Riot Games Lunar New Year

2023

With Lunar New Year fast-approaching and a tight deadline keeping us on our toes, we dove into the world of three Riot Games titles: League of Legends, Wild Rift, and Teamfight Tactics. What surfaced was this short film that takes you on a paper craft journey from workshop to Lunar Year Festival, encapsulating the magic and excitement that Riot Games brings to the celebration for gamers across the globe.

What made this film special was the incredible amount of work and detail that was packed into a short turnaround. From inception to delivery, we knew we had to hit our marks as efficiently as possible.

Our visual approach leant into the aesthetics of traditional paper cutting techniques, working with many layers and cut outs to build up the 3D forms of our characters and environments.

Authenticity was key, so a lot of attention was given to textures, edge details, and light and shadows within the models to make our world feel as tactile as possible.

The plan was to keep the animated aspect simple and economical, focusing on key moments of movement in the film. Our paper-layered worlds were designed to embrace the inherent charm of a low frame rate.

However, this meant that every pose and every frame had to be closely considered to capture the emotion that each character was going through, as we were limited in terms of how much animation and expression we could use.

Throughout the process, there was an emphasis on maintaining a sense of realism in what we were creating — we wanted this to pay homage to handmade techniques as much as we could.

To achieve this, we approached it with the mindset of: Can we physically make this level of detail? Then, we would would swap out designs of key elements, such as the characters and the bus, for simpler models when they were to appear smaller in frame.

This additional effect not only brought charm to the film, but a touch of magic and humor that contributed to the overall feeling of authenticity.