Season Start.
I lead the development and production of the first Start of Season cinematic for League of Legends, helping define the problem space, scope, brand identity and creative execution of all assets in the launch campaign. All works displayed © Riot Games 2018-2025.
Role
Product
Duration
Year
The First "Moment"
Back before start-of-season cinematics were garnering hundreds of millions of views, League of Legends only produced cinematics to promote a specific product release such as a champion or a skinline. Taking cue from Esports' World Championship music videos, our marketing team proposed a thesis that the yearly start of League's season was a big enough moment to validate a large investment into marketing. Thus the first Season Start campaign was born.
Keep It Simple
Because there was no product to market, the sky was the limit on what this moment could become. Was it a yearly brand campaign? Was it a revival push for lapsed players? Was it an anniversary? Guided by the spirit of Shoeless Joe Jackson — "If you build a campaign, players will come," — we settled on this moment being a simple call to action. The beginning of the ranked season opened the ranked ladder. So it was time to Climb.
After analyzing countless sports commercials, we devised a way to represent the ranked climb metaphorically in one uninterrupted camera boom UP (a motif later reprised by the Esports anthem "Rise"). We then used champion popularity data to 'cast' our most diverse and resonant champions to climb in visually stunning vignettes. Like a player in a game of League, each champion would face a unique obstacle, giving viewers an unprecedented look into the diverse environments of League's IP. We then mapped the progression of the piece onto the five stages of story (this would also become a blueprint for Season Starts to come):
Inciting incident
Progressive Escalation
Crisis
Climax
Resolution
The Production Climb
Having established a relationship with Digic Pictures on another cinematic, we chose them for their strengths in thinking with a cinematic camera, producing high-quality assets quickly and being effective collaborators. After finishing the shooting script internally, we inundated Digic with countless briefing materials on our multitude of environments, champions, side characters, props, materials and so on.
Our internal artists produced visdev and character concepts. A free-flow of storyboards and layout paintovers carried on throughout the production. Digic kicked things off with an animatic and our internal artists (including myself) kept throwing solutions into the mix. We then provided animation performance references for Digic's mocap actors and animators. Paintovers continued all the way into compositing, covering the kitchen sink: environment design, camera compositions, character expressions, lighting, etc. It was truly a democratic team effort — my favourite way of working.
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