IronStylus on Battle Priestess Soraka

If you're like me, you were really excited when the news rolled out about a new Soraka skin accompanying the long awaited Soraka visual update and then, once the update was released, you were crushed at the lack of a new skin.

Luckily, IronStylus flew by the forums to drop off an explanation of where our Soraka skin is and what the deal was with that leaked image that circulated the web a few weeks ago.

Here is the of "Battle Priestess Soraka" that IronStylus mentioned was floating around. Note: This IS NOT and DOES NOT reflect the final skin.

Continue reading to check out IronStylus' full statement on the matter.

Here  IronStylus giving us the low down on what's going on with the new Soraka skin:

"Yes, a new skin was indeed planned and executed on. You may have seen an image of it floating around. Here's the skinny:

Soraka's visual rework was started a while ago, Grumpy Monkey actually created her new base and did an amazing job I feel. He managed to capture everything we did love abour Soraka (hooves, bananas, horn, <3) and injected a high amount of fidelity while simultaneously simplifying, making her elegant. This set the bar for us for any following skin. While her model was being worked up I concepted what is colloquially known as “Battle Priestess Soraka”. However, as we poured resources into her base rework BP Soraka didn’t evolve too much.

As the base rework progressed BP Soraka strayed further away from where we were aiming the base. There was a bit of divergence. Soraka’s base maintained elegance but the BP concept was done far before her rework was completed, putting the skin in too much of a vacuum. By the time that her base was at completion, we evaluated BP Soraka and found it lacking for the prescient we had set with her base. It felt chunky rather than elegant. It didn’t quite mesh with her animations either. Particles were in good shape, but the skin itself lacked synergy. So, we put off BP Soraka for further iteration.

What we want to do is to release a skin that’s up to expectations which we have set for her new base. This may or may not culminate in the release of BP Soraka. We’re currently evaluating and iterating. In fact I’m most likely going to be the one who’s doing the iteration on the concept!

Hopefully that clarifies some things. We know fans are clamoring for a new Soraka skin and we want to deliver. We want to make sure the skin is up to par with the bar we’ve set with her new base. Right now as she stands BP Soraka is not up to snuff. We’ll see where she ends up!"

 For your convience, here is a comparison between the Leaked Battle Priestess Soraka image and the newly updated Soraka model.

But how could this happen? Why would they start producing a new skin without the new model totally completed? IronStylus spoke to this, saying:

"Her base model was for the most part done, but it had a lot of polish passes and tweaks as 3D and animation work progressed. Depending on the state of a model and its subsequent rig work can be done on a skin without the base being completely final. BP Soraka just didn't really evolve into anything as fresh as the base.

I actually really like the idea as she's a bit of a paladin. That's what inspired me to work on the skin. Actually it was one of the first concepts I did when I worked on the Skins team. However, looking at it now I don't feel it's the best execution and doesn't really hold up. I will probably end up tweaking it heavily or maybe redoing it depending on if we decide that it's appropriate.

I'm cool with any skin for her actually, from banana suit to demon. I think they're all great ideas! Whatever we release next for her simply needs to fit with the quality we've established and what is core to Soraka as a character."