One of the complete redesigns I did when we first started streaming: Morgana from League of Legends. I read her background blurb and got angry cause she has a lot of potential with a backstory involving familial strife, law vs. chaos as ideology, and resorting to dark powers to fight for what you believe in. But her design was…. just generic bra and skirt, and some evil makeup, I guess?? Ugh. So I basically started from scratch, which means this write-ups is gonna be just a little longer than the first.

More under the cut.

What Stayed In:

I kept the color scheme, for the most part, the belt part of her skirt, and her posture. Or rather… what I think her posture was supposed to be, cause she sure doesn’t look hunched over in the original, more like she’s got a sore shoulder.

So not much.

Initial Redesign Ideas:

I decided that Morgana should be more monstrous because of the dark magic she was using. I wanted to give her more colors than just purple and gold (LoL has a problem with 2-color costumes), so I went for a sickly green that would add to the “wrongness” of her design, as well as hint at multiple sources of corruption. They tried to make her look malnourished, I guess?? –

[Not even the splash artist was sure what was going on with her torso.]

–so I pushed it to the extreme in the redraw. I was also trying to maintain triangles as the main shape in the design.

Storytelling Elements and Later Additions:

So, Morgana has a sister in the game who fights against her, named Kayle.

I wanted to add elements of that old life to her appearance, so I changed her hair to blonde, like her sister’s. I also gave Morgana a tabbard similar to Kayle’s, with the same symbol on it, albeit old and worn-out. Forgotten, almost. The final change I did was adding the corrupted halo. The blurb on Morgana’s life sounds very obviously disapproving of her life choices, but I was more interested in making the sisters not so cut-and-dry good or evil. Kayle is very lawful, so she has to eliminate evil, at any cost. Morgana disagrees with that kind of ideology, and ends up resorting to making some bad deals in order to face her sister. Is either of them right? They both sound like they’re suffering in their respective positions. So I wanted Morgana to be a bit more sympathetic and interesting.

Final Thoughts:

You could call me out for giving her even less clothes than she had before, but I would argue that it makes sense in this context. Morgana’as power comes from dark, unnatural magic, unlike her sister’s armor and sword (Kayle’s equipment has a backstory of its own). I feel like she would have continued to give more and more of herself to gain more power, possibly even to the point where she can’t wear armor anymore. 

But I didn’t give her a silly bikini and buttcrack-showing skirt and call it a day. The developers couldn’t even be bothered to give her any indications of her backstory. If they had at least given her some deformities or something, I probably wouldn’t have been so angry. At least something fun came out of it.

-Icy