In December of 2018, one of Riot's Comic and Art content managers reached out to me asking if I wanted to collaborate on a special project; Wanna draw a cheeky comic to remind Twitch streamer Tyler1 to stay reformed during the next season of League of Legends? Immediately I jumped on board, after all, this is the sort of thing that fuels my troll cartoonist's soul!
Right from the start the idea of Draven writing standards on a classroom chalkboard in detention was the vision for the piece. Immediately my mind went to creating a spoof of the opening scene from the Simpson's with Bart in the classroom at Springfield Elementary, hearing the bell ring and jumping off.
However, the idea was scrapped when it was clear we wanted to keep it to a one panel illustration (as they were going to print the piece out and send it to Tyler as a gift). The gag simply wouldn't fly without at least three sequential panels telling the story.
With the "chalkboard" concept locked in. I went to work on my first thumbnail. I decided to set the context within League of Legend's Academy Skin series because it is in a classroom after all:
In this original thumbnail (pictured above), the concept was in its simplest form. An Academy Draven (representing Tyler1) writing "I will not be toxic next season" with his fingers crossed behind his back and a devilish grin, implying mischievous intentions. A Headmistress Fiora (representing Riot keeping a close, watchful eye) sitting at her desk, looking towards Draven with a suspicious gaze. All in all, this was a good start to the concept but it lacked something so I went back to the drawing board...
In this 2nd, rougher thumbnail, I decided to tweak Draven a little more, we got rid of the crossed fingers, the wording on the standards changed to "I will be Toxic!" because an alpha Draven wouldn't be subtle (so I thought at the time, more on this later) and Fiora would now be charging towards Draven presumably to administer some much needed discipline. Feeling this was a solid concept, I got the go-ahead to move forward and render line art that would be the foundation for the final illustration. There was still something about Draven I wasn't happy and after a few back and forths with the awesome Ben over at Riot, we landed on making Draven more representative of Tyler instead of a pseudo Academy Draven skin.
Here we have the first line art I produced for the piece based on my 2nd thumbnail sketch. My main focus at this stage was finalizing Draven’s look. I ditched the fur-collared coat in favor of a "Reformed" tank top. I decided to make him right handed so that we could use his left hand to position a spinning Draven ax key-chain to add a little cocky flair on that side of the page. Most importantly with Draven, I finally nailed the design I wanted; the hair, the "AH HA!" Draven expression and overall, I felt confident he was 95% finished at this point. Fiora on the other hand was still very much in draft form. I felt her look, overall was fine and it fit with the Draven however proportions were off in some areas and the perspective still need to be tweaked but ultimately it didn't matter too much…
Shortly after I sent this proof for review, Riot came back requesting a significant edit. This whole time Riot's team had been talking to Tyler's girlfriend Macaiyla behind his back planning the surprise and since Tyler streams from his living room where family often visits, we all felt the sexy teacher "spanking the bad boy" angle might be a little too much. The question then was, who would replace her as the teacher representing Riot?
We settled on Ryze (which really should’ve been the first choice in hindsight but this is the beauty of the creative process) in his Professor skin as Fiora's replacement and honestly, I liked this concept a hell of a lot better. The idea was simple, Ryze would be coming out of a portal with a "hmmpf" arms crossed expression communicating his disapproval of the cheeky Draven being a bad boy. We refined Draven even more; the ripped jeans were ditched in favor of sportier sweats, a look we felt was more synonymous with Tyler's personal style and shaved his arms because I planned on adding a Dravenisque tribal tattoo. Riot asked if we could also include T1’s cats Nelson and Theo which I think ended up fitting in quite nicely, adding a cute little personal flair. I gotta say, League of Legend's Academy is pretty cool to let students bring in their cats to class!
Wa-lah, the finalized line art. Small tweaks included enlarging the eyes on the Theo (cat on the right) to really communicate the "Oh crap!".
Ryze got a little beefer (do you even lift bro?). Probably due to the fact the whole time I was drawing him, I was picturing X-Men's Beast in my mind and monologuing as Kelsey Grammer. My confidence in the composition at this point was rock solid and it was time to move froward into the coloring stages.
Bam! The "flats" as I call them. This is where I start to think about a color palette. In all the times I've watched Tyler's stream, I noticed he wears a lot of blues and grays so I wanted Draven's attire to fall in that color scheme. All in all, it was a good start and after the go-ahead from Riot, I started the rendering process which, I must admit, I got carried away with...
Here we have the first fully rendered version I completed. I've always described my art style as a moody, Synthwave fueled nostalgia dream. It's my natural tendency to take my art in this direction. Lot's of purples, pinks and blues giving it a very Technoir vibe which ultimately just didn't fit the scene. After-all this is a classroom, not a dance club rocking Kavinksy tracks. Additional details here which made it to the finalized version included Draven's tank top going from blue to orange to add more diversity to the palette, the motion lines on the ax key chain, the notebook paper flying into the wind as Ryze enters the scene and Draven's tribal tattoo patterns. Even though I actually like this version a lot, I had to tone down the moody lighting and brighten the scene up.
...and here we have the final version. Between the image before and this final one, there was a few editorial changes which I feel solidified the concept. First and foremost, the facial expression on Draven was changed from the "Ah ha!" I'm being intentionally bad version, to a more "EEK! I just got caught!" the deliberate "I will be Toxic" text was edited to a more subtle, "up to the imagination" line which ultimately makes the whole tone of this project playful vs judgmental, and that was idea from the start. The very last little detail I threw in was a personal touch; an homage to one of my favorite movies From Dusk Till Dawn by basing Draven's tribal arm tattoo with a similar design to the one George Clooney's character sported in the film. A little no-life nod I threw in just for nerd points.
I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Riot to pull this off. I loved the surprise element of the whole thing and watching Tyler opening up the gift live on his stream really tickled my troll sensitivities to no end. I was giggling like a little kid amused by a fart joke while watching T1 notice all the details in the piece "THERE'S THEO!"
I look forward to future collaborations with Riot and really take my hat off to them for the effort they put in fostering an awesome community, full of rich content made by fans, for fans.
See everyone on the Rift in the 2019 Season and T1, stay reformed buddy!
Gief