Art + Design
The SERAPH!NE Project
Context
Revealed in October of 2020, the League of Legends champion Seraphine actually checks a lot of boxes for me in terms of appealing character elements. She's a singer (like me!) and a magical empath à la Mantis from Guardians of the Galaxy; a mage who is able to listen to the souls of others, and then create music that acts as a vehicle for delivering those emotions to people who otherwise would not have felt them. It's a magical power that, in the world Seraphine was created to inhabit, should have a massive impact. Piltover and Zaun the are twin districts of an ultra-capitalist city, where those with wealth and power live in a towering pristine paradise (Piltover), and those at the bottom must endure the pollution and waste created by the pursuits of the elite (Zaun). A pop star with a power like Seraphine's, who is able to transcend the district divide and become famous in both places, should threaten to overthrow the entire status quo of Piltover and Zaun if she's able to get the everyday populace of Piltover to consider the plight of the Zaunites... Right?
I and many other fans of the League of Legends universe seem to think so, but in practice, the character is unfortunately a lot less realized. Grievances against the character included (but were not limited to): the fact that her character design felt wildly out of place for the setting she was supposed to exist in; the fact that she had zero established character connections to any other existing champion in the game; the fact that the writers seemed wholly uninterested with portraying Seraphine as a credible threat to the status quo of Piltover & Zaun; and finally, the fact that on release, she was not advertised as her own independent character, but as a vessel through which Riot Games could sell their latest $20 skin, which imagined the character as a real-world k-pop idol. (Unlike most champions, canon-universe Seraphine had very little distinguishing characteristics that set her apart from her alternate universe k-pop counterpart, which left an impression that the skin-line version of the character was made first, with the canonical version of the character tacked on at the very end in order to justify her existence in the League of Legends universe.)
All this to say: practically no one was happy with her on release, myself included. That disappointment was the impetus for this fanatical passion project of mine. I challenged myself not only to re-imagine the character's narrative potential, but also to re-imagine her character design and ultimately create splash art for her to the tune of other League of Legends champions.
Final Reworked Character Concept
As an avid fan of both the art nouveau movement and the history of counterculture, so much about this project was an artistic indulgence for me. After I finished designing my Sera, I couldn't help but imagine the type of artistic presence she'd have in Zaun, where resources were scarce and art was a DIY investment. To that end I decided that I wanted to design a poster for her; one that not only included those notes of art nouveau characteristic to the undercity of Zaun, but one that would meet the practical demands of her circumstance. A design like this one that is limited in palette and linework focused would have been within her means to create herself through screen printing — a medium, of course, that is inextricably linked to the aesthetics of punk culture.
For this design, I was influenced by the psychadelic poster designs of 60's and 70's music artists like The Grateful Dead. It's delightfully appropriate to me that the hippie revolution re-appropriated the aesthetics of art nouveau. Whether in the real world or the fictional setting Zaun, those organic free-flowing lines seem to embody the all that is subversive and natural persisting in the face of industrialized society.
A render I made after hashing out some key design notes:
I modeled the surface of her floating stage after works in the Bling Universe art collection, a permanent feature at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. Seraphine's platform was built by her community, so it makes perfect sense for her to construct her stage out of recycled materials that would otherwise litter the streets of Zaun, like shards mosaic glass and bottlecaps.
A drawing of the character in my own art style:
I love incorporating whiplash line into my art, and new Seraphine's hairstyle has so much potential for creating those fun, expressive shapes!
The frankly MASSIVE Pinterest board of inspiration I curated for this project. Key terms behind the discovery of reference material contained within include: art nouveau, fairycore, steampunk and grunge fashion. It's 952 pins strong and counting. (Even after finishing this project, this character, her world, and her style still live in my head rent-free!)
