Lancer and Paragon Blitz

Nautılus·Nov 8, 2017·1 votes·2,002 views

Why does the new Blitzcrank skin have a walk animation, like he has legs; when he clearly floats with jets? Kind of completely ruins the skin. :/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBqDMkhbyaA

8 Comments

DrCyanideNov 8, 20171 votes

Everyone's been complaining about it, but they claim it's because he's not quickly recognizable as Blitzcrank with the model changes if they also change the walk animation. To me that sounds like they need to either change the model or find an animation that's close to the walk animation but looks more like floating.

zrWQMdGHtYNov 8, 20172 votes

By that logic Project NOT Katarina should just get deleted. I cant recognize my princess when I see that thing.

RiotmoonstonesNov 8, 20171 votes

Hey CÅT -

The animator who worked on this pair of skins commented on the PBE boards when they were still in development to provide context on the reasoning behind not changing the run.

From the boards thread:

Hey guys

I'm an animator that worked on Lancer Rogue/Paragon Blitzcrank and wanted to give some additional insight into this topic. If you haven't already, check out the post Riot AdamUnicorn wrote (linked above!) about the new production process/philosophies we used while making these two skins. It's definitely worth a read!

The main idea that informed our decision to keep a run animation similar to base Blitzcrank was gameplay readability. Very early on in development we had conversations about whether or not the run animation was something we could change. Blitzcrank as a character has some pretty iconic moments such as his silhouette, his run animation, and his hook ability and as the Nexus article discusses, we tried to focus and prioritize on what would made this Blitzcrank skin awesome (the hook) and all the other elements (skin design/effects/animation/etc) followed suit.

All skins have multiple levers that artists can play around with to make a skin feel different but still the same champion (and every skin has varied success with this). Areas like Colors, Models, Textures, Animations, Spell Visuals, and Audio all work together to form the final product. If we think of a character’s readability as a bucket, each of these different factors contribute to filling that bucket. Changing too many things all at once results in the contents of the bucket to overflow, leading to recognizability issues. Changing one thing drastically means having to be conservative (make little to no changes) in other areas.

In Lancer's case, because the changes to his model were SO extreme, in order to maintain his readability as Blitzcrank, it was critical that we keep his run animation. We initially tested some floating/flying animations but we quickly learned that any meaningfully different runs on Blitz immediately made him next to unreadable as Blitz.

TL:DR we thought about changing his run animation, but in order to sell the cool fantasy of this mech/warrior/lancer which required extensive silhouette and model changes, we couldn't also change the run animation.

TL;DR TL;DR by redditor Kadexe: These skins look really different from standard Blitzcrank, and changing the walking animation would be going too far when you're already pushing it.

DrCyanideNov 8, 20174 votes

If you've got to keep the walk animation, then why were legs not added to the model? Or if you don't want to add legs, then why not dial back the non-hook changes to the model so it looked enough like Blitzcrank a floating animation could be used?

The existing walk animation is unacceptable with the model that's in game. I'm extremely disappointed these skins are going live like this, since it shows a drastic drop in quality, literally going Quantity over Quality. I understand when the Skins team neglects feedback that would make something go from Good to Great due to exceeding intended price, but these skins are not meeting 1350 quality as they stand.

patmax17Nov 9, 20172 votes

there's another post by the same rioter, he said they tried adding legs but it was worse :( https://boards.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/general-pbe-feedback/UGxGnxIJ-pbe-bugs-feedback-thread-lancer-rogue-lancer-paragon-blitzcrank?show=nested&comment=0001000200020000

DrCyanideNov 9, 20171 votes

Then it would seem the non-hook changes, such as the massive shoulder fins, needed to be dialed back so it read more like Blitzcrank.

NautılusNov 10, 20172 votes

[{quoted}](name=Riot KateyKhaos,realm=NA,application-id=A8FQeEA8,discussion-id=VUbj4jQz,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2017-11-08T23:01:15.370+0000)

Hey CÅT -

The animator who worked on this pair of skins commented on the PBE boards when they were still in development to provide context on the reasoning behind not changing the run.

From the boards thread:

Hey guys

I'm an animator that worked on Lancer Rogue/Paragon Blitzcrank and wanted to give some additional insight into this topic. If you haven't already, check out the post Riot AdamUnicorn wrote (linked above!) about the new production process/philosophies we used while making these two skins. It's definitely worth a read!

The main idea that informed our decision to keep a run animation similar to base Blitzcrank was gameplay readability. Very early on in development we had conversations about whether or not the run animation was something we could change. Blitzcrank as a character has some pretty iconic moments such as his silhouette, his run animation, and his hook ability and as the Nexus article discusses, we tried to focus and prioritize on what would made this Blitzcrank skin awesome (the hook) and all the other elements (skin design/effects/animation/etc) followed suit.

All skins have multiple levers that artists can play around with to make a skin feel different but still the same champion (and every skin has varied success with this). Areas like Colors, Models, Textures, Animations, Spell Visuals, and Audio all work together to form the final product. If we think of a character’s readability as a bucket, each of these different factors contribute to filling that bucket. Changing too many things all at once results in the contents of the bucket to overflow, leading to recognizability issues. Changing one thing drastically means having to be conservative (make little to no changes) in other areas.

In Lancer's case, because the changes to his model were SO extreme, in order to maintain his readability as Blitzcrank, it was critical that we keep his run animation. We initially tested some floating/flying animations but we quickly learned that any meaningfully different runs on Blitz immediately made him next to unreadable as Blitz.

TL:DR we thought about changing his run animation, but in order to sell the cool fantasy of this mech/warrior/lancer which required extensive silhouette and model changes, we couldn't also change the run animation.

TL;DR TL;DR by redditor Kadexe: These skins look really different from standard Blitzcrank, and changing the walking animation would be going too far when you're already pushing it.

So basically the skin was a bad idea, Also isn't the walk animation for piltover customs blitzcrank skin different? I mean it really just sounds like a sorry excuse for " we messed up, here's a BS reason we can't fix it." You can still tell it's blitz on a minimap and by his abilities for any player who knows anything about the game.