[Riot Creative Contest 2017] Star Guardian Master Yi
vertex
Hey Polycount people, I'm working on a Star Guardian Master Yi outfit. I plan to through to a full colored Splash.
Early Design Philosophy:
-I went with a 3 point star design. The first team was 5 point, the 2nd team 4 point, so figured for this 3rd team, I'd go 3 point. Also, the 3 point start looks kinda like a Y for Yi.
-The Star Guardian theme, especially for the male (as in, Ezreal), definitely has the theme of clean and formal. The theme itself just looks sleek and clean. Therefore, I wanted to keep a lot of Yi's original skin feel and silhouette, but with this formalness in mind. I'll go over this more with my final lineart design. Good thing Yi has a hanging robe/coat, because I love them.
-The anime style knight was my biggest inspiration, as the coat, collar, long hair, and sword (among other things) are already somewhat present in Yi, and they are also designs I already like. Of course, I had to modify them to make it fit with the Star Guardian theme. Tuxedo Mask was a good inclusion too since he is the closest thing to a male Sailor Senshi/Scout in the Sailor Moon universe.
References:
Early Design Philosophy:
-I went with a 3 point star design. The first team was 5 point, the 2nd team 4 point, so figured for this 3rd team, I'd go 3 point. Also, the 3 point start looks kinda like a Y for Yi.
-The Star Guardian theme, especially for the male (as in, Ezreal), definitely has the theme of clean and formal. The theme itself just looks sleek and clean. Therefore, I wanted to keep a lot of Yi's original skin feel and silhouette, but with this formalness in mind. I'll go over this more with my final lineart design. Good thing Yi has a hanging robe/coat, because I love them.
-The anime style knight was my biggest inspiration, as the coat, collar, long hair, and sword (among other things) are already somewhat present in Yi, and they are also designs I already like. Of course, I had to modify them to make it fit with the Star Guardian theme. Tuxedo Mask was a good inclusion too since he is the closest thing to a male Sailor Senshi/Scout in the Sailor Moon universe.
References:
Replies
-Going with the sleek/clean/formal theme, I made Yi's coat more like a tuxedo (the collar like Ky's and the Scepter 4 team from K-Project, both in my references). The belt is a tuxedo belt. Slacks like Ezreal and Tuxedo Mask. Wasn't sure what to do with his shirt, so I ended up doing a straight collared shirt with tie, and I like how it turned out.
-The Ky-like shoulders were to give the same feel of his metal shoulderpads (similar silhouette), without actually being metal shoulderpads.
-The scarf, obviously from Mr. Chang. Both he and Billy from the Netflix Punisher series sold it for me.
-The 3 point start makes a cool hilt, very similar to the 2-handed sword in Baldur's Gate.
-The blade of the sword took some thinking. Yi's default sword is wide and curved. The thinner long sword (very Hakumen) felt like it fit the sleek/clean SG feel, so I went with it.
-The armor (Helmet, gauntlets, greaves); I studied the line style of the 2nd wave of Star Guardians mostly. They don't have a lot of metal on their outfits, but the white with gold trim fit really well with many armor designs from other franchises, so I adopted that. The shape and direction of the lines are meant to be original but still relate-able to Yi's default outfit.
-I tried making Yi's spec-ops goggles on this design, but no matter how I tried, it just didn't feel right. The sleek/clean feel of the SG skins clashed too much with the gritty goggles, so I ended up scrapping them for a single visor (almost like a project skin). The actual helmet is inspired by Hakumen's faceplate, which covers, much like Yi's goggles normally.
-I wondered if I "overkilled" the 3 point start motif on his outfit, but I feel I stopped at the right spot. His coat middle part (not sure what it's called) is cloth, so it has a slightly different design than the other metal stars on his outfit.
Gonna do a light color over with this for reference sake. Still debating on how much white vs black I want. It was obvious in some of Zeronis's designs (and Syndra's final design) that having heavy black on Star Guardians is not out of the question. I like darker colors, but this needs to feel like an SG skin first and foremost, so I'll have to fiddle around.
and then, onto the splash!