Why does RIOT alter icon art?

xGvPx·1/18/2015, 7:11:44 PM·9 votes·1,482 views

I know art is subjective, but I never understood why RIOT constantly redraws art assets like champion icons, especially since newer icons often come out as more muddy, and less defined. Shouldn't the goal of the art team be one, consistent look? I mean is it me, or are these much harder to discern at first than these ?

So why the heck do a good majority of the icons have to have this stylized, harder to distinguish, jagged look, while plenty of newer champs are launched with amazing looking icons?

3 Comments

Downfall1/18/2015, 8:49:41 PM7 votes

the only one i really dislike is alistar...it's very hard to even make out anything with that icon.

RasCaelestis1/18/2015, 7:58:29 PM6 votes

The one for Udyr Udyr is particularly bad, in my opinion. It has since been edited a little, but when it first came out a friend kept mistaking it for Gangplank. It's since become a joke between our group, but it's still pretty hard to make out who it is.

I know what Riot's going for, a more 'realistic' or 'gritty' style with splash arts, but when you shrink them down for icons that style gets distorted. It then becomes hard to tell what champion is where on the minimap. I've been playing for a long time, and can tell at a glance what the champions are, but a few friends that I play with are newer and have trouble. The Alistar one is one of the worst. I don't like the new splash art in the first place, but the icon doesn't even really look like him. It also makes him seem REALLY big. Like, his fist alone is half the size of the human he's knocking over, and the space he's in seems absolutely tiny. I know his lore says he's bigger than a human, but this seems a bit of a stretch...

Riot's supposedly all about 'Clarity,' but these new icons are making that a bit hard to believe...

The MechE1/20/2015, 6:42:00 AM2 votes

I have a lot of trouble with the Alistar one on the forums.