[ PAX East 2014 ] The Art of Relaunching Champions in League of Legends Panel & Karthus VU WIP Preview

Posted on at 1:28 PM by Moobeat
PAX East is still underway and today the he relaunch team hosted an "The Art of Relaunching Champions in League of Legends" where they primarily discussed the upcoming Twitch visual update! As a special treat, they also previewed a heavy work in progress model for a Karthus VU!
Continue reading for more information, including videos and pictures from the panel!

Rioter's on the panel include:
  • Randy " Riot Entropy" Begel - Writer
  • Curtis "C3Sound " Churn - Sound design
  • Josh "Grumpy Monkey" Singh - 3D Art
  • Skylar "Reach4TheSkylar" Surra - Animation
  • Josh "HUGEnFAST" Smith - Illustration. 
  • Ryan "Morello" Scott - Game Design
Here's a video of the presentation. Unfortunately the sound is a wee bit quiet and the introductions were clipped off due to some technical problems - the bulk of it is still there though!

If the video isn't your thing, here's a quick rundown of some of the key points the team looked at:

To kick things off, the team quick jumped into how champions are chosen for relaunches and visual updates, using the recent Heimerdinger relaunch as an example of someone who could just use an UPGRADE!!!
They then shifted to the main focus of today's panel: - Twitch, who currently has a VU testing on the PBE.

Moving on to Concept & Discovery - the team covered a few ways they try to flesh out who a champion really is, including brainstorming internally and analyzing player perception. 
Next up as voice exploration where the team gave examples of three of Twitch's VU lines all read in a Comedic, Paranoid, and Sinister way. [ Video link @ 3:05 ]
After that came the Art exploration, where we got a taste of a few early Twitch VU concept arts.
Early concept art for the Twitch VU
During the animation section, the panel singled out Twitch's new taunt. Originally he had a self described "boring" taunt where he tossed his vial up and down. In order to add more personality to it, the team ended up with his current new taunt of playing his cross bow like a Violin. [ video @ 12:19 ]

On the VFX side of things, they also previewed some ability concept arts!

Moving on to the splash side of things, they previewed some rough splash sketches
and then moved into discussing the various stages of a splash, from a greyscale to finished product!


After the presentation was complete, the panelists opened the floor up for a short Q&A session:

At the very end of the panel, the Rioters had one last surprise: A heavy WORK IN PROGRESS preview of the future Karthus VU!

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