Final Character

The most successful concept was chosen and developed.

Using tutorials from artists who have worked on League of legends to improve my painting technique.

Tutorials

http://chrisbjors.deviantart.com/art/League-of-Legends-Vi-and-Jinx-step-by-step-436212143

http://shilin.deviantart.com/art/2013-Shilin-s-drawing-tutorial-walkthrough-439701179

Combining Concepts

I have tried to combine the Chinese dragon and the cannon dragon, taking influence from ancient Chinese fire arms.

The first concept was my first try at this level of development. I liked the helmet and claws but overall I felt the image was quite flat and didn't have enough detail, feedback was form peers was also the same. The second concept was much more successful in combing the Chinese style and cannons, as well as showing of the spirit aspect.

I have taken the strongest concepts forward and began adding details and highlights. i found that using gradients in this part of the process helps to add  detail to the character as shown in the DOTA character guide.

http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2CharacterArtGuide.pdf

Dragon Concept taken forward

I have chosen to take the dragon concept forward, although I feel both concepts are strong.

I have made quick sketches of a wide variety of armors and weapons. I have taken this process to encourage me to keep iterating at each step and explore more options for concepts, encase I find a stronger concept than before.

The favored designs were the Chinese, polish and my favorite the black knight 

Dragon Concept

This idea was inspired by an idea of a creature(dragon or snake creature maybe?) encased in layered armor.

I have continued to use the rubbing out to create shapes technique to create these as it gives good impression of the layers. I feel i spent to much time making the layer armor, this stage me be better done by line sketches.

I like these concepts that are similar to a Chinese dragons, i like the idea of the smoke and the sharp claws as weapons. The smoke concept on its own however may be to similar to another character in league of legends, Nocturne.

Scarab Priest Concept

After doing some research into the character creation process at riot, I have started to conceptualize some ideas. Above I have been inspired by an existing world in League of Legends. The brothers shown in the research page are the only characters from the mysterious land and I thought it would be interesting to further explore that theme.

I have started by doing quick sketches of random ideas inspired by Egyptian mythology to get a verity of possible directions

I most preferred the the walking scarab man idea, therefore I have began to use silhouettes to quickly pick out details. I like this process so far although when picking out shapes i often take to long at this stage.

Overall Design Process at Riot Games for League of legends

Character design is an iterative process at Riot, all aspects for the character concept can change and the character can also be inspired by many things :

Backstory/lore

Name

Theme

 Abilities

 Inspiration – other champions, mechanic, personality, real world ideas

At Riot they also have many people working together to create a character although the main idea usually comes from one person. They may also get a verity of people to work on concepts who haven't worked at riot before.

Research into artists that have worked at riot, blogs and youtube channels that show there process. some of them also have tutorials on how they work:

IronStylus – Michael Maurino – Concept Artist

Lead concept artist for Riot Games. His blog shows his process and concept art for certain champions in league of legends, as well as skin designs for champions.

He prefers to design powerful female characters, as he wants to address the ‘problem’ with much of League of Legend’s art has – the over sexualized characters, which is more obvious in the older character designs

http://ironstylus.blogspot.co.uk/

Paul Kwon – Concept Artist

http://www.paulsketch.com/

KNockmaw - Kienan Lafferty – Splash Artist

Was splash artist at Riot Games, now works on his own projects? His YouTube and deviant art have many tutorials for artists and show of the process when he created the splash art for League of Legends

http://www.youtube.com/user/KienanLafferty

http://knockwurst.deviantart.com/gallery/

Michalivan – Michal Ivan – Splash Artist

Created a lot of the more recent splash art for League of Legends

He was hired through the digital media group Puppet Works, who are also responsible for several of the more recent animations for League of Legends.

http://www.puppetworks.eu/#/work/league-of-legends/splash-art

http://michalivan.deviantart.com/