Riot Games Lunar New Year

Near the end of 2022, Riot Games approaches BUCK to create a cinematic trailer for League of Legends. The cinematic was to launch a new set of character skins, and they wanted it to look entirely papercraft. Given the short timeline, our team opted to develop a faux-papercraft system, since making actual papercraft would take too long. The final pipeline ended up being > texturing photoshop files in After Effects to look like paper > then handing off to 3D artists to composite into 3D environments.

Contribution

Below are the shots that I animated/textured, as well as some BTS to show the process of how things were built, and the pipeline we ended up using to achieve the specific look. This project was fast and furious, but the final product was well worth it!

My first task on this project was to develop our texture library. We wanted to make sure that there was enough variation in the paper textures to sell the “paper cut” feeling. In real life, even the same paper will have variations in texture. So I made multiple types of paper, and the texture was able to be randomized, so that no two layers would feel the same.

In this GIF, you can see the process of texturing the characters to look 3-Dimensional; starting from Photoshop and ending in After Effects. The separate layers of the character are distributed in 3D space, so the layers can cast realistic shadows.

This GIF shows the entire pipeline of the project; from animatic > layered PSD > texturing in After Effects > comping into the final 3D scenes in Maya. I textured the first two characters in the scene below.

There were a lot of moving pieces at all times, and it is a testament to the amazing team at BUCK for pulling it together. The full credit list can be found here.