Brandon: CG's really valuable because it allows us to bring our champions to life.
It allows us to get up close and personal with our champions in a completely unconstrained way.
Thomas: We know that each champion has very iconic, distinctive moves that our players recognize.
So we're constantly trying to be as authentic as possible, and as close to the game that we can be,
we're gonna try and hit that.
Brandon: One of the difficult things is, as artists,
we can't take what happens in the game and interpret it completely literally.
Garen is a perfect example.
If Garen was just spinning around the CG the whole time, we would have what feels like a cartoon.
We saw the cut of the Garen scene and it didn't have the spin.
Garen is not Garen if there's no spin.
So how can we make a spin that is not like a literal interpretation?
And then Brad got up and he did his thing.
Brad: I stood up and I was like, "It could look like this."
I whipped around, kicked the chair into the wall, kicked this wall,
and whole time he is just screaming, "Yes, yes, yes!"
And that was it, that was the birth of it.
So I sat down and I started gesture drawing over the actual animation itself.
Adam: There was a lot of back and forth on getting that to look really authentic to Garen, but in a new way.
It was a nod to what happens in the game, but completely appropriate to the CG.
Brandon: Another example is TF moving in on Fiddle.
He's going to initiate that with the yellow card.
So if there's an opportunity to keep it authentic, that's worth doing.
Brad: Why not motion capture?
If we're trying to sell realistic or believability, then why didn't we motion capture the moves?
The most athletic being in the world couldn't deliver what we need Twisted Fate to deliver on.
What Ryze - Ryze jumps 10 feet in the air to jump over that giant 400 ton pillar.
We wanted to be able to break the body when we needed.
To create things you could feel and not see.
For instance, if you were to pause it, his back is broken.
I mean, it's completely broken, and he's off balance.
You don't see it, but you feel how powerful he is, that it's a spine breaking throw.
Thomas: Personality is incredibly important when we were creating these champions.
Rylan: Annie's cool because she's like this two-sided kind of character.
She's very cute and adorable, kind of innocent looking on the outside,
but then you know that she's got this demonic, kind of twisted inside.
We decided that we definitely needed to shoot video reference and kind of get some ideas going.
So one of our fellow Rioters, Christina Wun, volunteered to do some video reference for us.
And she did such an awesome job on it,
that the animator working on it basically just took that reference and put it on Annie.
It's interpreted brilliantly and it just really came to life, and it became this really cool moment.
Brandon: We put so many fine details into the CG that, no matter how many times you watch it,
you're going to notice something new every time.
You may notice that Demonblade Tryndamere's sword is actually breathing for a split second.
You may notice that Tibbers' tongue, when he's hanging by Annie's side, is actually flopping around, hand animated.
It's touches like that we think add a little bit of extra magic to the experience.
Thomas: This CG, for us, is really a gift to the players,
and we know our players want to see our champions come to life.
Brandon: One of the things we're really committed to is expanding on the characters, places and the story of our world,
and right now, we feel we're just scratching the surface.