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@Riot: Can we get some proper attention to anatomy in these animations?

Cynicatt·9/17/2015, 10:57:08 AM·297 votes·42,411 views

So, first off, I'd like to say I really love the new champion(s?), and I'm super excited for them to come out, but some of these animations are pretty bad. Just like you did with Soraka at first, Lamb has an equine leg that isn't animated anywhere close to properly for its anatomical differences from a human's leg. You've gone ahead and just treated them like human legs and almost completely ignored the joint called the hock, and in some cases even bent it backwards.

Below are some drawings of what I'm talking about and ideas I've sketched up of how to fix these things. ######Forgive me, my tablet is not working properly for some reason, so they're a little rough. http://imgur.com/BT3mvYl Here you can see the hock actually bending backwards a little bit. The hock joint should never be completely straight to begin with, let alone bent backwards. http://imgur.com/MXlONid more bending backwards and straight hock. http://imgur.com/hpjr1V5 In some of the animations like the joke/taunt, it's whatever, doesn't really matter, but honestly the run animations for Lamb look so terrible it's ruining the champion for me.

For reference here are some horse legs(which are similar enough to a lamb or goat, but easier to see): http://www.horseinfo.com/images/newhin01.JPG You can see there is actually a bone sticking up from the hock that prevents the joint from bending backwards! For more reference you can easily find videos and animations of horses running and trotting to see how the hind leg functions. You can easily see the run animation of Kindred here to compare: http://www.lolking.net/models?champion=203&skin=0

Additionally, I'd like to add that her homeguards animation makes her look like a flailing monkey... Other than that, she's great, but it would be really nice if some of these animations looked more animal-like instead of ignoring the anatomy of her legs completely.

103 Comments

333lom9/17/2015, 1:56:47 PM52 votes

Oh my I support this cause! Is it possible that they rigged her legs so bad? It's like they used human rigs for that, this should definitely be changed. It looks uncanny now.

RiotRiot Ohmu9/18/2015, 6:32:16 PM44 votes

Hey! First off, awesome feedback! A lot of the animators saw your post on reddit [and a similar mirror post on the PBE forums] and I thought I'd just reply here with some of my own thoughts:

Really appreciate the visuals aides you provided as well as your clear explanations for what you feel is more appropriate. They are all critique points with solid grounds and, in my opinion, can contribute to adding even more character to the champion. Based on your examples, I actually immediately thought the closest relative to Lamb would be a Fawn from The Chronicles of Narnia, at least, anatomically. It's amazing to see players that possess an understanding of a certain area that we may have overlooked and provide an informative critique (this is what we do everyday o(≧∇≦o))

As animators, we try our best to study reference and learn as much as we can about the related subject material so we can create animations that make champions (and other assets) really feel alive in game. There are instances, however, where movements/poses in real life don't work well in game (we sometimes even rotoscope as a first pass), and we're forced to change things up. Ultimately, we strive to keep things feeling/reading as real as possible while pushing the appeal of poses and exaggerated movements for our 3/4 perspective game view.

Since I can only speak for myself, I'd like to take a recent animation I did and use it as an example: I animated Project: Yi's dance which is a call to Genki Sudo's WORLD ORDER dance, "Have a Nice Day." I use this as an example because the translation from source material (real life) into League proved to be more complicated than I anticipated. The actual dance's appeal in real life comes from the stationary hips/torso of the dancers and their stiff arms/poses. Stiff body and arms, however, in Maya and in game tend to read as lazy animating. In the end, I had to break away from the original source (add breaking arms, slanted body, and lots of vertical up and down) to make it right in game (especially without music!). There may be people who disagree with the choices I made to get to the final product, but I feel that in the end it worked out sufficiently well, and even though it's not 1:1 with Genki's Sudo's actual dance, i feel like it's homage enough XD.

In Kindred's case, my understanding is that the points you bring up were not entirely overlooked but were decisions either the animator or the champion pod chose to do together. In the end, it comes down to the creative liberty of the artist and the trade-offs they choose to make, which does not take away any validity from all the points being made in this thread. I'm not directly involved with Champ development [I animate on Skins], but I will definitely make sure to pass on the feedback to the animator working on Kindred in case he doesn't see this. Remember, though, that based on bandwidth, timeline, and the the number of projects that come in one after another, sometimes we can't fix everything we want to, even if we try. Such is art T^T

Cheers!

EDIT: for visibility, on reddit, iniquitee talks about how the team and Rory/RiotLamz approached her animations. :D

Dreadface6669/17/2015, 5:37:08 PM42 votes

Too distracted by lamb booty.

Wyrmblade9/18/2015, 2:57:13 AM20 votes

Wolf is very anatomically incorrect too.

You see, in real life, wolves tend not to be floating ghosts that talk and hunt down recently departed souls.

Tigero9/17/2015, 3:19:14 PM17 votes

Upvoted and bumped. The way her legs move makes me feel like she's broken them in several places. Also while we're at it

TwitchInMyPants9/17/2015, 4:23:33 PM11 votes

This is a humanoid lamb we're talking about though. Anatomically correct really doesn't apply for the believability considering we're comparing a bipedal anthro to a 4 legged animal. The bone structure of this fantasy character is not going to be the same even if the legs are similar. The animations may look bad to you but the humanoid walk cycle looks just fine to me and making the changes you're asking for I find acceptable but unnecessary work at this phase of development. I mean we're talking about going back and adding extra joints to legs that are basically going to be used as human legs to simulate how an animal supported by 4 legs will walk.

I mean hell, look at the leg of a lamb compared to the thigh of Kindred. A lamb's weight is going to be leaning on these legs the way they're supported normally and with Kindred going to do this change would basically leave her with a bone structure that's going to leave her imbalanced and forcing her to arc her back to support her own weight as well as that of the bow if we're going to talk realistically here. Changes that would just make this character seem more unnatural than just assuming that this fantasy character has a different bone structure.

Catrian9/17/2015, 5:40:22 PM11 votes

Welp,that's gonna be one of those things I can't unsee now.Hopefully someone can get it brought to attention in time.

Biff Manly9/17/2015, 5:24:22 PM10 votes

Based on my experience with spirits of life and death, the anatomy is spot-on. Lamb spirits and actual lambs have shockingly dissimilar anatomical structure, such as being able to fire a bow despite the apparent hooves on regular lambs.

Brascus9/17/2015, 10:10:45 PM8 votes

The animators didn't bend the joints on the fast run as much because its following an arc (another animation principle) to give it a sense of bounding/leaping (whether or not that's appealing is still subjective), and frankly you can't even tell unless you have the cycle in profile close up on loop, on a 3rd party site. In game the top down perspective obscures most leg animation anyway.

So is this the most pointless bitching of all time? Yes, yes it is.

EDIT: So I found there are 3 total runs on this and found the main one OP was talking about. They have bent the joints in other animations and even in 1 other run, the fact that they didn't in 2 others means that they chose to do that, so wanting it to be more accurate is just an artistic choice. God forbid they deviate.

ReQnosis9/17/2015, 5:46:12 PM8 votes

Nice catch +1 *Hope they pay more attention to this stuff in the future.

SEKAI9/17/2015, 4:29:53 PM6 votes

I don't understand, Kindred originated from either a human or a humanoid entity anyway.

They are supposed to be themed after Lamb and Wolf, and NOT being Lamb and Wolf themselves. You might as well complain why Wolf looks like a snake with a dog head.

Not to mention if we have to be technical here, herbivores can not stand only with their backlegs reliably unlike say humans or birds.

Imo OP's argument is purely aesthetic and has nothing to do with anatomy at all. At least admit it's for the sake of eye candies and no need to dress it with some science skirts, it doesn't work that way.

The Amygdala9/18/2015, 3:59:33 AM6 votes

daaaayuuum RIOT employee getting schooled on something he/she should've known. It's on boyssssss

Mecha MaIphite9/17/2015, 10:34:50 PM6 votes

I didn't see this until now and it's bothering me so much now.

God damnit.

yay nibbers9/17/2015, 9:39:31 PM5 votes

So glad I'm not the only one who noticed. The running animation isn't too bad (though I personally don't like the whole animation, it's a bit lackluster) but her idle animation is a joke, it looks ridiculous.

Best Jinx OCE9/17/2015, 3:51:11 PM5 votes

Yeah but he walks on two legs so he has to lift his back leg and push it backwards where Horses tend to lift it forward and then push it down, bipedals have to lift it forward and then lean forward and push it backwardsish - which means if Lamb had a traditional hock he would need to tilt his left hip up with his left foot forward step then tilt his right hip upward with his right foot forward step which would leave him looking anatomically incorrect or give him a really bad looking hip up and down see-sawing effect making him look like some super swanky chick with unimaginable hips - so he instead has a less realistically physical possible leg joint (That joint would be caning him or have to have big muscles which wouldn't look as anatomically stylish (feminine as lamb is a feminine design with wolf being the masculinity which goes with their theme representation) so they left him with a leg joint that would break down within ten minutes of walking in the real world if it were not some super material or 5x as muscly and made the champ look more stylish with a dent to its realism which is probably less important seeing as looking cool in video games is probably more important than having the characters represent real life science. (Cool stuff > maths for entertainment IMO which is why movies and video games and books are popular past times and studying Calculus and taking quantum measurements and doing science is a little less of a past-time although it is a fun thing for some people out there).

Von Revanchist9/17/2015, 6:46:47 PM5 votes

Personally I think she is fine. I love the animations it gives her an odd but satisfying look.

Tesla Effect9/18/2015, 1:50:34 PM4 votes

People here dont get that this is a spirit and not an actual biological being. This whole thread is ignorant to say the least.

killd0zer9/18/2015, 1:31:20 PM4 votes

the run animations for Lamb look so terrible it's ruining the champion for me.

I pity how unenjoyable life must be

GreenLore9/17/2015, 9:11:12 PM3 votes

It might be also intentional to make her movements feel more unnatural. I mean she is a spirit after all...

Laustin Space9/18/2015, 10:29:46 PM3 votes

Another thing to take into consideration is that although that is how the joint's work for the animal in real life they are also using 4 legs and are unable to walk on 2 legs for extended duration while standing straight up. If you really think about how a 2 legged being with goat-like legs would be like they would have to be structured differently to uphold their balance.

Just a thought~

ArdoreAurorale9/18/2015, 10:56:39 PM3 votes

why do people actually waste time and care over these smallnesses?

Carpe Victoria9/17/2015, 11:38:41 PM2 votes

I appreciate this but I think the unrealistic movements of champs like Kindred and Bard are the reason they look very floaty when they move imo.

Shroom Junkie11/15/2015, 2:29:58 AM2 votes

Want to talk about anatomy? Go look at Trundle's Q. Lol