Concept Lore
When Noxus invaded Ionia's southern provinces, there were many casualties. Specific orders of martial arts, and practitioners of sacred techniques were lost to the Noxian war machine. As Riven's unit left one razed village, they left behind a dieing girl -- the last of her line. Severely wounded and mangled, Quinn was found by an group evacuating from another village. Year's later, Quinn reemerged -- but she was no longer the broken girl left for dead. Augmented by machines and magic, Quinn joined the League to show Riven the true power of her family's fighting style.
Conept Game-Play
I thought of Quinn as being a punching character with a kit similar to Riven's kit. Specifically, I thought of Quinn having a kit that mirror's Riven, but instead of utilizing a sword -- Quinn utilizes devastating punches with her generator-charged arms. She would more or less play as a combo-based bruiser with high cooldowns and massive damage abilities. For players who want to devastate their target, the enemy behind their target, and the area around them -- Quinn is the insanely brutal feeling champ for you.
Art Direction
I wanted the focus to be on her arms and back -- since she's meant to punch and slam opponents fiercely. Concept wise, the arms are larger, and her back has generators, because when you combine the two in a fighter character who uses her firsts -- you don't get the idea "this character can punch through a wall", you get the idea that Quinn can level a city block, and that's the intent. "I'm gong to hit you so hard, you're going to wake up at your Nexus in the NEXT game" is more of less the lines of how strong those two aspects of Quinn make her. The lack of armor at the center of her is to represent that she's fast when she fights. So she's not necessarily a tank, which comes across more if i were to have her in full armor.
Revision Notes 1
My reason for keeping the body suit and having the belt are the same; As a hand-to-hand fighter, I wanted her to look a little more like a wrestler, or prize fighter. But as opposed to a traditional belt, I went a little more oriental in design (it's a sash). And I still wanted her to read as "fast", and the body suit is the best way to show she is still agile among some clothing archetypes. The sash combined with the more ornate arms and legs are a little more Ionia, and at the same time -- I removed the things that read as too technological/futuristic in the execution (more curves, less right angles basically). I specifically avoided certain oriental clothing styles to deviate away from the cliche appearances that are related to oriental fighter tropes.
Champion Update
Apparently, Riot already had this concept in the gun. The champion Vi will be coming to fruition soon. This new champion fulfills the concept Quinn was meant to fill. Because of this, Quinn will no longer be receiving updates to her lore, art, or concept kit.
Riot Ames
While Vi might have been in the pipe already, it doesn't diminish that Izzabelle's rendition of the concept is awesome. If anything, it just shows how talented the OP is!
Here's the kicker; Quinn and Vi look a lot a like. The similarities they share are; female, power gauntlets, body suits, face tattoos, and short hair. Here's what Riot had to say on the matter.
Pabro
Firstly, I'm a fan of your work here Izabelle! Very fun and creative stuff here!
Wanted to chime in here on Vi, a bit since people are curious about the coincidence. For the official record, It takes us anywhere from 4-6 months to concept and produce a LoL champ.
In Vi's case, she's been aeound in various forms for two years. At one point she was a steam-punk capoeira fighter with dreads and robot legs- which sounds way cooler than our drawings for her!
A year ago we started exploring a girl with bad ass metal/tech gauntlets but we couldn't find a way to make her compelling. We were running into challenges with Shyvana overlap, as well as struggling to define who she was as a person. Sometime around this past June, one of our champ concept artists took another crack at her- and came up with the punky ex-criminal persona. We all got super pumped on this new direction and began full pre-production.. GypsyLord's first playable protoype came into design playtest in early July- and we had her marquee charge punch ability day one.
When I first saw this thread a month ago, I was amazed at the coincidence! Kudos to you Izabelle for your creativity.
Hope you all enjoy punching people in the face with Vi.
Iron Stylus
Izzabelle asked me to come post in the thread citing that there were some accusations that we had stolen his Quinn idea and made her into Vi. So, obviously Pabro, Griftrix, Ames and Zeronis have commented in here verifying that so.. uh.. here I am to veri-verify.
Champions tend to take a long time to marinate, especially depending on which vector they come in from. Sometimes a champion spawns because there's a particular character archetype that exists in the world and we want to harness the trope for League of Legends. That character then goes up and we start ideating on it. Creative guys, game designers, and artists all get together to "cultivate" it and make the concept into something workable. Vi's a good example of this. As Pabro states she started off pretty vastly different and then evolved. She actually had roller skates at one point.
Other champions are directly inspired by art that pops up by one of our artists. Nami and Diana are good examples of this. Artists produce an image that other people latch onto and it's fleshed out with creative aspects and mechanics.
Other times, game designers might come up with a kit that has some real traction. I'd give you an example but it's 4am and my brain is the consistency of sour milk at the moment.
That being said, these processes take months, sometimes years in extreme cases. Everything from a story not really coming together to a particular piece of technology might block something from being created properly. So yeah, not much really to worry about if anyone's afraid that we found this thread and cannibalized it. What DID happen was when I saw this thread I nearly spit up my home-made Italian soda. Vi was waaaaay into production, including her skin and BOOM. Izzabelle's thread. I flipped out a bit and couldn't help but laugh. Sometimes the stars align like that.
When I first saw this thread it was already getting some traction, and I KNEW it'd be back on the front page when Vi came out. Griftrix had forwarded me to the thread and I commented briefly. As I was perusing it later I noticed that on page 56. gypsylord came in and mentioned that Quinn is pretty cool. Well.. yeah.. you probably understand why he thought it was so cool now, and why I followed up by saying I knew he'd like it. I was amazed at the sheer amount of coincidence, especially since Quinn even shares similarities with Vi's launch skin. It was incredible. We obviously all pull from common tropes, i think that's pretty cool.
I don't remember where I was going with this at all.. but yeah, Quinn is awesome, Vi is awesome. Everything is awesome.
