Creator Spotlight: Allie Jean

Welcome to the Creator Spotlight! Learn more about talented League of Legends creators. If you’re looking for more League in your life, follow these amazing individuals! This time we're interviewing Allie Jean, best known for illustrating imaqtpie's YouTube thumbnails!

Who are you? What got you into creating/crafting?

My name is Allie, but I often use the moniker "Nut Boy." I'm an illustrator with way too many interests and I've been drawing since my dad handed me some office supplies when he had to babysit me at work as a toddler!

Where are you from?

Los Angeles, California, born and raised!

What got you into League of Legends and who is your favorite champion?

My friends picked up League while I was in university studying for my art degree around season 4. I was the last person to join them and got autofilled into the support role constantly, so my first favorite champion was Leona. If I was going to have to play support, I definitely wanted to murder the enemy bot lane or feed my ass off trying! Now, after playing and watching streams for many years, my favorite role has become ADC and my absolute favorite champion is Jhin. Sion and Orianna come closely in second place though.

How did you come up with imaqtpie's illustrated persona?

It's a little odd, because I enjoyed drawing only really feminine and delicate stuff for a long time in my life. There's a whole embarrassing article somewhere where someone at a convention interviewed me and I just talk about how much I love drawing girls. But in reality I'm a bit of a goon. I started off drawing QT by doodling some stuff based on jokes we'd pass around in QT's channel, and realized I enjoyed making art that wasn't dependent on being pretty but rather about being goofy and fun. When 2ndsequence (QT's editor) asked me if I wanted to make art of QT for the YouTube channel, I went all in on it. 2ndsequence has been friends with Michael for a long time and knew exactly what direction he wanted to go. QT's illustrated persona is very much curated by 2ndsequence's understanding of his friend's humor and his dedication to a vision when collaborating with me.

What champion is your favorite to draw QT-ified?

This is tough. Probably Sion, because I already love Sion, and putting QT's long hair on bald characters is still hilarious to me. Draven is also up there because he's extremely expressive just like QT and I get a lot of practice drawing teeth.

What was the process for creating the imaqtpie illustrated mural in K-Town?

Riot reached out to me and I immediately accepted! We went through a lot of sketches to start since there were a lot of champions as options to fill up the mural. Chesney (an art director from Riot) had a great composition and direction to start things off. We then filled it with champs that QT likes to play and references to some of our favorite QT videos.

I was a little on the fence about making the champions all “cosplay QT” because I was taking this HUGE project extremely seriously. We all came to the conclusion that we really did want it to be completely authentic to his character. I didn't hand-paint the building mural myself, but waiting for the finished piece to go up took just long enough to make it feel like I was seeing my art again for the first time... suddenly on the biggest canvas I've ever seen.

What's something people would be surprised to know about you?

When I got my first console as a kid, I didn't have my own TV so I plugged my PS2 into a black and white karaoke machine with a 6" screen. A lot of my memories of formative games like Kingdom Hearts are in black and white!

Who inspires you? Put some links, share some love.

This might be weird, but my art inspirations aren't usually other illustrators. My biggest inspiration is 2ndsequence, who really helped push me from making goofy stuff for fun into stuff that is goofy AND worthy of being a job. My newer inspirations are my friends at Game Grumps who let me run wild creatively outside the drawing box. As for illustrators, my first inspiration and influence was definitely my friend Dustin Nguyen, and my school friends Cathy and Siobhan whose art journeys I feel like I follow as closely as my own. I couldn't choose better people to be surrounded by.