Riot Games Teamfight Tactics: League of Legends Art Blast

By Daniel Wade - June 9, 2020

The League of Legends Lab Team welcomes you to our first Art Blast.

You might be wondering what the League of Legends Lab team is. “League Labs” is the group of creative folks who brought events like Urf and Nexus Blitz to life as well as conducting research and development for new game modes and pipeline improvements. We also made Team Fight Tactics and today we are focusing on TFT’s Set 3 and TFT mobile creation. I am very excited to share with you some of the team’s goals, thought process and techniques we used to bring Set 3 to you.

Set 3 content was a collaboration of multiple disciplines from concept, environment and VFX to Tech Art, UI and Sound. We enjoyed creating the art, sound, and visual effects for Set 3 and we hope you are enjoying playing it!

Here to tell us more about the making of the boards and TFT mobile is two of the lead artists on the project Marcus Lull and Sebastian Reeve

The Lab Team would like to thank the community for their continued support. We hope you enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at the creative process for our artists. If you’re interested in learning more about our open art roles at Riot Games, check here for more information.

Jin Ho Yang
Associate Art Director, Riot Games

Story Telling

Our previous boards based on Summoners Rift and Freljord are both beautiful to look at, but the team felt we were missing some specificity in the form of theme and stories. The Carousel, Dark Star and Odyssey boards share a strong Space theme while also giving players a closer look into League’s alternate universes.

The Odyssey alternate universe boards in particular are based on the crew of the Morning Star and each one shows a bit of their personalities, from Jinx’s chaotic and sometimes destructive creativity to Malphites birthday party complete with Ships in bottles and rage issues. There’s a ton of little details and surprises for players to find!

Stronger thematics and stories will continue to play a major role for us moving forward in our next Set!

Marcus Lull
Environment Lead

Mobile UI

A big goal for the mobile version of TFT was to be as true as possible to the PC game to ensure competitive integrity with cross-play. That meant we kept most of the changes focused on adapting the UI for hand-held ergonomics and readability on small screens. We wanted to ensure that mobile players could still do all the things they are used to doing and play alongside PC players.

Since phones are also so tiny, we had to find a balance between showing the Arena, and using the screen space to include the important UI that makes the game functional. We developed an underlying UI grid that pushed buttons to the edges of the screen and made it easy to both hold the phone with two hands, or one. But we’re not done yet – we want to make playing on mobile comfortable and easy on the eyes, while keeping the UI versatile as TFT evolves in the future.

Sebastian Reeve
UI Art Lead