League of Legends - Login + Campaign Animation (2018)

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League of Legends: 2018 Motion Graphics

Long Overdue: My 2018!

2018 was chocked full of new things for my animation work, which included branching into a bit more direction work and collaborations.

This is a collection of my animation / motion graphics work for the PC game "League of Legends" at Riot Games in 2018. Many of them are login screens, which show players what's new in the game, and act as the "front page" for our game. This could mean new characters, events, or skins (cosmetic content for in-game characters), and more. The screens here show my work mostly on new champions and their updates; there are many more awesome screens created by other teams at Riot as well, especially for skins.

Also seen here is work on gameplay trailers and teasers for these characters. That work was more closely done with the incredible in-game video capture team, and talented creative/production directors with the publishing teams.

I'm going to recycle this next paragraph, because it still totally applies; Keep in mind that everything seen below is the result of the great teams and people at Riot Games, and sometimes other talented partners. The Splash / Art team created the awesome illustrations for us to animate, the Motion Graphics team taught me a ton about how/why we animate, and everyone else put in great feedback to keep making each iteration better. And countless more people helped create everything else about these characters. So yeah, they all rule, but I'll be trying to tag others who had the heavier hands in the creation of these animations, but reach out if I missed anyone.

A Swan Song...

Finally, I also want to mention that League is phasing out their login screens, and I will be working on even more other projects around the company. It's been wild looking back at all of these animations with amazing art and sound/music, and I'm gonna miss working on so many of them. Thanks for checking them out over the last 5 years!

Enjoy, and thanks for your support!

Season Start - 2018

Last year's ranked Season kicked off with a big bang. I worked on, helped manage, and direct this login screen which featured a whopping 5 characters; On top of this we featured close-ups of their faces. It was a fun challenge to execute each of them with their own personality while focusing on subtlety with the expressions.

I helped concept this screen, heavily animated Jinx and Lucian, but also did partial work or finishing on all the characters/FX, and orchestrated the combined scene. Greg crushed handling the massive final background scene and somehow got this odd camera move to loop without a hitch! Our talented partner CJ did a great job with Poppy and Jhin, while Adam did the initial work on Galio.

My Role: Combination of Animation/VFX, Motion Concept, Animation Direction

Motion Team - CJ Xander (Refract Art), Greg Platt, Adam Oliveira
Character Illustration- Jason Chan

Background Design - Blind
Music Team - Edouard Brenneisen

Swain - The Noxian Grand General

I had a fun time figuring out this one! As soon as I saw the army in the WIP of this splash, I wanted see how I could go about recreating a giant army in a few days to a week... I ended up being able to make most of the soldiers as animated particles in After Effects, and used 3D to get the flags looking more realistic and make Swain's shoulder bird a bit more dynamic in terms of how much I could move it. Making it feel like he was draining energy from his bird was a fun touch to add as well, which looked great in the still splash.

My Role: All Animation/VFX
Splash Team - Victor Maury
Music - Edouard Brenneisen

Kai'Sa - Daughter of the Void

Kai'Sa's main challenge was figuring out her intro, which I pushed for in order to give a sense of her lightning fast speed and void powers; Afterward, the goal was to give a sense of the onslaught of danger she's constantly in, living at the edge the void. CJ helped make an awesome rig, while I timed out the intro; An earlier iteration had Kaisa landing hard on a foreground creature, but we axed it since the feeling of it was becoming borderline ...comical! After that, I worked on doing most of her animation and scene FX, while CJ animated the hordes of skittering creatures to bring it all together.

My Role: Main Animation/VFX, Previs

Motion Team - CJ Xander (Refract Art),
Splash Team - Victor Maury

Sound FX- Brandon Reader

Music Team - Jason Willey

Comic Cover:

This animated cover was made to promote the awesome comic that followed Kai'Sa through an encounter with a Shuriman merchant, who gets caught in a bad situation in the void. I was responsible for helping with mograph related direction, some previs, and notes as we worked with the awesome Jumbla Animation studios who brought it all to life. (I think the only detail I personally added was the twitching creature from the first few seconds, so that was my animation cameo).

Comic Cover:

My Role: Mograph Direction Advisor

Creative Direction: Matt Costa

Art: Elena Bespalova, Jason Chan

Animation: Jumbla Animation Studios

Pyke - The Bloodharbor Ripper

This screen was meant to be especially freaky... Pyke's insanity comes from being abandoned at the bottom of the sea with the hungry Leviathan, and now that he's come back from the depths, he tends to mistake people for his former crew members...and kills them. To get this idea across in the animation, I utilized the pose in the splash as Pyke stares directly at you and tried to make it feel like the viewer is entering his warped reality more and more with each breath. Finding the happy medium between disorientation and motion sickness was an interesting challenge to deal with while creating this camera warp effect.

My Role: All Animation/VFX
Splash Team - Victor Maury

Music Team - Edouard Brenneisen

Teaser:

This short was created to tell the tale of Pyke and set the tone the madness of his character, via both the visuals and his creepy narration. I helped nudge this project along at the start and provided some animation direction, and Blind knocked it out of the park with excellent animation and pacing work.

My Role: Partial Pre-vis, Mograph Notes/Direction

All Animaton/VFX: Blind

Creative Lead: Matt Costa

Art: Jason Chan

Irelia - The Blade Dancer

The blades in this scene were lots of fun to work on, (though infuriating at time to make loop!). Irelia herself is fairly static so most of her movement was focused on subtle movements, but much of my efforts were on getting the blades to behave in her iconic delayed pattern that's scene in-game. The blades were really an extension of her character, so I tried to vary the animation and tie them to her movements to show she was controlling them effortlessly.

My Role: All Animation/VFX
Splash Team - Jessica Oyhenart
Music Team - Edouard Brenneisen

Teaser:

This short was mostly focused on camera moves and pacing to show the mural that depicts the story being told. We worked through some tough render times trying to get this to work in After Effects with such a huge texture, but we got it all working in the end in a way that we could get some nice reflective lighting on the gold elements to call attention to important areas. CJ did the bulk of the initial camera work and 3D setup, and I did some camera and FX passes to take it home!

My Role: Mograph Direction, Supporting Animation/VFX Touch-ups

Creative Lead: Anton Kolyukh, John Battle

Motion Team: CJ Xander (Refract Art)
Art - Jason Chan

Gameplay Trailer:

I also got to work on a few specific shots of the very hype gameplay trailer! One was stitching together a shot by cutting through the frame as she sent her blades across, and another was adding ambience to the ending scene to make it feel a bit more serene.

Aatrox - The Darkin Blade

Relentless. Oppressive. I think those are pretty accurate words to describe Aatrox; With each beat of the heart of the blade that essentially is him, I waned to add waves of his life energy beating down on the battlefield. I was kind of glad that Victor added such a (rightfully) scared little dude into this splash to really get a sense of the fear Aatrox brings to the battlefield. The sense of scale with the hand reaching towards the camera was also awesome, and proved to be an interesting challenge to balance the amount of movement to reflect this as well.

My Role: All Animation/VFX
Splash Art - Victor Maury
Music Team - Jason Wiley

Akali - The Rogue Assassin

This screen's biggest challenge by far was the smoke. I probably spent over a week of this project just on that, if I remember right! I used to a combination of 3D simulation, brought into After Effects as a video to loop, and then did much of the shading and look of it in after effect by doing tons of compositing, to get a look I don't think I would have achieved in 3D that was closer to the original splash art. Aside from that, I wanted to occasionally display a blade sheen and eye highlight to keep some interest on her actual character, despite her thick signature smoke bomb stealing the show.

My Role: All Animation/VFX
Splash Team - Jessica Oyhenart
Music Team - Kole Hicks (My favorite track of the year!)

Nunu and Willump - The Boy and His Yeti

This screen was super fun to work on; It's one of the most warm and cozy screens I've had the pleasure to work on, while trying some new things. My goal was to create some solid reactions between the characters and what they are seeing together. I was able to use the in-game maya character models for this pair to create the magical visions that they are watching. I even animated 2/3 visions which was really fun (the snowball roll was taken from the in-game animation). Ji helped me focus on those elements by handing the stylized fire, flute FX, and snow layering, so I definitely owe him one there.

My Role: Animation/VFX

Motion Team: JiHwan Kim
Splash Team - Victor Maury
Music Team - Kole Hicks

Gameplay Trailer:

Again, this was an extra heart-warming gameplay trailer to work on. My role was to make the beginning and end scenes feel more magical by adding shooting stars, snow, and other comping. Breakdown included!

Pulsefire Ezreal - Ultimate Skin

Making this Ezreal skin was a fun chance to actually work on a skin for the first time in a long while.I was psyched to work on a classic ultimate skin rework, no less! There were so many moving parts with this screen. For one, we wanted to show Ezreal's gear get upgraded over time, which is a nod to how the skin works in-game. The other big one was showing 3 different time/places, and figuring out how to transition between them. An extra thanks to Jennifer for helping make a few extra background settings to make this idea happen.

My Role: All Animation/VFX
Splash Team - Jennifer Wuestling
Music Team - Kole Hicks

Neeko - The Curious Chameleon

For this social teaser I did some pre-vis FX and Camera work, while working with CJ who did the bulk of the animations. The main challenges were figuring out the transitions, and balance how much of Neeko we wanted to show through to players, since at the time they didn't know who she was.

My Role: Motion Graphics Direction, Touch Up Animation

Motion Team: CJ Xander (Refract Art)

Season Start 2019 + Sylas Login

Now, we end on another crazy screen; I know it's technically 2019, but it's the final login screen I worked on and it was quite a ride. For this, we had a three tiered versions of the screen, and contained a bunch of champions. The second beat was actually a red herring, we started the animation the same way, but then introduced Sylas stealing Blitz's power and "taking over" the campaign for a moment while still fitting with the overall branding of the login.

We had to figure out how to go about showing all the characters without doing too much character animation, balancing them all within the camera moves and space, and figure out how to reveal them through a smokey environment. Big shout out to the team coming together to help get this one across the finish line in time for the new season! CJ worked on the initial passes on the whole thing and much of the character work, and then the internal team took it further and created the Sylas version of the screen.

My Role: Main Animation/VFX, Animation Direction and Concept

Motion Team: CJ Xander (RefractArt), Greg Platt, Adam Oliveira
Splash Team - Digic, WeLikeSmall, Jason Chan