[Riot Creative Contest 2017] Love Birds Xayah & Rakan

RaivynMoon

Hello! Here are some thoughts about the concept for this illustration, plus a bit of a disclaimer. When I've heard about the Creative Contest for 2017, I've thought about participating with this concept of "Love Birds" Xayah & Rakan, which is like a Heartseeker or Sweetheart concept, but taking more into account these two characters' background as vastayans or bird-human hybrids. I was very disappointed when I came across some skin leaks a few months ago which stated that Riot's team was already working on skins with a Heartseeker or Sweetheart concept for these champions, because that meant to me at that moment that this idea wasn't suitable for the contest anymore. But after the actual skins landed on PBE, and saw that they were VERY different from what I've had in mind for my concept, I decided to give it a go. That being said, I know there's some kind of controversy right now about the official skins, so I would like to ask everyone who would like to participate in my project's discussion to keep it nice in the comments. I'm not very experienced on designing stuff like skins yet, but I really wanted to be able to enter the contest to have fun and learn as much as I can, and I would love to be able to enter with the concept that made more sense to me of all I've thought of these last months. Please feel free to leave some comments or constructive criticism!

Now that that's out of the way, here are my inspirations for the concept. I'm mostly taking inspiration from Varus and Quinn's skins, specially from Valor's design. But I might also get some ideas from other similar skins, so I have these around too. I want Xayah's color palette to be mostly white and pink with a little bit of red, while Rakan's color palette would be white and red with some pink details, so both would hint to their partner a bit.


Here's some process on Xayah. I'm still trying out different stuff on her hair and clothes on the side, but I'm liking this one so far.


I'm still trying to figure out a design for Rakan that seems different enough from Xayah's, because I'm pretty aware of the confusion that their capes can cause while in game, and that's something that I didn't think about back when I first thought of this concept a few months ago.

Please let me know what you think!

ChorizoNuclear

Nice work, i would like to see her finished soon. 
Btw, i think xayah's feathers are pointy
Good luck!

FriedChicken

I love the pink color of her hair, amazing! and her ears are so cute. 10/10

Crashwoman

I dont know how that design could go through different designers and they said "this is good". I really like your concept and I hope you advanced more in your desing   

DrEggman

Hey there, your concept art looks good in terms of how well its drawn and i think the design looks pretty decent. However, in my eyes i don't feel like it will fit the characters themselves.The main reason as to why i think this is because we know both characters are in love and they are a "couple" and from my perspective, valentine skins (or at least the ones that were released first) gave the vibe that they were making references to cupid (as seen in both ashe and varus skins) or some form of romantic deity. With time that changed and i felt that it went in the direction of "let's make a valentine skin because it would look good on X character" rather than making it to fit the universe that they originally created. I think a tango skin for both of them would fit them perfectly or something that will fit the idea of these characters, at the same time i like the design of the armor, it reminds me of a valkyrie at wich point it makes me think that an "olympus" universe could also work really well for both of them.
I hope you learn a lot from this experience and you continue to grow as an artist!