A quick note on some of the Newest Champs

Let's talk about Quinn and Vi.


Apparently, Riot listens, and it's very heartwarming when something that people have harped on over and over and over gets addressed.  These days, artist like Iron Stylus are greatly helping the company develop some very good compromises between feminine and practical, and personally, I love his work (he's created champions like Leona and Diana).  It comes as no surprise then, that the largest departure from the usual riot 'babes' is in his newest champion, Quinn.  I do not have a single complaint about this champion, or the space to say all of the nice things I want to say.  Iron Stylus's entire talk on her was about functionality, practicality and her own individuality as to why she would chose androgynous costuming over something sexier and that is incredible and awesome.  You can read his entire blurb here:   http://www.surrenderat20.net/2013/02/ironstylus-talks-quinns-aesthetics.html#more 

Vi is another great addition to the riot cast of ladies.  While she is obviously attractive and fairly shapely (her costume is relatively tight fitting)  she is a different type of woman when compared to what we have seen.  She's rough around the edges, she's strong, her clothing is armored and covering, and she looks like she could kick anyone's butt anywhere.  She is essentially punk rock, which is great in both its juxtaposition with Caitlyn (her partner in Piltover's police force) and the rest of the female cast.  Though I don't know the artist who designed her, I say great job and keep it up!

And to Riot, I say, give these guys more work!  It's great.  I know myself and other players are tired of being told this is what women look like and personally, Vi is the reason I didn't quit when all that came out before her was sex wrapped in black leather.  So thank you riot, for continuing to be the company that listens.

Body types and Juxtaposition

**The shadowbox feature on blogger is very small.  To see the larger image, open it in a new tab.

This is the early body typing I’ve done for the female characters, based on their roles and back story.  I’ll go into greater detail on each when I move into early costume designs.  They are alphabetically organized, with the exception of Shyvanna. 

                Really the only thing I want to talk about with this post is the idea of juxtaposition.  This is an extremely important idea in animation and film that seems woefully underused in most video games.  In essence the idea consists of juxtaposing two fairly different elements to make both elements appear stronger.  In animation, this can mean a number of things, from drawing straight lines and curves next to each other internally in a single character in order to create appealing shapes, to pairing very different character sizes and types together in order to play up size for one or both of the characters.  

Early art from rapunzel demonstrating straight on a curve to create appeal                 By: Glen Keane

 Size Juxtaposition in Bioshock :  You're doing it right

In my body typing for example, Sejuani is very tall and muscular, and to have her near Sona and Sivir who are both shorter and more curvaceous accentuates the fact that they are shorter and it also helps Sejuani to appear stronger.  With current designs for female characters in League of Legends, there is almost no variety, and so, the characters who logically should appear more sexualized based on their personalities and lore come across as no different from any of the other female characters.  They are all sex objects, and all of their roles, personalities and back-stories are weaker for it.

Disclaimer and Project Overview

                The design of female characters in video games has been a topic of constant discussion recently.  There are innumerable blog posts on the subject, and I’m sure, like me, plenty of gamers have had at least some discussions with their own group of friends about the topic.  Even those that feel there is no problem with the way women are designed currently will often admit that, yes, game studios are definitely operating under the idea that sex sells.  Whether you think studios are trying to appeal to a certain market, express their own personal ‘ideals’, or are just lazy, there is a noticeable lack of variety in female character design.  The current predominant standard for designing female characters seems to consist of copy pasting a large chested, small waisted woman and adding a slightly different face and different costuming.  This design is repeated over and over, in game after game, in spite of the characters’ contradictory backgrounds, job descriptions and personality traits.

                As a gamer and character designer, seeing other designers ignore qualities that should affect a character’s overall look drives me crazier than anything else.  Ok sure, your character has an impractical shirt that should fall off as soon as she takes two steps— that’s fine.  But is that character supposed to move around a lot—for instance, behaving as a melee fighter or tank?  If the answer is yes, then your design is flawed on a fundamental level!  The fact of the matter is, in many instances, these game studios that are ignoring character traits are doing so just so they can create mindless cheesecake.  What it boils down to is a laziness about character design that focuses on t&a   (tits and ass) rather than creating a believable, readable character.

                One of the more popular games that suffers from this t&a focused design is League of Legends.  I love this game and am an avid player, but every time a new skin comes out for a female champion, I can’t help but cringe, because it inevitably is unbelievably impractical and doesn’t relate to the character at all.  Even the splash art updates lately have been fairly overblown, with all of the cleavage front and center as the focal point of every drawing. 

   

While I love to see better art than what the game originally started with, the fact that every female is turning into a double-d that could easily be found on any corner in a big city is just frustrating as a lot of the champions-in-questions’ lore doesn’t relate to this portrayal at all.  If the lore is going to be ignored, why write it at all?

                And that’s the point of this blog!  As a character artist with a lot of time, I want to re-imagine the female characters from League of Legends.  My goal will be to create individualized, unique characters that read easily from an in game setting.  I will be trying to reconcile lore, kit, team role, and personality based on the voice-over, and putting all these aspects into a believable body type and costume for each character.  I will only be working on characters available on normal servers as of the date of this post, so if you visit at a later date, please no asking ‘can you update [insert new female]’ because the answer will be no, as I’m not interested in taking on a never ending project.  There are also a few characters who I feel already work based on their lore and designs (Diana, Kayle, Janna, and Orianna) and I won’t be redesigning those characters.

                And now for a quick disclaimer.  As this is a project solely based on remaking the work of other artists, I want to first say that this blog is not meant to insult or demean any of the artists at Riot, but is more directed at addressing issues in the design standards of the gaming industry as a whole at present.  Since that is the case, I will attempt to keep ranting to a minimum and mainly focus on my thought process in creating the design for each character.  While I can’t promise there won’t be any ranting on here, I’m going to try to keep it kind to the original designers.

All that being said, anyone is welcome to email me at legendsLadiesRedesigned@gmail.com