Stylized 3D Character Art with Riot Games’ Katia Bourykina and Blair Armitage
Time
Thu, Jan 16, 2025
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM PT
Location/Platform
Livestream-only - Gnomon Twitch and YouTube
Join us on Thursday, January 16th, at 7pm PT for a livestream-only event featuring Riot Games' Character Artists Katia Bourykina and Blair Armitage as they jump into the production pipelines and share the journey behind Ahri’s evolution!
We’re thrilled to welcome Katia and Blair, two industry veterans behind the iconic characters of "League of Legends" and Riot’s innovative projects. During the event, Katia will share insights into the Art and Sustainability Update for Ahri in "League of Legends," breaking down how the champion’s design and model were modernized. Her discussion will cover modeling for animation, UV mapping, and the greyscale-to-gradient texturing process.
Blair will explore the development of Ahri for 2XKO, showcasing how she adapted the champion for a cel-shaded aesthetic. She’ll walk through techniques like vertex normals, painting maps, UV optimization, and lessons learned from bringing this fresh take on Ahri to life.
Whether you’re a fan of "League of Legends," an aspiring artist, or curious about the creative pipelines behind Riot’s champions, this livestream event offers insights into stylized character development at the highest level. Don’t miss this chance to hear from Katia and Blair about their journeys and creative processes. RSVP now to receive a reminder when we go live on the Gnomon YouTube and Twitch channels and to receive exclusive offers from our event sponsor Dell.
Speakers
Yekaterina (Katia) Bourykina
Principal Character Artist
Katia is a Principal Character Artist who focuses on stylized and handpainted 3D characters. She started the industry back in 2009, and has spent the last eight and half years at Riot Games, where she contributed to the League of Legends Skins team and later joined R&D. Prior to her time at Riot Games, Katia worked on World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor and Legion. She specializes in character features and aesthetics, managerial work, mentorship, and problem-solving within character art development.
Blair Armitage
Principal Character Artist
Blair is a Principal Character Artist who has focused on exploring a range of styles mostly for R&D projects. While the majority centered on PBR stylised characters, recently she has focused in on cel-shaded styles for 2XKO. She has been an artist at Riot since 2017 and prior to that worked as a freelancer and inhouse artist at several UK games studios. She specializes in asset creation and implementation, cross-discipline work and providing feedback on anything character-related for the team.
Sponsored by
Gnomon events are sponsored by Dell.
Dell Precision has over 25 years of innovations, driving the work of power users, designers, and creators. The Precision product team works directly with customers and strategic partners to deliver the most reliable and powerful PCs from Dell. The intelligent performance is driven by AI-based software, Dell Optimizer for Precision, and the professional-level components, such as Intel® Core™ and Xeon® processors, fast memory (including ECC memory options), scalable storage, and professional graphics from NVIDIA that drive many of the creative applications and workflows, as well as exclusive technologies such as Reliable Memory Technology Pro and, patented thermals and the Dell Optimizer.
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