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Hey Ironstylus, I've got a bunch of random questions and critiques about league champ visuals!

turkeyBACON·8/17/2014, 9:33:47 PM·3 votes·879 views

Hey Ironstylus and champ VU team! Hope you guys are having a good weekend. So I've had quite a few ideas and questions for a while but most weren't deserving of their own post so I'm going to post them here hoping that you can reply to at least some of them.

  1. Targon's is one of the most visually confusing locations in your lore right now. Targon appears to revolve around the central theme referencing heavily from greek and roman or at least it spawned with the original intro of Pantheon (who is also visual cliche but is legacy and bound for VU). But everything we know about the place is seems to clash with it self. Leona appears to be her own thing. She uses a lot of high contrast colors and long lines on a half armour jump suit. None of which seems to match her setting or even seems to reinvent the idea of ancient greek. She's just too modern in styling. Diana on the other hand is sort of a weird mix between modern clean lines that interlock and coated in ancient stone and green tones. This oddly works pretty well for her and her story and almost works as a good mid point between the ideas but the outliers (panth and leona) are so far removed she is still fairly alone.

1-A) Do you agree with my assessment? Do you think Diana is the gold standard that the visual stories should revolve around? Lore wise she's stuck in the past but she appears the most cohesive and put together so far. Leona feels far to modern to me and panth is just in an a dire need of any story at all.

1-B) As an aside whats up with the iconography for Leona and Diana? Diana has this very simple circle in a crescent moon where as Leona has these multiple concave elongated diamonds that intersect a doughnut. Lore wise It suggest that the shield and swords are ancient but the symbols are implemented in ways that make them appear almost tacked on rather than important. They also don't work as separate elements that should be in the same "family". It looks like they were designed by 2 different people but I'm fairly certain you were heading the visual lead for both. As an outsider it become pretty difficult to envision how they go together as a pair and how any other icon could fit if you were to try to introduce more.

  1. Is Brand slated for a VU at all? Personally I feel that brand lore wise has so much potential for visual story but he's currently stuck in boring burnt husk that doesn't tell me anything about who he is other than he's on fire. This guy is suppose to be an ancient evil(?) that possessing a body of a world traveler/raider. Brand looks like the minion fodder that you easily cut through before you get to the final boss that he's suppose to be. Please tell me someone is/wants to look at him in your team. He's so much wasted potential.

  2. Is there any chance Irelia can get the same hair update that sona got? I know she needs a deep concerted Visual and gameplay rework but I'd hate to have to wait mulitple years for that to come about since there are more pressing VU's. At the moment Irelia's major offender is her octopus hair and since it has so much visual real estate it sticks out like a sore thumb. Just updating her hair might be a good bandaid while we wait for all the pizza feet and whatnot to be removed from the game.

  3. Do you think Shen might be worthy of a Karma or Trundle level VU? Frankly, thematically ninja tanks don't make sense and lore wise, shouldn't Akali, the fist of SHADOWS, be Zed's rival rather than Shen, the Eye of TWILIGHT? If so, I've got some crazy idea's that should beef up both Targon's and Kinkou lore and offer a VU path for Panth and the members of the Kinkou Order. It borrows from the idea of the White Lotus in Avatar: the Last Airbender.

  4. The yordle update seems to be be coming along slowly but surely. Heimer is now my personal gold standard for yordle visuals btw, BUT i'm fairly certain you guys have stated that Ziggs and Lulu were yours. Each one now shares similar proportions but the anatomical details seem to vary kinda widely. I'm going to ignore furriness and color but focus specifically on ears and noses. Ziggs and Heimer share the same catlike button nose, Lulu has a very petite pixie nose. Structurally they are very different and normally I would apply this difference to sexual dimorphism as I would with the furriness levels but the ear shapes don't follow the same rules. While Heimer has large almost bat like ears, Ziggs and Lulu have very different longer elf like ears that come in the furry and non furry variety. Your visuals don't seem to be following the same anatomical guidelines. While yes i understand that this is a fantasy game and it can and should have its own wide varied visuals, I start to worry that your going to end up the same hodgepodge random set of characters but with just a higher poly count.

5-A) And I know this isn't your field specifically but if you could pass it along to the new champ visual team, but Gnar having a tail just adds to the confusion of trying to tell what Yordles are. He feels like an outlier that broadens the visual story of yordles too far. When Fizz came out you guys stated that despite is similar proportions and lore he defiinitely wasn't a yordle. But he still muddies the waters and I still see player's call him one. Frankly you guys just don't have the lore presence to make those distinctions yet while still putting out VU's and new champs that toe the line visually.

Okay that'll be it for now; I do have a few thoughts on lore and cinematics and champion reveals but that's not Ironstylus' current field. I hope I don't sound too harsh. It's difficult to read tone online but I send these off with the best intentions. Take these questions and crits with the understanding I really like your game and I know a lot of these concerns are probably on your mind but you guys are dealing with a lot at once. I'm just hoping priority will be made for these more after the more egregious are dealt with and aren't forgotten.

7 Comments

Syrai8/18/2014, 2:24:06 AM1 votes

I only read your first point, and I have some questions - Have you read Leona's Lore? Do you know why she is outfitted the way she is?Leona Have you read Diana's lore? And know why she's outfitted the way she is?Diana

Serpents Embrace8/18/2014, 3:18:26 AM1 votes

Gnar is an outlier, and he's not a yordle. He's as much a yordle as a neanderthal is a human. You've only skimmed the lores, yeah?

ArmySquirrel8/18/2014, 5:41:24 PM1 votes

Targon does need work thematically, but I wouldn't even touch Leona or Diana. It's true, the Solari seem a little more modern, roughly like a medieval monastery, but they exist in isolation from Rakkor, so it makes some sense for there to be divergence, even significant divergence. Rakkor though just needs work done to give Pantheon and his clan something cool, unique, and developed, rather than, basically, "We're Spartans from 300." But that's well known. There are thematic issues as mentioned. As for the Lunari, well I assume it was something very similar to the Solari, though we really know very little about them. Even Diana knows little about them, only what she's put together over time, and again, they are somewhat old.

As for iconography, it's kind of an eye of the beholder thing. It's true they are quite different, but symbols are a form of language, and language can sometimes incorporate widely different concepts, often borrowed from other languages. We also don't know the full story behind their link, whether or not they were separate and simply came into conflict, or they were once together and faced a civil war which resulted in the Lunari cult being purged. As for how they could go together, Leona's surfboard is quite an interesting little design, and I don't mean just for the tiny moon symbol in the bottom corner of it. The front design has elements of both Solari and Lunari iconography hidden in its design.