Following the journey of Eduardo Gonzalez’s career is a case study in thoughtful creative team building and character design. He started out as a contracted concept artist contributing to series such as God of War, Socom, and Kill Zone, spent seven years at Riot as a pivotal player on the Visual Development and World Building teams, and is now the lead Art Director for Super Evil’s new battleground shooter Catalyst Black.

Through personally designing a total of 37 different champion skins for League of Legends, he learned the all-time importance of building “possibility” into characters so that they can be transported into other forms of media while maintaining the identity of the original game. 

In E03 of Devoted Speakeasy, join host Ninel Anderson as she chats with Eduardo on: 

(1:00): Riot: how it all started  

(5:08): Co-Founding World Building Team with the knowledge that the IP will transcend the game 

(11:40): Shape language and symbolism of specific champions in League of Legends 

(17:28): Subcultures within characters to give depth and possibility without touching the game

(20:40): How does the collaboration between different roles work in champion design? 

(29:00): Surfacing “hooks” or “clues” that will give games their identity 

(35:15): Estimating time spent on assets as a trial and error process 

(40:00): A glimpse into early visual development for God of War 

(45:40): What are the secret ingredients to a successful new IP?