Since you brought up some very good points on whether or not something is "to be killed for gold" vs "does it have any actual character" ended up doing an analysis of Omen.

Mind you, pretty amateurish at this, and it's all based on what the concept art depicts alongside the in-game model.

I will attempt to cast Parrot Summoning - as I am absolutely unqualified to talk about this. :x

This may take a few hours as the Parrot is currently not available.

Forgot to mention the almost permanent grin it has on it's face. Whatever that would imply.

Somehow that sounds foreboding.

Wouldn't really imply anything, though if you were to look at it from a pure "creature" perspective a grin typically means that there's some form a malevolent intelligence to it.

Take the Xenomorph(s) in the Alien films for example, often times before they open their mouths to deliver a hiss/shove that horrible, horrible tongue into somebody, or drip something icky on surfaces their upper lip kind of quivers upwards into a grin.

Let's just say when something that's predatory literally grins at you, nothing good can come from it.

Ahooo.

I think it's weird how the plating goes forward, rather than backward. In terms of mobility I'd think this would slow it down as it'd increase air drag, no?

Plus if it's attacked from the front the carapaces going forward like that means they'll direct the attacks inward, toward the body of the creature rather than shrugging them away.


Overall it looks almost like he's designed to shoot his spikes, then high-tail it out. Like he's made to take hits from behind, rather than from the front. It'd also explain the spikes sticking directly backward from the tail, he could either fire them like a shotgun or perhaps generate some sort of spike trap in his wake.


But that'd mean he's a champion designed around hit-and-run, fleeing and basically being an anti-"Fun" champ...no? :|a

When I look at Volibear I'm not sure how he is much different...

Riot has never had issues with designing champions like that, Fiora is perfectly content taking shots to her solar plexus so long as she can show off her chest.

Anyways, I think he would make a lot more sense if his head was switched with his tail, he looks kind of backwards and uncomfortable.

There's a huge difference between Omen and Volibear. Even forgoing the "He's on two legs most of the time and the other guy isn't", or the lack of spikes or the almost "Noble"-esque look of Volibear with his shining armor...

He also has that strong and everlasting look on top of that :O

I don't know anything about the official body analysis but just from personal opinion I don't see anything even remotely similar between Omen and Volibear...how are you..?

Omen just looks...Toxic. Volibear looks noble. Not sure what the correlation is.

I look forward to the speech of the great parrot.

Man, this discussion.

One of the main issues in the first thread was "he has back spines, but they're not part of his combat design."

Then take off the back spines?

Honestly, most character designs at other big companies see a huge number of visual iterations without much trouble and they make it work. This conversation is pretty pointless -- the real conclusion is that the people who work at Riot didn't like the idea and decided not to use it.

Personally I don't see how it's that hard to "fix" Omen, and I definitely don't totally buy into the "miniboss" versus "hero" concept. If the person doesn't have enough personality, add more. If Pixar can make us feel for a boxy robot and a white ovoid that barely talk, pretty much anything can be done. Whether or not it's easy or the people at Riot right now want to go out of their way to do that for certain concepts is the actual question.

As we see from Xyph's post above, it's been mostly Rioters who don't actually have the qualifications in visual character design leading this discussion on the forums because they're consistently articulate online and the people who actually have this as a job don't feel like talking with the community about it.