Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

Can we stop with the shared splasharts?

Noc Jibblies·10/28/2015, 8:38:27 AM·5 votes·810 views

Never posted on the forums before, but this has been bothering me enough to get me on here. Does it bother anyone else that so many recently released skins have been shared splashes? Almost all of the Bilgewater event skins, the Warden/Marauder skins, Academy skins, Pool party, and the playing cards-based skins all have shared splashes. They all seem to be slightly lower quality, per champ, with every extra champ added.

For example, look at Ironside Malphite, just kind of pasted in behind the splash that already had Garen, Quinn, and Aatrox. Look how little of that splash actually has Quinn in it, and no matter who's you look at, whatever way it is flipped for that champion, there's always someone else sharing the spotlight. Go to view Academy Ekko's splash, and Vladimir is front and center.

Compare any of these to a recent splash with only one champ in it: Master Arcanist Ziggs, Captain Fortune/Gangplank, Demon Vi or Cosmic Reaver Kassadin, those skins all have gorgeous splasharts that feature their champion well. Even the Project skins did it better, in having all of them form a diorama when combined, but not noticeably appearing in one another's splashes.

Now we have the Harrowing skins coming up, Slayers and Zombie skins sharing a splash. The shared splash would work fine as promotional material or something, but the individuals suffer from sharing the space. Slayer Jinx in particular I find disappointing, she's at an odd angle, you can't tell what color her hair actually is (it looks red/orange compared to the Vi-pink it actually is), you can't see Pow-Pow at all and you can't make out any of Fishbone's details on her back. Just looking at her section of it, (which I'll be doing every loading screen that she's played) you can't even tell what the theme of the skin is. I wouldn't know it was meant to be a Zombie-slaying Jinx just by looking at it. For what's going to be a 1350rp skin, I would expect better than that.

What's everyone else's thoughts on this? Am I the only one bothered by it?

2 Comments

Neswii10/28/2015, 9:15:16 AM1 votes

I'm all for it if the skins are 975 and below or the shared art is nice. For Quinn/AA/Garen, I love it. Adding in Ironside Malphite though makes it a bit worse in my opinion.

I do see the advantages for the artist to focus on making that one splash better than spending 2-4x on different splashes which might end up having some be better than others.

Prehistoric skins? Epic fight between three titanic beasts. Suit Skins? A king and his closest people. Academy? well thats just typical school setting but it looks great.

The SSW skins though, I really don't like that one much since instead of all of them being in a stadium together like the other Worlds skins, its just them doing individual poses and being cropped ontop of eachother. Why is Talon bigger than Thresh and Singed? And why is Twitch just floating there over Talon's blades?

Arcade Riven and Battle Boss Blitzcrank though, thats just a shared splash for no good reason. I get that its a fighter select screen, but that just doesnt fly in my opinion. I love the colorful surroundings that went with Arcade MF and Hecarim. (Arcade Sona Splash update when?)

So TL;DR: GOOD: Prehistoric, Card suits, Academy, Worlds Champs skins besides SSW, Bilgewaer pre-Ironside Malph, Slayer.

Not so good: SSW, Arcade Riv/Blitz, Bilgewater post Malph.

Star Guardían10/28/2015, 7:08:06 PM1 votes

I find for some that it works and others it doesn't. For example, I like seeing the Pentakill skins on one splash. However, the Pool Party skins are better on separate spalshes. I found the old Pool Party splash arts (Graves, Leona, etc.) much better than the new shared one with Lulu, Mundo, Rek'sai etc. I agree with you, most of them look really awkward together. In and ideal world, I would prefer all skins having separate splashes and then combined art work for promotional material, but that takes too much time and effort and money from Riot. The best example of this is the Pool Party Skins from when Jinx was teased. Each skin had its own splash with cool details and information in the background. Then we got to see all the champs together in that artwork that teased Jinx from her POV.

I personally don't mind if they use shared splash arts, but only if they're better together (Ex: Jurassic skins). So far most (not all) of shared splash arts so far have been less appealing than the separate ones.

I think the main reason why shared splash arts look so awkward is that from a game stand point, each champion in the splash art has to stand out on it's own so that it can be framed for the in game loading screen. From an artistic stand point though, it makes the art look cluttered. A good comparison is the Slayer Splash art and the Slayer login screen. Although this is one of the better shared splash IMO, the login screen is much better because the artist wasn't worried about making each champ visibly noticed, so they were able to play with perspective more.

From an economic and business stand point though, the shared splash arts save time and money.