The League of Draven!

Here’s some of the concept art created for Draven “The Glorious Executioner”!

I work with some super passionate people and there are many disciplines involved in the creation of an LOL Champion.
Draven was a blast to work on, to suit his unique play-style we wanted to inject a lot of personality into him, and of course his trusty wicked blades! This was the first image that came to mind while developing his look and vibe. Sometimes I’ll start with a Bust to get inspired, but there are many ways to tackle starting a concept, in Dravens case it was his attitude first!

 

His weapon took some development as we wanted him to wield something that reflected his over the top ”loked out” personality, something that couldn’t be confused with any other Champions weapon and felt menacing and wicked. Here’s the first exploration (drawn in sketchbook/scanned in and toned in PS5).

 

More refinement on blade direction we felt worked best..

 

Final design for Blade with functionality broken down, The double flip boomerang blade of Death! He’s got some options!

 

Draven in action, at this early stage of concepting we tend to keep the design grey scale,  avoiding color until the design works well tonally (It’s less distracting as I can easily get lost in color all day!). This was the initial design for his costume and it went through a bunch of further explorations.

Here’s the turn around and final design for Draven. We do a full “turn around” of the character making informed decisions about surfaces, materials and proportion, then the 3D modeler (The BAdAss omonteon) has everything he needs and take it to the next level!

 

I hope this was insightful to some Gamers/Artists out there!
If you are interested in seeing a further breakdown of the design process for Draven and additional concept art let me know and I’ll organize some more stuff!

More League of Legends artwork soon! All the Best – Σ