Boy, I haven't seen this one in a loooong time; That's, uh, an interesting use of the Soft Brush. Are those bubbles or just really big wispy orbs coming out of his cards?
Seriously though, even if it's a matter of taste (I can see the charm in League's old, more cartoon-like and 'blocky' art-style), I'd argue that League's art quality & standards have all gone way up in the past few years since that first Twisted Fate splash was made- Not only that, but League still has this pastel, more painterly, vibrant style, while still being a bit more realistic and less goofy, and I think it's apparent that Riot has been trying very hard to go in that direction and preserve those old qualities- Some of which, by the way, existed even as far as in Twisted Fate's first splash; As we had then, we nowadays still have exaggerated body features & proportions, as well as those vibrant & painterly color:
- Braum has some huge upper body but slimmer bottoms & legs, as well as very stylized animations cycles.
- Fiora has incredibly angular features (intentionally).
- Darius has his hooked, fleshy nose, and it's one of his recognizable & iconic facial features. He also wields an incredibly huge axe and performs an incredibly high jump.
- Annie still has a pretty big head for her body and age.
- Heimerdinger is super small but has the most goofy & big features (I know he's a yordle, but still)- His hair, his mustache, his energized animation cycles.
- Singed still has incredibly vibrant crimson reds, poisonous greens and rusty golds, as well as his huge boots.
- Taliyah, despite having mostly warm, dirty colors, features a very timeless style, with her textures looking very obviously hand-painted- at least in my eyes (IN A GOOD WAY!)
- Ekko has his large, shiny, white mohawk, incredibly vibrant red colors (scarf) and glowing teals of his clock-hand, Z-Drive and other machines.
- Zac is Zac.
- A lot of modern champions & skins are made with proportionally big hands (Ryze, Ekko, Acadmey Vladimir- to name a few).
- Yasuo's hair is very stylized- I'm not sure such a hair-style can be executed in real life.
- Ivern has a very unique silhouette in both his model and animation cycles (most notably is his walk).
- The texture of Vel'Koz's bony shell is so cartoon-like and seems very hand-painted and I love it.
- The two shopkeepers of Butcher's Bridge had the same "painterly" style that Taliyah and Vel'Koz feature, as well as some very goofy but awesome-looking non-proportionate (rather "cartoon-like") body shapes.
Those are just a few examples that I could think of off the top of my head.
-_-
So, sure, the age of spooky skeletons, pizza feet and black, lonely few hairs is coming to an end, but most of the good things of the good ol' art style are still being preserved and yet modernized to a much less "technically ugly" quality.
