Join me creating a champion!
Hello everyone!
I'm chewlon, a concept artist from Germany and League player for almost 5 years or so.
After doing a few fan skins for League, I got the feedback that I should try and create my own champion. I started this project a few months ago, and a lot changed since then, because I really want to create something cool and interesting and learn as much as possible from this.
After some really early sketching and researching I decided to go for one of the six champion concepts I thought of in the beginning. I was limited to creating a human/male character, as I already created skins for monsters (Nautilus, Tahm, Kindred) and female humans (Nidalee). There was no male human concept that I've done yet, so I wanted to go for that. After weeks of reading everything about the regions and characters that could have something to do with my champion, as well as some more sketching, I made concepts all the way up to some fake ingame pictures. But i wasn't satisfied and felt like I could use everything I learned so far and create something cooler.
So after changing and improving the story the fifth or sixth time I now feel like I'm going in the right direction. But champions in League of Legends are meant to be played, and that's where I need your help:
Please, tell me what you think about the story, the visuals, the general feeling of the champion and so on. ANY feedback is highly appreciated. The best way to create something cool is as a team, so join me!
Things I changed in between the old and new process: After starting with sketches and iterations, trying to define the character while designing parts like the face, armor, weapon I changed my process to starting with images focusing on the mood and story of the champion. Instead of developing the main parts of the story, gameplay and visuals at the same time I now figured out a story that is interesting and that makes sense first, thought about some gameplay mechanics and based all visuals on that. This way all "questions" that I could have while drawing can be solved in the context of the story. Instead of just creating a champion based on some shapes and colors, this process should help me design something new and interesting, someone the player can connect to instead of a champion that is cool because "omg that shoulderpiece looks nice".
So this is him, so far:
These are the core images for my character right now. A rough image of him in his environment, to get a feeling for the champ, a portrait, a full body sketch and iterations for the transformation. NONE of these are final! They are just to get a feeling for him. I'm pretty happy with this feeling right now, so all future concepts would be based on this. (Please, tell me what you think about this too... It's really important for me to define the feeling of the character before i get into details)
Like I said before, the story changed a lot already, but this is its current state:
_"Noxus and Demacia are in no direct war, but that doesn't mean that there are no attempts to weaken the other. LeBlanc often sends out a few soldiers to the demacian borders, but that's just to hide her real plans. Elise's supply of artefacts from the Shadow Isles often contains some interesting relics, but this one especially fascinates LeBlanc: A dark crystal, shimmering blueish, imprisoning a young shadow creature that was taken from its mother. These beast are terrifying when grown up and can't be imprisoned, but a small one can, and it's almost as destructive when it tries to return to his or her mother. LeBlanc quickly plans to put this crystal inside someones body and ship this person to the Demacian capital, knowing that it will take some time for the beast to break out and destroy everything around it. This would seem unrelated to Noxus but still weaken Demacia. She gathers the best scientists she can find, but they all fail. Most of the time the hosts die, and sometimes even the scientists are found dead, cold and bloodless with the crystal next to them, shining more blueish than usual. Realizing that she needs help from a more experienced person she contacts Singed in Zaun. He worked for her before, and the money she offers would allow him to buy everything he wants for his experiments. Also he sees the chance to test the boundaries of the human body like never before. But everyone he tests the procedure on dies, humans, animals, it does not matter. He realizes that the trapped beast is still young and that he might need a young body to connect the two. Why not give it a try? He kidnaps an orphan child that was with a small group of other kids near his lab. They were looking for valuable things in the trash, talking about a friend of them who has fancy devices. They say he can even turn back time. They just want to be like him. Singed drags him back to his lab and starts experimenting. The procedure finally succeeds. He removes the boys heart and places the crystal in his chest. Small parts split from the crystal and start moving around in the boys blood system, this way he seems to stay alive. He gets transported to the demacian capital without anyone noticing. At least no one stays alive that noticed.
(Everything up to this part of the story will probably not be written down anywhere. I want to work with only a few images - the letter from LeBlanc to Singed, Elise handing over the Crystal to LeBlanc, the boy looking for things in the trash. I always really like it when there are only hints to what happened in some parts of the story, so the reader or player has the freedom to connect the dots. Biggest influence for this are probably the Dark Souls games. Imagine this like a teaser before the champion is released. Random images on social media, that leave room for interpretation but only make sense once the champion is released)
He wakes up somewhere in a small street in the demacian capital. He does not remember a lot, only a few fragments from his past. He knows that he came from a terrible place, without a real family, without hope or a future. He understands the chance he has in this city. Like all boys his age he joins the army (Soldier screaming at him "Why are you not with the others? Don't you want to make your city proud? Come, boy, go back to the barracks and never run away again!"). All young soldiers are paired up with medics of a similar age. This way the soldiers learn to protect by protecting the medics and the medics learn their job by keeping the soldiers healthy. The medic he is paired up with turns out to be a girl, that started her education only a few years back. Her little brother died to a sickness, that's why she joined the army, to protect anyone else from this fate and the pain she suffered. She sees the boy as a "replacement" for her lost brother and the two become very best friends, almost like a family. The girl quickly realizes that the boy gets weaker and has almost no pulse from time to time, but regains his strength whenever he touches someone. This person seems to weaken though, it almost looks like the boy drains the life energy from people he touches. She also discovers weird stitches on his body, as if he was ripped open some time ago. She does not tell him all of that, but always pays attention that he does not touch anyone with his hands, so no one else discovers his "curse". Every time he feels weak she holds him close to her body and puts his hands in hers, so she can take her energy instead of the energy of anyone else. This works out for some time, the boy learn and becomes a better soldier every day, but the girl weakens. Every time he asks her "Why is your face so pale? Please, let me help you! Are you sick?" she tells him "It's okay, just let me hold you in my arms, that's all i need".
But one day it's to much for her to take. While holding each other he drains the last bit of life out of her body. At first he doesn't realize it, being overwhelmed with energy like an addict, being addicted to life energy. But as soon as the drain ends he realizes what happened. He killed her. He killed his only friend, his family. Also he suddenly understands whats wrong with his body. Why he felt weak, why being close to her made his energy return to him.
In shock and being afraid of harming others he takes his things and runs away from the city in the middle of the night, north, far away from anyone he knows. He doesn't stop until he reaches the far end of Demacia where there is only snow, forest, some animals and very few people living.
From this day on he tries to survive. He hunts down animals whenever he finds some and drains their energy. When he fails at doing this he gets weaker and weaker, until his pulse stops and he has a blackout. He does not know that he dies. That the crystal shards in his blood system stop pumping the blood through his body. That the crystal prison shatters and the beast takes over his body. It tries to find its mom in this place it doesn't know, running around like a wild animal, killing anything and anyone in his way. The crystal automatically drains the life from its victims and drags it back into its prison once enough energy is collected.
The boy then wakes up, in the middle of corpses, corpses of people that just wanted to life a normal life, just like him back in the capital. He does not know how, but he killed them, and he has to keep draining the life from beings around him to stop this from happening again. But he does not always manage do that.
He is trapped in this constant circle of life and destruction, with no way out.
- The boy without a heart"_
This is the story so far. Everything can obviously changed, but I liked this version the most out of all the versions I wrote before. Just like this post is supposed to help create a champion as a team this story was developed with input from several people, that's why I would love to hear the opinion of you all. This way this story could become something really amazing!
The versions before focused more on him staying in the city, him killing people without anyone noticing, but i felt like putting him at a sad place made the character way more dramatic. Also adding the medic created a connection that was missing before. This way he is a boy, coming from nothing, a place without hope, who gets thrown into a place where he has a future, family and hope, back to nothing and a terrible burden.
Rough gameplay thoughts:
The first gameplay mechanic I was kind of satisfied with looks like this: He has a "ragebar" similar to Shyvana or Gnar, representing his "life energy". This slowly vanishes. He can refill it by hitting enemies. Champions grant him the most energy (connected to him not being able to always keep the beast imprisoned just by killing animals). This energy could also be stored separately, so he could inject a bigger amount at once, giving the player more control about the transformation. He gets weaker the more the bar empties, and transforms into the beast once its completely gone. This beast is pretty overpowered and has few downsides (unless Gnar for example) but as soon as he deals X amount of damage or kills X champions he transforms back to his human form.
This way you could play a "normal" champion that gets weaker out of combat, but completely destroys everything once he transforms. The process of getting weaker could take longer in the early game, to stop people from standing in their base, waiting, but be kind of quick later combined with bigger amounts of energy possibly consumed by the spell to give the player control about the transformation.
Enemies also have some sort of control. They can let him hit them, so he stays balanced, or starve him and abuse the phase while he is weak. This means that they have to fight the beast later, which will probably kill them. I tried thinking of something that goes beyond "I can control my rage by hitting or not hitting". Which is awesome in the case of Gnar. But this way it might be interesting and multidimensional too.
This is still heavily work in progress, any feedback is highly appreciated.
Concepts:
The boy. Rough concepts focusing on the character, feeling and transformation. The top left image shows him coming out of the darkness, driven by running low on energy, stepping into the light, defensive but still willing to take lives to save others. The other images were explained earlier:
Rough transformation sketches. Trying out different shapes and ideas. How could the beast take over?
https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/008/579/838/large/leon-ropeter-3.jpg?1513700267
Transformation iterations. Based on the idea that the beast "overlays" the boy, being more or less shapeless in its original form, but recreating the characters shapes. This way it should be easier to recognise him ingame, no matter if he is human or in beast mode.
https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/008/579/835/large/leon-ropeter-1.jpg?1513700259
Older concepts that are still connected to the current concept and some concepts that went the wrong direction:
The very first sketches. After I decided which idea I wanted to pick (I can post them too if someone is interested) I sketched some iterations, asking myself the question "How can i make this basic idea feel different in as many ways as possible?" Sorry for the tiny text, this page was not supposed to look good, just to collect ideas. I went for the top right version with the little boy, but picked parts of some other concepts while i was getting into more detail.
The next step was going into more details, still figuring out who this guy is. This is a small selection of the sketches I made at this point in time:
Front view armor sketches to try some things out. Again, at this point he was supposed to be in the demacian capital. Also I was focusing way more on the visuals than the story of the boy, one of the biggest things I changed in my process:
https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/008/579/836/large/leon-ropeter-2.jpg?1513700265
The face is super important for the character. So I did some iterations. These are still in use now, I went for something similar to the top left one:
This is a rough version of how he could have looked like ingame. Did not like it at all, there was nothing special or really interesting about him, also he did not tell a story just by looking at him. Stopped working on that pretty quickly:
That's it for now. For everyone that read the whole thing: Thanks! I really appreciate it :) There are probably still things missing in the text, like that I thought about adding a necklace or something he got from the medic girl that he carries around with him, reminding him of what happened, as well as details in the story or concept sketches. I will add them as soon as I remember them or if someone writes them!
Please, share your opinion. What do you think? What would be cool, what should I change? Anything is highly appreciated, I would love to create a champion that we as players can enjoy, both ingame and lorewise. It's a super fun and exciting challenge so far and I've learned a lot, but I want to learn more and push this concept until it's really, really damn cool!
I will post updates whenever I drew or wrote something new to keep this a steady process and to let you guys be part of this whole creation.
So thanks a lot for reading and in advance, I'm super excited to read the comments!
Cheers and happy holidays,
Chewlon
[sg-kiko]
(As say, a rat with a blowgun
), we can afford it. His ult feels very open, as it could incorporate a more teamfighting- style or an insane dmg spell that would only be activable while as the beast, returning him to his original form, the damage scaling on how much rage they had left. But again, the ult is EXTREMELY open on all the posibilities you've made with this character. He could also, say, release the energy from the people he killed and so on. His ult is very flexible. Use it wisely!
