A FAQ - Skins

Solan Stonewhip·10/16/2013, 5:56:15 PM·1 votes·644 views

Hi guys

i was wondering if anyone, RIOT or otherwise, could inform me as to how the skins get chosen. as in, who decides what champion gets a skin and why?

it would seem to me that it's just artists preference. because we seem to get a lot of champs who have a lot of skins. and a bunch more that have very few.

just curious. i'm sure it's a FAQ.

thanks

not sure if this should go into the story and style or not. but that's where i'm putting it

3 Comments

7hreshprince10/16/2013, 8:49:04 PM1 votes

From what I have seen Riot post there is usually a lot of things being worked on at the same time and it ends up being whatever makes it down the pipeline first that comes out. Obviously if there is something that is deemed more important for some reason (championship Thresh for example) it would be put high on the priority list.

Another question is how difficult it is to do the champions skins. Teemo for instance has a lot of skins but from what I can tell it is a lot simpler to make then Zyra. With her there is the plants and various spell animations that need to worked on.

Also some champions are in need of a Visual Update to fix their rigging before they can do any new skins for them. Twitch is a good example of that.

Hope the information helps, I'm sure there are more reasons than that.

TheVoiceofExile10/16/2013, 11:49:18 PM1 votes

Although I'm not a Riot employee (soon enough maybe O.o) I am remotely familiar with the game character design process. Here is a mini list (note I said mini) of things that Riot has to account for when making a skin:

A champion for that skin!
A theme for the skin that ties in to some extent with the champion
Making sure that the theme works well visually, with that champion's lore, and hasn't already been done (to some extent obviously) for another champion
The amount of work that needs to be done to make said skin, including but not limited to
Particle Effects: * Generally 1 to 3 attack animations (basic, an alternate, and crit) * All 4 abilities, 5 if they have an active passive * All 4/5 abilities interactions with champions they hit (friendly or not, minions to)
Animations obviously, is the skin just a recolor (unlikely due to recent quality increase on skins)? Or is it a Ultimate skin? etc * Generally 2+ taunts, 2+ jokes, 1 dance, 2+ laughs, idle animations/actions, champion interactions, etc * Spawn animation, death animations (2+), recall animations(s), etc * Depending on the skin level, possibly all the skill animations and leveling animations (think Pulsefire Ez levels 6, 11, 18)
Concept art, more concept art, another redesign of concept art, final concept art, load screen portrait, icon, background for the store
Sounds, again depends on the level of skin

So as you can probably tell from my likely incomplete list there is a lot that goes into the skin. This isn't even including the business side of making a skin, public opinion, etc. They do this for every skin idea they get and like 7hreshprince said, it depends on what gets done first. The more work it takes the longer it takes and the higher the possibility of the skin never getting done (happens, RIP Scorched Earth Renekton).