I am required to work collaboratively to create a range of characters that stem from an existing franchise. The franchises are Skylanders, League of Legends, and World of Warcraft.
Next, within your team, select an Architype for my character.
• Hero • Villain/Shadow • Mentor
• Magician • Outlaw • Explorer
• Jester • Lover • Ruler
• Care Giver
Then as a team, we must use the website Coolers.com, to design our characters using only the colours that we have randomly generated. My final character should seamlessly fit within my collaborative character set, created by the rest of my team.
This project has 2 different goals, depending on my career aspirations. I will be tasked with designing, concepting and modelling a character. Then, depending on my chosen career path, I will then choose 1 of the following.
- 3D
Having completed my model, I will now rig, skin and animate my character in 3D, with the option of importing it into Engine. - 2D
Having completed my model, I will now animate my character in any 2D software, whilst creating a character sheet that displays fully rendered artwork of my character in multiple poses.
This project will give me an insight into many different roles within the games industry. Having an understanding and an awareness of the multiple positions can initiate my preparation for my future career aspirations in this industry.
Randomly Generated Colours
I will only use the colours that we have randomly generated for designing my character.
Research on League of Legends
I decided to choose League of Legends over the other two games because of its wide range of character species (yordles, ascended, spirits etc.) and different regions to choose from. I also am interested in fantasy games, so this gives me the perfect opportunity to make my own fantasy character.
League of Legends is one of the world’s most popular video games, developed by Riot Games. It features a team-based competitive game mode based on strategy and outplaying opponents. Players work with their team to break the enemy Nexus before the enemy team breaks theirs.
The games take place in the world of Runeterra, which consists of the supercontinent Valoran made up of the many different in-game nations as well as the continent of Ionia and the archipelago islands of Bilgewater and the Shadow Isles. Runeterra is also known as “Magic Earth” and shares connections with otherworldly plains including the Void. A thousand years prior to the current time period of the game, “World Runes’ began appearing across the world, each containing an immeasurable amount of pure magical energy. Tribes began collecting these runes and abusing their powers, eventually resulting in the “Rune Wars” which ended up almost destroying Valoran and corrupted the world with hidden magical energies.
After watching this video and understanding the lore of League of Legends, it gave me more insight into the story, this will help me fit my character seamlessly into their timeline, making my character seem even more believable that she or he is from the League of Legends franchise.
Teamwork Brainstorming
Below are different regions with a similar colour scheme as our randomly generated colour palette.
BILGEWATER
IONIA
IXTAL
THE FRELJORD
ZAUN
Overview of the regions
- Bilgewater: pirates, thieves, smugglers. A lot of crime, people who steal/ purchase hextech ( kinda like the buyers of the black market)
- Ionia: Spirit realm, wild forests, mountains, more east Asian looking, East Asian tales ( nine fox tail, Sun wukong 孫悟空)
- Ixtal: Egyptian but jungle, maybe even look like Mayan people, Amazonian people
- The Freljord: Viking, Norse
- Zaun: underground steam punk, “they make black market tech (hextech) ”, illegal inventors, more rougher looking than the Piltover region. (Piltover is the legal inventors on the overground, just above Zaun)
After researching each selected regions, we decided as a group to do Ixtal. As it fits our colour palette the best, and Ixtal does not have a lot of in-depth stories like the other regions, therefore we could build on this region with a lot more room for creativity.
Mindmap on Character Relationships
Brainstorming on character relations will make our group’s characters seamlessly fit within our collaborative character set.
SIBLING PAIRINGS IN LEAGUE OF LEGENDS
- Anivia, Ornn, Volibear
- Ashe, Sejuani, Lissandra
- Shen, Zed
- Darius, Draven
- Cassiopeia, Katarina, Talon
- Nasus, Renekton
- Garen, Lux
- Varus, Valeeva
- Jinx, Vi
- Kayle, Morgana
- Yasuo, Yone
We looked at sibling pairings in League of Legends to decide if we would want to do sibling pairings for our characters, or even triplets. But we thought doing a sibling relationship will limit us in choosing which species would our character be, as Brian wanted to do half human half animal for his character, and Min and I wanted to do human characters.
Moodboard
Moodboards are a collage of images that are based on my theme, this provides a strong foundation for my vision of the project, creating a moodboard helps me establish the basics of what the end result could ideally look like. Here is a mixture of pictures of Mayan, Amazonian and tribal women. Heavily inspired by the Ixtal region.
Yucatec Maya/ Aztec Inspirations
Inspiration opens us up to new possibilities and ideas by allowing us to go beyond our ordinary experiences and limitations.
KUKULCAN/ QUETZALCOATL
Feathered serpent god, what god is Kukulcan? Kukulcan is the feathered serpent god in many Mesoamerican cultures. He was particularly important to the Yucatec Maya. The Aztecs called him Quetzalcoatl.
Silhouette
Silhouette design is a very powerful way of designing characters, props, and environments. It is a great way to make designs have a strong shape, memorable visual appeal and stand out from the rest. Hence, I created 7 different silhouettes. All of the characters above are inspired by Mayan, Amazonian and tribal women, with different clothing and weapons. Some weapons are more modernized and fantasy inspired to fit League or Legends aesthetic.
Rough Drafts
A rough draft is to give me a place to start to formally put together my ideas with evidence. I did some rough drafts on the silhouettes I liked the most, here are 4 drastically different designs, with different poses, clothing, hair and weapons.
Line Art
Having a line art to clearly show the ideas and details I have on my character so that the viewer can see the finer intricacies of the model including the clothes, hair, accessories, and weapon.
Colour Variations
Colour variations are important as the colour grabs the attention of the viewer and colours have different individual associations which can influence the mood
Aztec Tribal Patterns
Final Design
Orthographic view