Maybe you could teach me your methods?
[Meow]
That's good.
[Meow]
More fierce though.
[Meow]
[Laughter]
Too fierce, I'll pull back the fierce.
[Music]
So, we're here at a cat cafe.
Yeah.
Very appropriate to talk about Yuumi.
Yuumi is a magical cat from Bandle City.
When we developed Yuumi we wanted to do a kind of unique take on a cat since she's in Runeterra.
She has magic.
She has a weird little light thingy on her forehead that glows.
I love the light.
Yeah, of course she can fly too, which is not something most cats I've seen can do.
But Yuumi is like a lot of cats in that she's kind of distractable.
She's constantly on the hunt for fish.
She's constantly on the hunt to take a nap.
As you know, her master mysteriously disappeared into the Book of Thresholds.
Which is a book of magical portals that instantly teleport you anywhere.
This cat's feet are on this cat's head.
So, portals.
[Laughter]
The book is a sentient book, so Yuumi and Book are now searching for their masters somewhere out in the world.
That's where I come in.
When I first read this script I was like...
"Whoever wrote this must own cats or just have a lot of cat experience."
Yes, it's true.
I was really excited to audition for this character.
What was it like getting in the mind of the cat when you were preparing for this role?
I have such a bond with my own cats
that I just kind of pulled all of their behavior and their characteristics.
and infused that into Yuumi.
I always like to imagine what my cats' voices would sound like if they could talk.
Oh my gosh.
It's just really easy for me to pop into cat mode.
I like that, "Pop into cat mode."
I didn't want to be too serious, but Yuumi's also very fierce.
So, it was kind of like a playfulness and a fierceness combined.
Literally, when I was making her meow sounds, I was clawing.
I don't know if you guys saw.
Yeah, I remember that.
Yeah, it'd be like [meow].
One of the challenging things about Yuumi was I had nothing to react off of
because Book never talks.
There aren't even lines written for Book.
That's how we got a lot of the different line options.
"Where's my fishy fish, fish for my dishy dish, dish?
Where's my fishy fish, fish for my dishy dish, dish?"
Yes that one, yes.
Yeah, I thought that was cool and creepy.
We recorded it so many ways.
We did.
How did you come up with Yuumi?
On champion's team we have a designer, a narrative writer, and an artist
work together to develop a new character.
It starts with blue sky ideation so we can come up with lots and lots of different ideas.
With this champion we knew we wanted to have a cute support, but that was pretty much it.
We came up with the idea of a cat because we hear the internet really likes cats.
Also, I really wanted to have a cat champion that I could play.
I thought it would be fun as a writer to capture the kind of strange, quirky personality of a cat.
In the development process we had the conversation
where we weren't actually sure if Yuumi was going to have voice over lines in the beginning.
We thought maybe she would just meow.
But part of the fun of this job, for me as a writer,
was to imagine if a cat did have words, what would they be saying?
Because their minds are very different from people's minds.
Yeah.
When I was watching some of the animations early on, a lot of Yuumi's movements were so catlike.
The licking of the paws, and then she scratches the back.
Yeah.
I'm like, "Every cat does that."
It's so spot on.
We were able to come visit a cat cafe and kind of observe them as they're running around.
Some of the artists brought sketchpads and drew the cats.
That is so fun.
It was super inspirational and awesome.
As an actor, I'm always taking things from real life
and putting them in my toolkit, and saving them for later.
Then if I don't have a real life experience that relates to what the character's going through
I use a lot of imagination.
One of the things I love about VO is that you can be things
that you would never be able to be on TV and film.
Like a cat?
Like a cat or a creature, because I think subconsciously I am a cat.
Yes.
Well, your past life as we talked about.
Yeah, I have so many cat characteristics.
It's kind of weird, but it works.
Yeah, it does work.
Yeah, it worked for Yuumi.
It did.
I've got a good feeling about this one, Book.