[RIOT CREATIVE CONTEST 2017] Character Art - SONGM@STER SORAKA
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Hello everyone!
I'm really glad that Riot is throwing another Creative Contest! It's been 3 years since the last one and I ended having to leave it early due to personal circumstances and I'm so glad that I am able to have another go! League of Legends is pretty much my most played game nowadays and preseason to season 8 is so far really fun to play so I really want to be able to put a good effort into representing some of what I think are the most amazing character designs I've seen in a while.
As I busy myself with a full time job I will forewarn you that updates may be sporadic or even seemingly infrequent (it took me two weeks before I even felt prepared enough to make a thread). There will be a burst in December and January but November's a bit tighter. Anyways, onto the topic. I will also warn you that this gets wordy; I'm going to treat it as if it was a professional project (with the most lenient deadline ever) so I do apologise as it is very long but if you do read it and/or offer some critique, insight or encouragement I would really appreciate that.
Inspiration:
For the character I'm choosing Soraka as I really loved her latest skin Star Guardian Soraka but I still wanted to have some creative freedom. Looking at other skin lines and remembering that I recently got into both Love Live and IDOLM@STER, I remembered that a non-musical champion was given a musical skin:
Summed up as Pop Star Ahri, she is based on idol groups in Korea and Japan, in particular AKB; what was surprising about this skin is how little Ahri has to do with this other than having the dance animation mimicking Run Devil Run by Girls Generation (a Korean idol group), but it was still a believable and very nice looking skin.
So how can you link Soraka to singing idols? Well, what if Soraka used the power of her voice to heal and perform abilities in conjunction with using her staff? Welp, close enough link, lets go with it!
Analysis
I will say that Soraka has one of the weaker silhouettes in League and I think this is kinda deliberate; she is very squishy in most optimal builds taken and by herself is usually not a threat (unless of course she is building Bananas). Generally speaking a Soraka is trailing behind a team and topping them off with health at the cost of her own. She is a human shaped character with a unique stance due to her 'goat legs'. What really sets her apart are a gigantic staff which has a large circular shape, large, pointed ears (in most skins) and a large horn on her head. All of these things will contrast the rest of her body so that she is identifiable. I think this is why some of her skins are allowed a lot more leniency with silhouette, such as Star Guardian Soraka adding permanent wings or Divine Soraka having a long dress; the core identifiable features already say who she is and they are placed at the very top of the character.
Minor things that stand out about her: Her face is usually framed with hair bangs, she's tall but thin.
I took a couple of screenshots and I did a black paintover of them to show what her silhouette looks like and what to me I feel are what stand out about her and I drew a base to generate some ideas from.
"Well if she's such a subdued character, why are you making her a skin that basically makes her the centre of attention?"
Because she can perform clutch saves or make plays through her abilities. These are the moments that aren't really appreciated by in game stats - when that Gnar gets that big global heal off Soraka's ult when she's bot lane and it saves his life from the Gangplank Ult, or when that Thresh who just flashed now cannot use Flay or Death Sentence to kill your AD Carry because Soraka Equinox'd him at that exact location and now he's feeling really bad. I think that's why supports main even play enchanter supports and that is the kind of mindset that I want to be thinking when I am designing and modelling this skin - for these kind of moments, they really should be the star.
So we have a motivation for the theme and now its a case of trying to come up with a concept that will marry the two together. I painted some silhouette concepts to begin exploring:
I think I went in a bit ham and painted over these with costume ideas; I was more interested in setting a direction as I considered this quite open ended when I created these. I had some basic references for clothing and costumes and a lot of influence comes from fictitious idol singers from Love Live and IDOLM@STER, to contrast with the real-life influences for Popstar Ahri but also to be able to design some very elaborate costumes.
There was a problem with these concepts though; League has a lot of skins with a lot of themes and these concepts could easily be considered as a different skin line; number 1 looks like High School Pentakill, Number 5 could be Sweetheart, and Number 3 could end up joining Headmaster Fiora as Scholarship Soraka. Hilarious and having potential but they're not reaching my objective. Love Live was proving to be a massive influence on this and it does the same thing with very seasonal costumes.
These aren't the actual references I used but are just examples of themes becoming the main focus of a given design.
This wasn't going to work with League content due to being associated with other skin lines, so I did a moodboard of references that are more directly identifiable as stage idols and to hopefully cement the intended direction of the project:
Whilst this is here, the texturing on IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls is really outstanding and I'm hoping to be able to emulate this for the handpainting part of this project.
Frills, long billowing fabrics, trails, asymmetry all make for interesting and busy forms. I hear that they had actual fashion designers for consultants so if anyone knows really good resources for fashion design I'd love to hear them. I also remembered something really really basic about Soraka and really kicked myself for forgetting it.
Soraka is more associated with the moon than Diana, the Scorn of the Moon. The crescent moon is in almost every skin. Why is this not being used!
I then did 3 edits that follow this moodboards mindset instead, they're in the third column.
Those 3 concepts feel closer to what Soraka might look like if she had a Popstar skin. Maybe Riot would go down a similar route as with Popstar Ahri (tighter clothing, less billowing for performance and mobility). I particularly like associating the moon and stars with her like this and
Successes This Post:
Because I was just trying to be cute, and it all for that alliteration.
If you made it to the end of this long post, thank you. If you have feedback, critique or suggestions please feel free to reply. If you feel that I should uninstall then I suppose I couldn't blame you. Thank you for reading and hopefully the next post will be very soon.
I'm really glad that Riot is throwing another Creative Contest! It's been 3 years since the last one and I ended having to leave it early due to personal circumstances and I'm so glad that I am able to have another go! League of Legends is pretty much my most played game nowadays and preseason to season 8 is so far really fun to play so I really want to be able to put a good effort into representing some of what I think are the most amazing character designs I've seen in a while.
As I busy myself with a full time job I will forewarn you that updates may be sporadic or even seemingly infrequent (it took me two weeks before I even felt prepared enough to make a thread). There will be a burst in December and January but November's a bit tighter. Anyways, onto the topic. I will also warn you that this gets wordy; I'm going to treat it as if it was a professional project (with the most lenient deadline ever) so I do apologise as it is very long but if you do read it and/or offer some critique, insight or encouragement I would really appreciate that.
Inspiration:
For the character I'm choosing Soraka as I really loved her latest skin Star Guardian Soraka but I still wanted to have some creative freedom. Looking at other skin lines and remembering that I recently got into both Love Live and IDOLM@STER, I remembered that a non-musical champion was given a musical skin:
Summed up as Pop Star Ahri, she is based on idol groups in Korea and Japan, in particular AKB; what was surprising about this skin is how little Ahri has to do with this other than having the dance animation mimicking Run Devil Run by Girls Generation (a Korean idol group), but it was still a believable and very nice looking skin.
So how can you link Soraka to singing idols? Well, what if Soraka used the power of her voice to heal and perform abilities in conjunction with using her staff? Welp, close enough link, lets go with it!
Analysis
I will say that Soraka has one of the weaker silhouettes in League and I think this is kinda deliberate; she is very squishy in most optimal builds taken and by herself is usually not a threat (unless of course she is building Bananas). Generally speaking a Soraka is trailing behind a team and topping them off with health at the cost of her own. She is a human shaped character with a unique stance due to her 'goat legs'. What really sets her apart are a gigantic staff which has a large circular shape, large, pointed ears (in most skins) and a large horn on her head. All of these things will contrast the rest of her body so that she is identifiable. I think this is why some of her skins are allowed a lot more leniency with silhouette, such as Star Guardian Soraka adding permanent wings or Divine Soraka having a long dress; the core identifiable features already say who she is and they are placed at the very top of the character.
Minor things that stand out about her: Her face is usually framed with hair bangs, she's tall but thin.
I took a couple of screenshots and I did a black paintover of them to show what her silhouette looks like and what to me I feel are what stand out about her and I drew a base to generate some ideas from.
"Well if she's such a subdued character, why are you making her a skin that basically makes her the centre of attention?"
Because she can perform clutch saves or make plays through her abilities. These are the moments that aren't really appreciated by in game stats - when that Gnar gets that big global heal off Soraka's ult when she's bot lane and it saves his life from the Gangplank Ult, or when that Thresh who just flashed now cannot use Flay or Death Sentence to kill your AD Carry because Soraka Equinox'd him at that exact location and now he's feeling really bad. I think that's why supports main even play enchanter supports and that is the kind of mindset that I want to be thinking when I am designing and modelling this skin - for these kind of moments, they really should be the star.
So we have a motivation for the theme and now its a case of trying to come up with a concept that will marry the two together. I painted some silhouette concepts to begin exploring:
I think I went in a bit ham and painted over these with costume ideas; I was more interested in setting a direction as I considered this quite open ended when I created these. I had some basic references for clothing and costumes and a lot of influence comes from fictitious idol singers from Love Live and IDOLM@STER, to contrast with the real-life influences for Popstar Ahri but also to be able to design some very elaborate costumes.
There was a problem with these concepts though; League has a lot of skins with a lot of themes and these concepts could easily be considered as a different skin line; number 1 looks like High School Pentakill, Number 5 could be Sweetheart, and Number 3 could end up joining Headmaster Fiora as Scholarship Soraka. Hilarious and having potential but they're not reaching my objective. Love Live was proving to be a massive influence on this and it does the same thing with very seasonal costumes.
These aren't the actual references I used but are just examples of themes becoming the main focus of a given design.
This wasn't going to work with League content due to being associated with other skin lines, so I did a moodboard of references that are more directly identifiable as stage idols and to hopefully cement the intended direction of the project:
Whilst this is here, the texturing on IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls is really outstanding and I'm hoping to be able to emulate this for the handpainting part of this project.
Frills, long billowing fabrics, trails, asymmetry all make for interesting and busy forms. I hear that they had actual fashion designers for consultants so if anyone knows really good resources for fashion design I'd love to hear them. I also remembered something really really basic about Soraka and really kicked myself for forgetting it.
Soraka is more associated with the moon than Diana, the Scorn of the Moon. The crescent moon is in almost every skin. Why is this not being used!
I then did 3 edits that follow this moodboards mindset instead, they're in the third column.
Those 3 concepts feel closer to what Soraka might look like if she had a Popstar skin. Maybe Riot would go down a similar route as with Popstar Ahri (tighter clothing, less billowing for performance and mobility). I particularly like associating the moon and stars with her like this and
Successes This Post:
- Made a thread - Seriously this has actually been kinda hard. I haven't made a thread in a while and I am anxious about the kind of response I will get.
- Analysed the character - I learned a lot about this character whilst I was looking so closely, I didn't even clock that Soraka had a more subdued character silhouette, at least in contrast to a lot of other characters. Maybe that's why no one focuses her or builds Grievous Wounds items?
- Defined the direction of the skin - Looking towards something frilly that isn't associated with a topic that can be confused with another skin line. The only things that should are things associated with Soraka, so stars, crescent moons, astral themes.
- Skirts billow out too wide - whilst Soraka does get a lot of leeway with silhouette in skins her skirt billows out a bit too wide; I believe that she is defined partially by a thin silhouette so the skirt may just need to be thinned a bit.
- Didn't use the Crescent Moon in the concepts - future concepts will use it; its her biggest visual cue.
- More Concepts - Produce more concepts that are closer to "frilly idols". Utilise references from fashion and real life. Understand fashion design
- Microphone interaction - Work out how the microphone is really going to work to be believable. Either Soraka will have the microphone on her "staff", or she can have a headset and the staff will be free to be designed (although it will sort of make less sense for her to have it). Not the worst problem as I feel that Riot do have a lot of leeway with skins.
- Concept needs to be finalised - I am allowing myself to update when I can but I do feel that this stage of the process needs to be wrapped up soon so move onto Zbrush sculpting. I would like to think that this should be done by start of December but that can be an ambitious outlook for my current schedule.
Because I was just trying to be cute, and it all for that alliteration.
If you made it to the end of this long post, thank you. If you have feedback, critique or suggestions please feel free to reply. If you feel that I should uninstall then I suppose I couldn't blame you. Thank you for reading and hopefully the next post will be very soon.
Replies
I took some of the initial designs and tried to adapt them to different things, allowing for freedom with changes but I did want to make sure that I could narrow the direction down so a single theme. Whilst the "frilly" aspect of the previous post is prevalent I took some inspiration for outfits that singers might wear during ballads or other powerful types of song. I think this is quite fitting with Soraka given her lack of mobility and game changing ult but also meant that the silhouette could be made thinner more easily.
The staff is quite difficult to design; particularly trying to keep that "big area" that players need to see to identify her. Some success is had with using musical notation utilising a Treble Clef, Bass Clef and Common Time, the latter being quite linkable to her crescent theme.
I currently edge on utilising designs 3, 6 or 9 as I feel that they communicate a quite elegant form but reduce the noise of the frills to something that seems manageable. Design 2 really pushed that aspect too far, as well as taking forever to paint. A lot of these designs stemmed from design 5 which I really enjoyed concepting. The tone/value gradient for those prospective designs from top to bottom also feels more balanced as I try to keep the highest brightness and contrast values more towards the top whilst trying to lessen that effect towards the bottom.
All the skirts feature an open design to seperate this skin from the Divine and Reaper skins; I don't think she has anything like that so I am hoping that it increase the uniqueness and allows the player to see another of her defining traits.
If you have any feedback or think there are some designs that you like, please let me know. I'm going to try to make steps to move towards final design so any feedback/crit is appreciated.