Star Lords is a tower defense game started by Izelis, Inc. My role on the project was to direct unit design, tower design, and animation. Designing the units for this game was a challenge because of their end size. The smallest units ended up being only 15 to 20 pixels wide in game, which is incredibly tiny. Making each unit readable at that size necessitated that the designs be kept very simple.
Above, you can see the units for the Coalition faction. To keep things readable at actual size, I used a lot of color cues to give information about the units. An orange and red gun indicates conventional damage, while light blue indicates energy damage. The amount of gold trim on a soldier indicates its relative level of difficulty.
The Blackguard faction focuses on speed and special abilities over brute force. The two units here are a Medic that heals nearby units (healing indicated by the white trim), and a Runner that moves quickly but does little damage.
The Awakened are the final faction in Space Lords. These sentient robots feature a black and green color scheme and decidedly non-human silhouettes, although the color cues of the previous factions still hold true - red weapons indicate conventional damage and white indicates a Medic-type unit.
Above, you can see a sample animation test that pits several of the units against each other as well as one of the tower types, a slow-firing but powerful energy tower.
Below is some concept art for the different units in game, as well as the lineart that the figure on the title screen was based on.
