SARIN - "The Plague Doctor" (League of Legends Fan Champion)
This one has been an adventure all over - and it's not done yet, there are still missing pieces I will continue to upload.
After two fan skins I decided to try my hands at another level of difficulty - designing my own champion to fit into the world of Runeterra and into the game itself as a playable champion. I've worked on her for several months in collaboration with a good friend of mine (Jan-Niklas Hanstein) who was in charge of fleshing out abilities and game design. It's also been a great exercise in teamwork and communication! I am very proud to finally share what is done of her so far and everything that will be added. Yes, there is a whole backstory being written down, but I'm still tweaking that.
General gist though:
She's a studied academic from a noble family in Piltover, who descended to Zaun after ethical issues with her research. Receiving funding from the chembarons, she soon made connections to Noxus and saw her chance to get out of the twin cities and explore other parts of the world, curious what scientific discovery could lurk there. Turns out the work as a field scientist took a bigger toll on her than she expected. Physically scarred and traumatised by the war, she came to the conclusion that conflict is what ruins this world - it ruined Piltover and Zaun, it ruins Noxus and Ionia and on it goes, on bigger and bigger scales. She took it upon herself to carry the burden of rebuilding a world without conflict, one where every genetic and biological reason for difference and unjust treatment is fixed - sadly one has to also wipe the world clean before doing so.
TL;DR: She's an arrogant scientist with a god-complex who tries to do good in the worst way possible.
The stripe on her hood is meant to resemble a halo - which translated great into her top-view and I am very proud of it.
Is it the poison or just Jhin being dramatic? Who knows.
This is not the entire moodboard I created, since that evolved a lot over the project. These are the pictures I had in my mind the most while designing.
I had no clue how to start all this, so back to basic silhouettes it was.
Fleshing out the ideas I liked from the first set of thumbnails.
I already settled on some things here, like the sling and bombs as weapons and the idea of a masked "entity" with a hidden personality.
I needed to go back and take a look at Sarins origin and who she is. From that keyword list, I extracted primary, secondary design pillars and themes.
Closing in. I immediately felt like I hit the right spot with the design to right but it still needed improvement. I paid lots of attention to establish a clear line of focus.
Last polishes before getting to her final design.
Her mask is a complicated set of planes, so a sheet was necessary to make clear how it works and sits under her hood.
I like to go slinging myself, so I understood how her weapon works, but not everyone might.
Close-ups of her bombs and vials, since the clean glass-spheres were confusing to some people.
Her entire character is about duality: Good and evil, Zaun and Piltover etc... so that needed to show in her movement.
Initially I wanted to create a character similar to Jhin, leaving the audience wondering who is beneath the mask - but I got curious, so I had to know.
I am super glad I decided to explore what she looks like, since she is a total flipside to your usual female league champion.