Sound Design of Kayn

TheHobbits·9/26/2017, 7:17:00 AM·5 votes·3,668 views

Or more specifically Rhaast. There is an element of sound design on one of his abilities that always catches my ear. I don't own him and he's not on free so I'm using his skin spotlight (It has the sfx im talking about). Take a listen:

https://youtu.be/QWsyxpCin2M?t=480

That kind of bouncy addition to the scything cut. (Does that make sense? Can you hear it?) Its kind of like a bloopy sort of noise sometimes and a little synth rattle other times.

I'm asking Riot 'what is that? What does it mean?' Did you feel that Rhaast needed some other sfx added in there for players to differentiate the too in the chaos of a battle? (Totally understand that). What was the choice on this sound specifically though? Is that the sound Darkins make when slicing things?

I studied sound design and its always the sound that pick up in team fights. Just curious.

5 Comments

RiotRiot Sound Bear9/26/2017, 8:11:25 PM3 votes

Hey TheHobbits! You are spot on with your analysis!

Kayn was a tricky Champion to design since he has 3 models. The idea behind his design was to figure out what he was going to sound like during base form (Kayn), his shadow form (Ascended Kayn) and his Darkin form (Rhaast). Each form has very little variation in the abilities so I found opportunity sonically to push those thematics a little farther, I designed the kit on Base and copied them over to each form and embellished textures and tonalities I thought worked well with each form's thematic...

-Base form Kayn is recognized by the raw sound of the scythe with a touch of foley for specific moments, which is played up to make him feel dangerous. I used minimal magic throughout his spells to save room for more magic during other forms.

-Shadow form Kayn identifies as being sleek, fast and dangerous. We want his sound to reflect that. Using shadow magic and blue tonal magic we can build on the sound that was made for base Kayn, editing in layers where we could add the more character.

-Rhaast was the difficult one, I didn't want just bloody sounds for each slice, I wanted something that pulls him far from shadow and base form, and the distorted synth textures you hear I sprinkled throughout his kit. More than just dangerous Rhaast had to sound scary and evil. I found this by using lots of distortion on all the synth textures that were built for him, then carefully editing them into the sounds I created for Base Kayn to give Rhaast a darker/Darkin personality.

Let me know if this answered your question!

Toppien9/26/2017, 8:33:44 PM2 votes

some of his lines are too quiet too...i can barely hear him