrie: