The developers shared work on the new, updated Skarner. What do the first concept sketches look like?
Skarner entered League of Legends on August 9, 2011. It has never enjoyed much popularity, and you can even say that it has been forgotten by many players. His situation was so bad that Riot stopped releasing skins on him for over 5 years.
It was certain that the champion needed a rework to bring him back to life. Today it is known that it will actually appear in the game. What is known about it? It turns out that the first sketches have already been created.
Skarner’s rework
Ryan “Reav3” Mireles – lead champion producer – revealed that the creators are already thinking about Skarner’s rework. While the actual work has not yet started, the first concept sketch by Larry “BravoRay” Ray has been published.
Let’s talk about the champion that won the VGU poll earlier this year: Skarner. We haven’t yet officially started on Skarner’s VGU (it will start very soon), but that sure didn’t stop Larry “BravoRay” Ray from doing some high-level sketches for inspiration. BravoRay is a huge fan of Skarner and couldn’t help himself so I thought it would be worth sharing some of his explorations.
The first two rows are attempts to keep Skarner’s theme pretty much the same as live while making him more unique on the League roster by adding other fantastical elements rather than just a traditional scorpion body structure.
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The third row contains explorations of a full reboot of the Brakern. It explores them as ancient protectors of the old Shuriman civilization before it was lost to the sand. The idea is that they are constructs built from crystals housing thousands of elite warriors’ souls.
The last row is an exploration of a version of Skarner where his current lore is continued. We haven’t committed to this yet, but in those versions he is captured by Piltover and experimented on in order to create a Hextech guardian they can control. But he regains his memories, escapes Piltover, and is now hellbent on destroying the city for what they did to him and his people. And now he has sweet Hextech augments to help him do it. Piltover will soon have a taste of their own medicine, and it is bitter.
In a further speech, Rioter emphasized that the above graphic is only an early concept sketch. Everything else may change as the actual work on the update is yet to start.
Keep in mind these are all super early ideas coming out of BravoRay’s crazy head, so we aren’t locked onto anything yet.
Shortly after we officially start working on Skarner we will do a bigger /dev blog with a lot more information from game design and narrative as well. For now let us know what you think of these explorations and if anything sounds exciting to you.