21 -27 April, 2025 — Donita Kadharusman
Games Art Pipeline 24/25
3D — Low Poly Game Char, Week 1
Young V&A Visit
Visited the Young V&A for the Informed Practice unit, but ended up getting inspired for the 3D unit instead. One particular display I particularly took an interest in was ‘A Killer Surprise’, a cupboard that was owned and decorated by Dr. Killer. According to the description of this piece, once the cupboard is closed, it looks harmless yet it hides a secret beneath a beautiful flower-decorated cupboard. This concept sparked the main inspiration for the 3D unit character: someone who fakes a personality to seem beautiful/flawless.
Mind Map
For this 3D unit, I’m paired up with YC again (same partner in 2D unit) and we chose to base our characters from League of Legend (2009). It’s partially because we both play Valorant (2020), which was also developed by Riot Games and I’m also aiming to intern in Riot Games for next summer. Furthermore, since we’ve both watched and familiarised Arcane (2021), we decided to go for Zaun rather than Piltover, due to its rebellious nature Zaunites have. So we can highlight the expressiveness of our characters. Another reason is include Zaun’s minimalistic and rough clothing style to avoid the complex machine aesthetic of Piltover (avoid complexity in our design due to the poly limit in 3D) (update: well- still went for a complex design, it is what it is-).
Inspired by the Young V&A visit, I aimed to implement a character who fakes their personality to seem perfect, hence, coming up with an idea of having a theatrical personality, who hide / mask their ‘weakness’ (emotions) behind a flawless theatrical act. Coming up with their personality enabled me to choose their roles and unique animation: a criminal chemist with their signature animation of a theatrical drama pose (for example curtain call, interpretive dance, or dramatic monologue).
Mood Board
Creating the mood board helped through the completion of the mind map as I could gather both visual and contextual research for my character design and lore.
League of Legends
Zaun research:
Zaun lies in the underground just beneath the city of Piltover. Their living condition is rough due to the toxic fumes and water leakage from above. Furthermore, lights that reach Zaun are considered dim because of its industrial architecture which consists of tangled pipeworks and stained glass which causes it to appear green. Moreover, due to the environment, most Zaunites adopt minimalistic and rough clothing. Despite that, residents of the undercity have adapted remarkably to such conditions, finding ways to turn hazardous materials to their own advantage. They’re capable of modifying these chemical wastes into innovative creations like “chemtech“, chemicals that are processed through machinery to enhance the consumer’s abilities. Through these statements, Zaunites are proved to be just as advanced and intelligent as its neighbour, Piltover. In fact, Piltover scientists whose radical ideas are rejected often go to the undercity, where they’re able to pursue their bizarre inventions without restriction. (Riot Games, 2025)
As a result, people tend to live more ‘freely’ in Zaun rather than Piltover. This freedom allows Zaunites to fully express their truest self, whether through playfulness, madness, or even violence. Their obsession with experimentation, inventions, and weaponisation on chemtech also gives Zaunites a greenish steampunk aesthetic. However, they’re still deeply related to Piltover, hence, making some of them inherit their look from elements of Piltover’s refined machinery. The reason behind their behaviour is because Zaun is not governed by traditional laws or courts, but instead, it’s ruled by chem-barons, who resemble more of crime lords than legitimate leaders. (Riot games, 2025)
Through my observation of Zaun’s playable champions in the League of Legends (2009) game, majority of them have a green chemtech colour palette, giving it a steampunk look while also express a scary, eerie, and unhinged personalities just as I’ve written on my Zaun’s research. Hence, I had an idea of giving my character an unhinged and sadistic personality for their fake personality, their perfect theatrical persona they show to the world, while hiding her emotional and vulnerable self, due to trauma. From this behaviour, I learnt that they’re also a perfectionist, hence I will keep this in mind to add it into their lore.
Furthermore, looking at League of Legends (Riot Games, 2025) splash art, the game adopts a wide range 2D art style whether it is more anime style with big eyes to resemble their expressive personality or a more natural and realistic art style to show their maturity and collected characteristic. However, every characters have stylised, vibrant, and painterly art style to fully exaggerate their personality, backstory and characteristics. From this 2D art style observation, I’d like to implement this art style to my final render of 2D character concept (if it’s achievable with time constraints).
A steampunk look is what I strive for my character, but I’d also want to underline their theatrical personality. I came across and took references from Gwen, a doll that’s brought to live, hence, her fancy dress and expressive personality. Her design reminds me of a victorian era outfit, so I decided to go with it to express my character’s theatrical personality and perfectionism yet mixing it with steampunk look to highlight’s their origin, Zaun.
Lore wise, I was heavily inspired by Renata Glasc’s backstory and position as a chem-baroness. Especially her unique line “We don’t have to be enemies. Let me change your mind.”, this shows that the undercity holds many powerful and manipulative leaders just like her (Riot Games, 2025). That sole line describes the atmosphere of Zaun, hence, I’d like to link this character’s concept and lore to mine.
Due to her traumatic past, my character was ‘persuaded’ (manipulated) to join her side. Her life was better off under her, hence not wanting to disappoint her ever. This backs up to her perfectionist personality of not wanting to disappoint anyone, especially the higher-ups.
Renata Glasc is also an alchemist with a twist, where the ‘medicine’ would heal yet cause side-effects such as making the consumer go mad. Hence, I had an idea of making my character’s criminal trait is to experiment her chemical inventions on her targets before submitting her final ‘perfect’ product to Renata Glasc, even if it ends up killing the target (though that’s their intention from the very start).
As my character is extremely tied with Glasc, it’s only natural for them to have similarities in their design. Unlike any other Zaunites, Glasc possesses a pink chemical aesthetic, because she uses chemtech as medicines, to show both Zaunites and Piltie that chemtech can be ‘positive and beautiful’. Therefore, I’d want to keep in mind of pink chemtech instead of a traditional green chemtech for my character design.
Another character design I noticed from her is that she has a syringe as her main weapon and symbols of syringe to highlight her alchemist role, yet having a formal outfit to state her position as a chem-baroness. Hence, I came to conclusion to have an overall victorian and steampunk look, while hinting her chemist identity by having syringe symbols all over their outfit.
Moreover, I decided to look into their 3D art style and I noticed that even if they have varieties of model, from adult humanoid, anime humanoid, to even child-like humanoid or monsters or even animals, each of them have a simple, soft shaded, stylised painting style. This particular colouring style is convenient as their playstyle / gameplay is already chaotic, so it prevents from overdetailing / overcrowding.
Another aspect I noticed is that each character have natural/neutral colour that’s accompanied by an accent colour, where that chosen colour is more saturated to highlight their personality and main focus. For example, Gwen’s bright thick and curly blue hair which makes her look artificial supports her backstory as a doll and Renata Glasc’s pink arm to highlight her chemtech invention. Hence, I could conclude that they use 80% desaturated neutral colour and 20% accent colour in their character to maintain harmony and a main focus for the character. For these reasons, I’d want to implement these techniques to my character to show that the character belongs inside the League of Legends (2009) while highlighting their main focus and personality/narrative through colour usage.
Warrior Nun
Peer recommendation (YC): There’s a badass nun from Warrior Nun (Netflix Philippines, 2022) who hides her weapon inside her cane.
This sparked an idea of using a harmless looking item which is then revealed to be gruesome as my character’s weapon. To match her whole aesthetic, I searched items that were previously carried around in the Victorian era, for instance, an umbrella, coin, key, cane, and a purse.
As my character is a perfectionist who’s driven by fear of failure, she tends to overanalyse / overthink of possible outcomes. Besides using this to execute the perfect planned experiment on their target, her trait is also used to analyse outcomes of Glasc’s plan, hence making her as the perfect analyst in Glasc’s organisation. In the end, I chose a key as her main weapon which is used as a staff and a syringe, as they’re capable of offering Glasc keys to open ‘locked doors’ (dead ends) in her plan.
Character Concept + Narrative
By gathering all these references and ideas, I could finalised my character concept and narrative:
“A Zaunite criminal, working under Renata Glasc, Eleanor masks all of her raw vulnerability with a flawless theatrical persona. Her carefully crafted charm and theatrical flair allow her to immerse herself in her dark work without remorse, conducting ‘chemical experiment theatrical shows’ on enemies who are tied with other chem-barons.”
Backstory:
As an orphan who grew up in an orphanage ran by a ruthless chem-baron, her childhood was a nightmare filled with slavery, abuse, and isolation. She was always forced to mine endlessly, yet her efforts were never enough, hence punishment and disappointment followed her every step. Valerie, her only support and friend suddenly fell gravely ill. With no help from their heartless caretaker, Eleanor seized the chance to escape.
Coincidentally, she met Renata Glasc herself, a chem-baroness with a history of alchemy. Although she had nothing to offer, Glasc was intrigued by Eleanor’s idea of repaying her with loyalty and service, hence taking her under Glasc’s wing.
Despite her overwhelming fear, Eleanor returned to the orphanage was not for closure, but vengeance. With a forced smile, she gathered herself up and put up a flawless theatrical flair, successfully orchestrating a precise chemical gas leak that left no one alive.
Over time, she earns Glasc’s trust as her right hand. Due to her perfectionism, she’s capable of analysing and predicting outcomes, ultimately unlocking hidden variables even in a most well-crafted plan. Her perfectionism trait was first born out of a fear of failure from her childhood. Due to this, she continues to suppress her weakness, her emotions behind ambitions and flawless theatrical persona. Her internal rage toward the chem-barons simmers quietly, only finding release through the cruel experiments she theatrically performs on enemies linked to rival chem-barons. She executes her perfect plan by stalking her prey first before striking an ambush with her staff to unleash chemical attacks from a distance, which makes her a deadly blend of mage and assassin.
- Name: Eleanor (elegant name)
- Used to go to an orphanage under ruthless chem-baron with Valerie “Boltshadow” (YC’s character) as her only friend. Yet they’re separated once her character is deemed as ‘too weak’ by Renata Glasc.
- A Zaun chemist and criminal who works as Renata Glasc’s right hand
- Experiments chemicals on people who works under other chem barons
- Devoid of her emotions, hence creating a mask to hide her vulnerability (her theatrical personality)
- Has theatrical personality (performs a theatrical drama in daily life, especially when executing her ‘experiment’)
- Due to her theatrical and chaotic / sadistic tendencies, she’s known as ‘The Theatrical Havoc’
- Hence having a mix of victorian and steampunk outfit for her. (working under Renata Glasc: pink aesthetic or Zaun aesthetic: green)
- A perfectionist who would over-analyse plans, making her a good analyst for Renata Glasc (unlocking closed doors in her plans, hence referring her as a key across Glasc’s organisation)
- As a result: anger issues and self-doubt when things go south (fear of failure). This stems from her past trauma of child labour (not meeting required task = punishment, isolation, abuse)
- Roles: mage (uses key as a staff and syringe, deals long range attack) and assassin (stalks her prey first before executing her perfect plan. she’s able to go invisible)
- Unique animation choices: theatrical pose or a weapon inspect
Genshin Impact
Another reference for her clothing is Fontaine from Genshin Impact (2020) as the character designs from that region were highly inspired by Victorian era outfit. If there’s one word to describe this aesthetic is elegant, which backs up Eleanor’s theatrical and perfectionist personality.
Furthermore, I used this opportunity to look at their Victorian design elements which could be implemented into my character such as: corset, boots, high heels, bowties, fancy hats and coat. Another noteworthy element from the designs is to include the patterns that are visible in their clothes to complement their personality: circular elements to support characters with water type abilities or brooch / jewelries to support their occupation and background.
Eleanor’s personality was heavily inspired by two of Genshin Impact’s (2020) characters: Fischl and Furina. Both share a common traits which is having a theatrical personality. Hence, I took references of their movements and style for Eleanor’s unique animation. They posses dramatic, self-centered, cocky poses in their daily life. However, I was particularly interested in the ending bow Furina did in her character demo, hence I plan to use this as Eleanor’s animation. As this movement represents Eleanor behaviour in concluding her success orchestrated ‘experiment’ (successfully kidnaping someone and torturing them with her chemicals).
Infinity Nikki
For broader fashion outfit inspiration, I observed Infinity Nikki (2024) dresses as it’s a dress up game. It has a variety of elegant and cute dresses which Eleanor can adopt to express her perfect persona. For example: short skirts to express cuteness, longer ones for elegance, layered dresses to exaggerate and refine characters’ silhouettes, and asymmetrical elements to add to uniqueness.
Yekaterina Bourykina
Moreover, I looked into Yekaterina Bourykina (2025) workflow in their 3D League of Legends (2009) character which I want to explore and apply it in this project. They used a low-poly model with overall 1 box of UV unwrap per character body model, then colour it in photoshop by using grayscale first before applying it with colour which can make the progress a lot efficient and effective. Furthermore, I’d be using their topology as a reference for my upcoming 3D character topology to keep it as low as possible while maintaining strong language and structure.
Paul Kwon (Zeronis)
Another artist I looked into was Paul Kwon (Zeronis) (2021) and he showed me one of the workflow of completing a game character: attack concepts. Hence I’d want to include that into my character to complete the whole story of Eleanor. From his concepts, he tends to use effects on the weapon to show its movement and power, hence I’d want to incorporate that to my attack concepts as well. However, this would be on the optional task list as I’m still catching up with the essay unit and starting the process and research document.
Silhouettes Practice
Before I start making Eleanor’s character silhouettes, I warmed up with creating silhouettes of quickposes. This is to get the feeling of human anatomy and proportions correctly while maintaining enough speed and flow, because in the previous 2D unit, I was stuck on perfecting silhouettes correct anatomy to the point creativity was limited.
Character Silhouettes
Then I advanced into creating Eleanor’s silhouettes. At first I tried a simple yet expressive pose then continued until I found a pose which fits her personality yet able to portray her outfit’s silhouette clearly. Hence choosing the 6th silhouette as the base pose and anatomy.
Furthermore, I noticed that if the gown’s silhouette is huge and flowy, it’s better for Eleanor to have short hair and vice versa (small / short skirt goes well with long and big hair). This is because to avoid overcrowding the character with too many accent aspects / elements.
In the end, I realised that being a perfectionist only holds back progress, especially in silhouettes. Even if the first and second silhouettes proportions and dresses were not perfect and expressive, as long as I keep experimenting and creating ideas, I realised that it’ll get better and reach a conclusion / solution. (Progress > perfection)
Afterward I sketched on top of the silhouette to roughly draw out her overall design. Drawing inspirations from various references like the steampunk aesthetic of Zaun champions from League of Legends (2009), Victorian aesthetic from Genshin Impact (2020), and fashion dresses from Infinity Nikki (2024)
Proceeded with Eleanor’s key staff silhouettes and trying to match her overall outfit aesthetic (steampunk, victorian + chemicals and syringe).
Bibliography
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Infold Games (2024) Infinity Nikki [Video game]. Infold Games. Available at: https://www.nikke-eu.com/act/wand/pc-download/ (Accessed: 26 April 2025).
Kwon, P. Z. (2021) ‘Gwen The Hallowed Seamstress – Official Concept Art’ [Artstation]. 1 April. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xJbkZR (Accessed: 24 April 2025).
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