Why do in-game models sometimes differ from splash art so much? For example, Nightbringer Aphelios is black and red in his splash, but has a lot of blue in his actual model. Aside from instances like Blood Moon Aatrox where the color saturation is upped for better gameplay clarity, what is the reason for these differences?

While splash art and in-game models are closely connected, they have different goals. With in-game models, the top priority is gameplay readability. Since splash doesn’t have that consideration, our big goal is to create deep immersion and something we call “cinematic believability” in our illustrations. You can think of this the same way a comic book character translates to a big blockbuster movie. The movie version will have higher-detail fidelity in the costume, materials, and render, including invented details that didn’t exist in other versions. There will also be dynamic, moody lighting depending on the scene’s emotional tone or setting. We even think about things like camera distortion, lens flares, dust motes in the air, and film grain. All of this stacks up to make something more believable, and more cinematic, than other representations can achieve.



Sometimes the mood and light can mean colors aren’t as punchy as they might be in the model textures—like Nightbringer Aphelios’s cool, dark scenario—and it can also make other colors really pop, like the bright red tassels on his jacket. That said, we don’t want the splash art to feel totally different from what you see in game, so we do take the time to compare the splash to the in-game model—we even try to “model” the character so they match the pose in the splash art.



Ultimately, we want to make sure we’re keeping splashes and models close to each other while still hitting our unique goals.

- Riot Owleycat, Illustration Art Lead