In order to bring a ruthless hunter like Rengar to life, the designers had to fuse every aspect of champion design into a predatory experience that feels as ferocious as the champion himself. Getting players inside Rengar's head for the primal hunt was the biggest challenge in his creation. What began as a tricky proposition eventually became a compelling champion with an ultimate ability that sums up the brutal and methodical Rengar playstyle.
- Marco “OCRAM818” Bustos (Associate Sound Designer)
- Alex “Skribbles” Yee (Associate Creative Designer)
- Trevor “Classick” Romleski (Associate Live Designer)
- Paul "RiotZeronis" Kwon (Concept Art)
- Casey "RiotParticleMan" Robinson (Senior VFX Artist )
Skribbles: Going way back to the beginning, we've been looking for what space to explore in the anthropomorphized animal department. We've done a decent amount of characters from different animal kingdoms and are starting to become cautious with the theme. We said that if one animal deserved to be a part of this menagerie that hasn't been done in our game yet, it's a lion.
We worked hard with the concept team to find a space for Rengar that was independent enough from someone like Warwick. He had to feel unique but still be served well by the lion-man motif. From there it was about smoothing out the idea of a trophy hunter and finding ways to differentiate him from other characters. We didn't really find a spot for Rengar until we saw RiotZeronis's amazing concepts.
Trevor: With Rengar and Warwick, we knew there was a differentiation. Warwick is more feral and picks up the trail of his bleeding prey and chases them down. Rengar is more of a methodical hunter.
RiotZeronis, how did you iterate on Rengar's concept art to turn him into the ferocious predator we see today?
RiotZeronis: Rengar went through a bunch of iterations that just didn't seem to fit in our game world for one reason or another, and as time went on we were less-than-excited. I was tasked with doing another pass at him and it was particularly challenging for me because I had never really done an animal character or champion before. I've never made a lion man before. After a ton of lion research and a huge lion collage next to my desk, I started to draw. I wanted to capture his lion-ness but give him some accentuated features. I just had to make him work.
I drew him as badass as I could with a fuller mane and exaggerated trophy hunter elements with his bone pauldrons and handmade armor he put together while out in the wild. His adornments are his stories. Also, he's got an eye patch, and that gives every character more depth. I gave him a variety of weapons and had to explore a ton of options. Some of his original weapons were too close to Draven's axes so they were cut. I didn't even know that the animations would use the knee weapon that I drew on him.
Skribbles: The weapons had to be about overpowering and attacking, something that Rengar would fashion and use.
OCRAM818: You gave us a lot to work with, man. We just ran with everything.
Skribbles: RiotZeronis's art was crucial in turning Rengar from just a lion man into THE lion man.
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