Hey guys! If you don't know what the CCOS is, it's the Community Concept Open Stage. A champion concept contest here on the boards, made by and for players. No reds involved and nothing official (no, you won't get a concept in-game or anything), but it's a great way to show off your concept know-how, get feedback from your peers as well as vye for a chance at some bragging rights and a shiny custom .gif to pin on your concept.

The CCOS happens every month, taking entries starting at noon EST on the second monday of every month. Currently we're in the March segment!

Now with that out of the way, this post is a little something I do whenever I get enough volunteers for judges that I don't have to jump in myself. (I organize/host the CCOS btw). A Breaker post is a culmination of tips, rants, shout-outs and anything else I can throw out to keep those creative thoughts rolling and keep the CCOS cheer on the up and up. I'm shooting for doing two every month while the judges are doing their thing, but no promises on me being able to keep it up [Insert parrot meme here]

#Shout-out

######Note: I can only do this because I am not slated to judge, this does not imply favoritism or foreshadowing of the CCOS results in any way, just a personal thumbs-up from me. :)

As promised I sifted through the March entries in search of a good lore-side concept, and Dyslexai stood out (among others) with Alvedaen, The Ruined King.

A good lore doesn’t have to be several pages long. Alvedaen sports a easy to digest size lore that spoke well about who he was and where he came from, while being a smooth and well-made passage. While the idea of ‘the ruined king’ isn’t a new one it’s many incarnations by players is always a treat to read, imho at least.

Check out Dyslexai’s sweet lore-skills in the link above!

#Tip of the week: Thematics

What I mean by thematics is the tie-ins you can make with a champion’s kit/lore and their overall theme. Malzahar, for example, is the Void Prophet. So some thematic tie-ins are his DoT (death by attrition/patience) and his voidlings. Most of his kit is ramping damage so he is both the harbinger of ‘an oncoming doom’ in lore and kit. So how can we put that into a player made concept?

Easiest place to start is to ask the right questions, first is “what theme am I going for here?”. Like it or not you’re going to have a theme for your champion, be it subtle or very apparent. It’s all part of characterization. Without a theme your champion is going to look very samey. A theme is effectively a quick ‘claim to fame’ that sets them apart from the other champs. More often than not you can easily answer this question by your champion’s title.

Now that you have your theme you have to first think about what would make sense to have in their kit. Lux has lasers because she’s light, Jax has everything revolve around his lamp-post because he’s the weapon master, etc etc. This is where you can have a good spark of creativity for game mechanics because it’ll focus your thoughts on what that theme can do.

Future plans

As promised, I’ll go into why I’m looking to make a team for the CCOS. Simply, I’m planning to expand it beyond the Boards. Don’t worry it’ll still stay on the Boards as the home-base, but I’m hoping to draw people from other mediums. Like Leddit.

Of course, if you’re familiar with Reddit you know about the “Reddit hug of death” and so I plan to be well prepared for the 60 concept limit to fill quickly. Seeing as most judges already have issues grinding through 20 or so concepts I’m going to have to re-think the process to be able to handle such a large load. Hence the team.

With dedicated and experienced perma-judges we can cut through the concepts quicker and with other members tackling the peripherals the level of organization can get much higher! In other words, I tackle a lot of the stuff with the CCOS all by my lonesome, and while I’m not complaining I can’t keep doing that if I plan to get the CCOS bigger and better.

In case you missed last week I am looking for:

• A hype-generator. Not spamming or cheesy or anything, but someone to post things like Breakers to keep people interested and talking. Random tip collections, shout-outs and the like are all fair game. More details to be discussed if interested.

• An animator. Look, I'm not a pro at animating. I can navigate Blender and Maya alright but I simply don't have the time to practice enough to give you guys the .gifs I think you deserve. So if anyone feels they can do better (and has better/quicker equipment) and do it every month feel free to contact me. It's honestly good practice for anyone looking to animate/model as a career imo.

• Perma-judges. This means I can rely on you being available every month to judge every concept in a month. This also means (prone to change depending on number of perma's) you cannot enter the CCOS once you're signed up.