Amumu: The Curse of the Sad Mummy[]
We were commissioned by Riot Games to create a musically-driven animation to narrate the backstory of 
Amumu, a character from the game 'League of Legends'. Amumu is a perpetually lonely character who embarks on an unfruitful journey to find friends.[1]
Our intention was to contrast the sombre tone of the musical track with the funny, charming visuals of Amumu. He has a head that is far too large for his body and cloddish feet, all of which make him a bit awkward. His lonely and emotional personality gave us a lot of scope to play with when developing a storyline for this piece. The visual style is inspired by paper cut-outs, a deliberate departure from the 3D, action-packed, realistically rendered style that is typical of video games.
We initially came up with a story sequence inspired by delving further into Amumu's character as well as selected lands from Riot's world. We wanted the transitions between worlds to be seamless, so we first mapped out the sequence as rough drawings. These were developed into beautiful storyboards which formed the foundation of the animation. The animatic was created from these boards and we stuck closely to them for the remainder of the project. Beautiful concept frames were then created which were cut up and developed further in Photoshop, prepping PSD's that after-effects artists could use in their comps. We spent a lot of time developing Amumu's final look using various illustrations which depicted him in various poses and expressions that the 3D artists could make use of when modeling and animating. 3D modeling and texturing of Amumu began as soon as we had approval on his design. Since we wanted the final shots to have a fluid, dreamy effect, we spent a few days filming ink, watercolor bleeds, splatters and stains which could be combined with our illustrated elements to make them seem organic and alive. Once all the elements were composited in after-effects, the magic happened bringing to life 'The Curse of the Sad Mummy'.
Quick Gameplay Thoughts 8/27[]
By Azubuike 'AzuBK' Ndefo-Dahl[2]
Hi everyone. I’m AzuBK from the Summoner’s Rift Team, here to break down the Amumu changes that just went out with patch 11.17. I’ve been working on Amumu with the intent of showing some love to one of our oldest champions, and wanted to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about how we approach this type of project in general.
For those who aren’t familiar, the core of the change is that Amumu can store two charges of Bandage Toss and his early game is buffed. That new power came with tradeoffs in other parts of his kit, which we’ll get to later on.
So, let’s start from the beginning. Amumu isn’t exactly a world-beater at the high end of League’s ranked ladder, and that’s not news. For a long time now, he’s barely scraped by in higher-skilled play while also bordering on overpowered for the average player. This is an unfortunate position for players of any champion, because it means that your favorite champ becomes less and less powerful as you improve at the game. It can feel like League is telling you that, in order to climb, you need to abandon your champ—and that sucks.
We talk a lot on the Summoner’s Rift Team about ways to help champs in this sort of tough spot, but actually resolving the issue is a delicate undertaking. There are a lot of tricky factors we have to reckon with on this type of change, which we refer to as a “reshape.” Many of them overlap with the considerations we have for VGUs.
- We want to enhance what current players of the champion love about their champ, or at least retain it as best we can. However, that playerbase isn’t homogenous. They often want different things, and it’s a careful dance to respect as many of them as possible while also making the changes we believe will best serve everyone.
- This type of project usually demands more ambitious, novel changes, which are also more uncertain than something like +5 AD. This means we spend more time than usual testing and validating, and even then the outcome is never 100% sure. PBE feedback is especially helpful for understanding whether players think we’ve gone too far or missed something critical, which can cause us to re-evaluate our approach.
- Finally, we ask for a lot of trust when we make big changes to a champion, so the stakes are high. It’s unlikely that we revisit the same champ for major changes anytime soon, since we have obligations to the entire roster and also don’t want to force players to re-learn their main repeatedly. So, both we and players know it’s gotta be good the first time, aside from follow-up tuning.
With all of that in mind, let’s explore how we arrived at the Amumu changes we made this patch. It was clear from the get-go that small adjustments weren’t going to cut it, as he had nearly a 6% winrate difference between Average and Skilled play. So, I pitched a bigger idea that I believed would dramatically increase Amumu’s skill expression: 2 Q charges.
The idea behind this change was that it would add flexibility to his play pattern. He could Spiderman around the jungle, Q to the frontline to threaten the backline, Q to a minion for a gank, Q to peel without giving up all his threat… Basically, Amumu would no longer be a sitting duck after casting his first Q. This change seemed to do the job, so it remained through the entire process. We also know early power is more valuable in higher MMR, so I brought up his clear speed through early W buffs. Combined with the Q change, this seriously improved his early skirmishing.
The Game Analysis Team (high-MMR and ex-pro players who test and advise on our projects) reported that Amumu was running over their tests early game, which was great to hear since the goal was to make him appealing for their skill level specifically. Lower-MMR tests showed him to still be reasonable, which made me pretty confident that the direction could work with some fine-tuning. I pulled back on Q's cooldown, because it often felt more like 3 Qs than 2. I nerfed his late-game through R and W, along with some base stat scaling reductions. After further testing with GAT, we had a list of changes we were proud to deliver to you all.
I hope you enjoyed this look into how we approach reshapes for troubled champions. By the time you read this, Amumu’s reshape has been live for a few days, and I hope he’s landed well. If he hasn’t, I’m probably talking to the team about how we can follow up. If he has, well… there’s always another champion to work on.Media[]
| Amumu's Theme - "Curse of the Sad Mummy" |
| Every child in Valoran has heard the tale before, About the cursed mummy boy who felt his heart no more. For many years, young Amumu traveled through the lands, But then the curse began to whisper in his ear, The sorrow and despair, The moment when Amumu realized what he had done, |
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Trivia[]
- Amumu is voiced by Cristina Milizia.,[3] who also voices
Annie and Nunu, the Yeti Rider.
- Amumu's Japanese voice actor is Makoto Tsumura.[4]
- During development, he was called SadMummy.
