Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

Championship Shyvana

Gixia·9/25/2014, 12:53:26 AM·3 votes·3,623 views

Since I don't have a PBE account, I figured I might as well bring this up here.

As someone who's mained Shyv since her release, I'm very very excited to see Shyvana is getting this year's championship skin. After seeing that she wouldn't be getting the Victorious skin, I had dared to hope for her to get championship instead, but never honestly believed that she would (I figured Lee Sin was a shoe in). So, I'm very grateful to see she'll be getting the skin, buuuut...

I do have a couple of small concerns. Primarily with her human form. This may be a relatively minor nitpick, but it's her face/head shape. It doesn't really strike me as being recognizeably Shyv. All of Shyvana's skins have always had the problem of looking a bit too human (in contrast with her base skin, which better connotates her half-dragon heritage by giving her a clearly unnatural skin tone and hiding human traits like her hair). Championship Shyvana manages to partially avert this with her legs (oh god I love those little dragony feet), but her face/head then go in the complete opposite and make her look too human. Especially in contrast with her lower half, her face/head shape just feel... off. It's hard to explain, but it feels like she has the most human head (even moreso than Ironscale). it just feels... weird.

That said, I'll confess, I don't actually know what kind of fix could be made for this type of situation, since blue skin with blue armour would just be awful and completely lacking in colour contrast. Or maybe the more human-like visage to sharply compare with her dragon body is intentional. I don't know.

But speaking of colour contrast, that all-blue thing I mentioned... Yeah, her dragon form's suffering from a bit of that. It feels like it could use some more silver in there somewhere to make it pop better, or maybe some yellow/gold (though I know gold tends to be reserved for the Victorious skin). Also, not really a fan of the axe face, though asking for geometry tweaks seems like it would be unlikely to get any results. Still, the ones on top of her head feel a bit small, like they seem like they should be just a liiiiittle bit longer, while the ones on bottom just feel out of place entirely. The angle on them feels off, like they should be either a bit more horizontal, or a bit more vertical.

These are ultimately little nitpicks that, I'm not sure if anything can be done about them, but it'd be nice. The skin looks awesome either way and I will be happily buying it.

Now, if only it gets a splash art as absolutely drop dead gorgeous as her recent base splash update... But I'm not gonna hold out hope for that. That base splash is kind of hard to beat.

13 Comments

Captain Danger9/25/2014, 4:17:55 AM2 votes

I completely agree with this post. Here's an in-depth artistic critique of the skin x-posted to reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2heg2y/riot_indepth_artistic_critique_of_championship/

First off, let me praise Riot for choosing Shyvana for their new Championship Skin. Shyvana is one of my favorite top laners (even as she's fallen out of the meta).

I have severe concerns about her Championship skin. From a conceptual stance, Championship Shyvana is a knock out of the park. The palette is also a great change from what we've come to expect. The primary issues with Championship Shyvana is her human form, specifically her head. Her head and helmet lines deviate in a drastic way that make human Championship Shyvana look bloated and unusual. To be blunt, Shyvana's Helmet and hair combine to make her look like a peanut. I have several tweak suggestions at the end of this post.

The Artistic Concept of (human) Shyvana

To analyze where Championship Shyvana goes wrong, we have to look at the artistic concepts that guide the design of her human form. Shyvana is a sleek and powerful hand-to-hand fighter who will get up in your face, and then turn into a powerful dragon form when her fury has reached its maximum. Her human form is defined by her sleek, muscular body, her long ponytail, her battle helmet, and her gauntlets. (Of course, Ironscale Shyvana does not have a helmet... we'll return to this.) The underlying geometrical structure (the lines) for all of these shapes are a downwards V.

First, let's focus on her battle helmet from an overhead perspective: http://i.imgur.com/gO3lPxA.png

The overall shape of the helmet is a V whose tips curve inward: http://i.imgur.com/Yd2nKy8.png There are additional lines in the center that add a secondary shape, but again, a V is what defines the overall structure.

Now let's look at her face: http://i.imgur.com/x2Exqlp.png

The sides of her battle helmet slant downwards, suggesting a v-like shape: http://i.imgur.com/P9FpV05.png

From this low angle, you can see an inverted V on the top, but again, a V-shape on the bottom. http://i.imgur.com/PnP4bbm.png

Ironscale Shyvana

Ironscale Shyvana notably loses Shyvana's helmet, but you can still see the downward V structure dominates the form:

It's even clearer with the face how the sleek V lines of her hair take away from the overall roundness of her face:

Boneclaw Shyvana

The Vs dominate Boneclaw Shyvana's form. Look at how her helmet has multiple Vs and sharp lines, all leading down. The hair/headband thing also once again sleeks out her roundface.

Lumus Avatar9/25/2014, 12:58:02 AM1 votes

spoiler alert

MetaCosmos9/25/2014, 2:26:10 AM1 votes

First post on boards simply because I am concerned about the particles of CS Shyv on Surr@20. The Blue on blue on blue is painful. @Riot please consider gold or white particles for the skills. Particularly burnout.

Tyverus9/25/2014, 2:41:28 AM1 votes

Honestly she looks like a cartoon to me. :/ Maybe its along the same lines with all the blue but it just seems she doesnt fit with my idea of a cool or desirable skin. The others seem to fit better. Maybe they arent done with it yet? still going to push through some particle/base color changes? god i hope so.