I can imagine them, being in a smaller (not standing) pose, as long as no enemy is close.
And when you get closer they “develope” from kind of plinth to a standing statue.
Best with a nice “transforming animation” - like when in transformers movies the autobot transforms from car to robot (of course a bit more trivial).
Further more, instead of just adding armor, you could show different levels of strength of these protectors live you show different levels of creatures.
Like you showed in here:
Because this model looks like one of the lower level protectors. Pretty skinny and not very threatening.
The higher the level he should get bigger shoulders, stronger arms and legs - till he is in the end looking like kind of massive golem.
I’m thinking this is a sort of infantry of the protectors. The guys could be in a box shape and when you stumble upon them (they’re always in groups), they transform into the concept art we have know or whatever it changes to. And yes I think they should show their level of strength like @Smoothy mentioned their planning with cuttletrunks
