RIOT Games + WAR

For the second year running, the teams at Royale and Riot Games pulled out all the stops for the Valorant NA team’s maniacal competitive event, Last Chance Qualifier. Building on the work we created together in 2021, we aimed the creative flamethrower at continuing the twisted narrative of 2022’s cast of characters (FaceLesses, Lion&Wolf, and our hero: the Dark Horse.) Mashing surrealist + apocalyptic flavors together through a decidedly graphic lens gave us a rich palette in which to stage a story following the intense journey through the Red Zone on our way to the next stage of play: Champs.

Over the course of seven zany weeks, we concepted this piece openly with our partners at Riot (big ups to Rel Hunt & team AGAIN) producing a range of world studies that we poured over together, taking the tastiest bits and continuing to build. Crucial collaborator and all-time human being, writer John Chuldenko, delivered a script that was, ah, ambitious...which of course had the desired effect of firing the entire team up even more than the current level of fired-up-edness.

Art director SuperTalent, Jordan Taylor, took the “make it red” direction from Riot to heart, whipping the design team (the always spectacular group: Brandon Lee Smith, Farbod Khoshtinat, Jose Ponce, Fernando Lazzari, Edgar Zavala, Tyler Compton, Gardner Pierce, Claudia Wu) into a sprint to cover off on the environment design, character studies, set pieces and overall visual program for the campaign.

Pat Clarke, who is in my top 3 animation directors (ok he’s the best), began blocking out camera and character action, leaving a suite of critical breadcrumbs for the animation team to follow once design was locked. Pat peeled off and handed the reins to the combined talents of the aformentioned designers, all of whom magically morphed into dynamite animators overnight, delivering approximately 50 shots to King of All Editors, Ryan Frey, who also created a majestic audio cut of our track, ‘Concrete,’ by Poppy.

Such an absolute pleasure working with the teams on this one.
Please enjoy.