In an exclusive chat with gaming media, Alexia “Riot Lexical,” who serves as the Lead Champion Producer for League of Legends, revealed that Riot and her team have been working on creating the champion “Aurora” for 7 years now.
As revealed in the Aurora Champion Insight post, Lead Art Concept Riot Kindlejack and Lead Champion Designer “Riot Squad5” have been brainstorming and discussing this champion like crazy since 2018.
When the Rioters first conceived of Aurora, they envisioned the champion as a dancer who told her stories through smoke or a mage champion who could combine with magical elements, all before arriving at the more “cute bunny” concept that is her final design.
(Concept art of champion Aurora, when she was still being developed. Credits: League of Legends/ Riot Games)
Why did the process of creating Aurora take so long?
“Honestly, it’s a concept that players are very familiar with. I often handle Rioter onboarding, and one of the tasks we do is release a champion,” Riot Lexical told the press. “That idea keeps coming up.”
This wildly popular concept of a cute bunny wasn’t just proposed by the community and newcomers working at Riot. When the idea for this concept reached the devs, they were excited to develop the new champion.
It was up to Riot Squad5 to design the champion’s abilities that would match the champion’s cute look. One of the team’s ideas, which came up during development, was for a super-smart mage who could copy other champions’ spells.
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“At that point, people were testing her. They were loving her kit and felt like stealing spells was a unique expression and something that was really fun, but we got pretty so-so results for everything we put together,” Riot Squad5 said in Champions Insights. “Some testers said that stealing spells seemed too evil for her,” attesting to a certain disparity between the champion’s abilities and the cuter visual concept.
(Credits: League of Legends/ Riot Games)
During the champion’s conception, Riot thought of two other characters
Due to all this feedback involving the champion, the development team had a brilliant idea: they created a champion who had the power to steal abilities from opponents, Sylas. And part of the champion’s personality concept went into the creation of Lilia.
Another concept that emerged during Aurora’s development was the “Spirit Blossom” skin line, which was created for Yone and also contributed to the lore of Fiddlesticks’ demon.