PROJECT 1: Designing the concept

I chose the "Helmeted Character" brief as my first project, mainly because it did not ask for a specific style, which means I should be able to practice low/mid poly handpainting on this one without problems. I knew from the start that I wanted to create a skin for, in my opinion, one of the coolest characters in League of Legends up to this date - Kai'Sa, Daughter of the Void.

(Kai'Sa 3D turnaround by Riot Games)

She honestly has it all; thick thighs, badass facepaint, troubled teenagehood (and of course, the required helmet), so picking her was a no-brainer. What she unfortunately did not have was good fan-concepts for her possible skins, which meant I had to pull of a few sleepless nights right from the start to design a wider range of concepts to choose from. When designing these, I sourced the inspiration from: 1. already existing League of Legends skin ranges

(Reference board I used to analyse and choose the final skin ranges. Plus, on the right hand side, a cheat sheet for Riot's new game Teamfitght Tactics, which I played in between designing to keep myself sane. 😄)

2. From the player community itself. It is quite known that Riot places a huge emphasis on interacting with its players' ideas when adding new features to the game, and because I'm a certified League addict (and working for Riot has been my end-game goal ever since I started doing game art), I felt like I should give that practice a go. "Aviator Kai'Sa", one of the skins I designed (and, spoiler alert, subsequently chose to model) was actually suggested in the player forums.

I ended up producing the following (very rough and quick) designs:

 I then decided to ask the League community for help again, when I posted on a Czech LoL Facebook group I was a member of ever since I was a kiddo, asking which one of the skins the players would be happiest to see as a 3D Model or in a game. I got a pretty unexpectedly overwhelming amount of responses, around 100 people commented to share their opinion (in a group where posts get lost fairly quickly because everyone's posting so much) and the result was a close tie among the three, but ultimately, after consulting my art/industry friends for help, I picked Aviator. They felt it read the best in context of the game and was not as generic as the other two. One suggestion I got from someone extremely proficient in handpainted character creation was to re-design the turbines above her shoulders, which is a process I will be showing in my future posts.