Champion Sneak Peek: Lee Sin, the Blind Monk[]
By ByronicHero[1]
Last year, around this time, we were forced to say our goodbyes to a loved and cherished friend, taken from us so tragically and so senselessly before his time. On April 1, 2010, we bid farewell to 
Urf the Manatee. It was a trying time for all of us all, and many came forward to pour their hearts out and memorialize this noble prince among Sea Cows.
If there's anything that the death of Urf the Manatee has taught us, it's that people deal with grief in different ways. For instance, take this gentleman here. 
Lee Sin was so shaken up that he actually ran off and joined a monastery. Now he's Lee Sin the Blind Monk. Hey, what do you mean you've seen him before?
Dev Update: Champions, Lore, Modes & More[]
| “ | And so as part of that, we're investing more in ASUs-these are the art and sustainability updates. So we've done Caitlyn and we've done Ahri, and we're trying to get faster at it. So we're actually doing two right now, working on both of them at the same time. And those two champions that are getting an ASU right now are Lee Sin and Teemo. |
| — Jeremy 'Brightmoon' Lee & Andrei 'Meddler' van Roon[2] | |
 |
Scounting Ahead on ASUs[]
By Megan 'ZeOcelot' O'Rourke, David 'Duncnasty' Jeka, Einar 'Beinhar' Langfjord, Sean 'Redepoka' Yeung, & Ed 'Memurr' Zhao[3]
Hey folks! We’re the ASU team back to share some of our work on Lee Sin and Teemo! We’re aiming to check in with you all again later this year, but today you’ll hear from concept art, tech art, and animation about some of the work that goes into ASUs. (Editor’s Note: As a quick reminder, ASU stands for Art and Sustainability Update.)
But before that, let’s talk about release dates. Keep in mind that these dates could still change as anything could happen and both of these characters have extensive skin lists, but currently Lee Sin is scheduled for the first half of 2024 and Teemo in the second half of 2024.
We realize these might be a little later than some of you would like, but we want to make sure that these ASU’s hit the quality bar internally and for players. That said, we can’t wait for you to get the shiny new Lee Sin and Teemo in your hands, but for now let’s dive into how these ASUs are coming to life!
- Modernizing the Monk
Megan “Ze Ocelot” O’Rourke, Concept Artist:
As a concept artist working on ASUs, one of the things we want to solidify is proportions. Not only do proportions define a character’s silhouette and identity, they make concepting skins a lot easier and more consistent.
Making Lee Sin’s proportions consistent is paramount. Lee Sin’s body is muscular and fit, but also thin and lean. There should be some breathing room when we’re working on an ASU, but introducing something too different can feel out of character.
Another big feature we wanted to emphasize was his braid. Having it looped around his head and shoulders felt very limited. Freeing up his braid would not only help his overall silhouette but also add an extra area of interest in terms of animation and design.
Outfit-wise, we didn’t want to depart too far from Lee Sin’s original clothing. Compared to VGUs, ASUs aim to retain the overall look of a champion while adjusting details and refining shapes to help modernize them. A lot of Lee Sin’s new design is translated from his rendition in Wild Rift, but we’ve added some subtle details that feel a little more Ionian, such as additional layers of cloth around his waist and more curved, organic seams or trim on the clothing pieces and accessories.
- A Rig Revamp
David “Riot Duncnasty” Jeka, Technical Artist, Rigging:
Before I get into what we're aiming to fix or change in Lee Sin and Teemo, I want to address the blind monk yordle elephant in the room: What is rigging? To put it simply, rigging is the step before animation—putting joints into characters to mimic anatomy, attaching that champion to the joints in a step called "skinning," and then adding controls to those joints for animators to, well, animate. Now that that’s settled, what is rigging looking to fix in Lee Sin?
It’s a bit too early to show any comparisons with Lee’s old rig and what we're planning to do with his new rig, but I can show you some of the issues we’re trying to fix.
Lee Sin’s current base rig can be a headache for our animators: his controls don't make sense, you can't tell the left from the right, things dont pivot the way they should, and his neck… well, we have to talk about his neck.
We’ve had to get really creative with Lee’s neck movement over the years—from 
Playmaker Lee Sin onward, we even had to add an additional additive animation to pop his neck into place. And that only kind of worked. Meme about the neck while you can… it’s getting fixed.
It's hard to create a powerful pose with the tools we've given our animators—and Lee Sin’s skeleton isn't helping on that front either. His upper thighs are too low, his upper arms are too far out, his clavicles are too low and crossed (which for sure is a rigging method, but an old one). Anatomically, and technically, much of it doesn't make sense. We're aiming to fix all of this and much more to help our animators deliver as dynamic of poses as possible. We're also aiming to give his iconic ponytail some more options.
- Alive and Kicking
Einar “Riot Beinhar” Langfjord and Sean “Riot Redepoka” Yeung, Animation Artists:
The philosophy for us animators when it comes to our beloved ASU champions is bringing them up to modern standards, which usually comes down to three factors:
- Gameplay feel
- Gameplay read
- Character resonance
The importance of each of these factors varies from character to character. As an example, one of our goals for Ahri was for her tails to move smoothly between her different movements to really solidify her fantasy as a nine-tailed fox. For Caitlyn, we focused on making her feel like a highly trained officer who knows how to handle her rifle, while showing off her (once severely lacking) empathetic personality traits. Every character will take into account these three factors, but ultimately their gameplay, personality, and resonance will affect where we direct most of our effort.
With these goals in mind, let’s discuss our animation goals for Lee Sin:
Historically, Lee Sin has had major issues when it comes to animation. His base silhouette isn’t very unique, which makes it hard to distinguish him from other characters with generic human male silhouettes and projectile Q animations like Ezreal and Brand, especially when they all wear skins that change their base look. This is why we’re going to add Lee Sin’s ponytail into his base design to help distinguish him from the others.
Lee Sin also suffers from unclear hitboxes, especially when it comes to his emotes and idle variations where he defies gameplay logic. It's not very easy for a new player to know where to aim your skillshots when fighting this monk.
Another issue we are going to have to face is the gameplay feel of Lee Sin. Some players have spent thousands of hours honing their skills and gotten used to how the current Lee Sin feels. But the biggest issue with base Lee Sin is that his attacks feel floaty, not to mention his body mechanics aren’t rooted very well in real martial arts. With the ASU, we want to make Lee feel like a true professional warrior monk while maintaining the gameplay feel that his mains have fallen in love with.
We really want to think a lot more about what Ionian martial arts look like, taking inspiration from and consulting with real martial artists to make Lee Sin worthy of being the greatest martial artist in the realm.
We’re also doing some extra development work for special skins with unique animation sets, like Muay Thai Lee Sin and Knockout Lee Sin. Since these two skins are popular due to their specific game feels, we are going to try our very best to keep the original feel of their gameplay after the ASU. But at the same time, they’ll benefit from some of the quality of life changes from Lee’s new base.
Now let’s scout ahead to Teemo!
Trivia[]
- Lee Sin is voiced by Feodor Chin in both
League of Legends and Legends of Runeterra. God Fist Lee Sin, Storm Dragon Lee Sin, Heavenscale Lee Sin, and Divine Heavenscale Lee Sin are voiced by the same actor.
- Lee Sin was voiced by Vic Mignogna, who also voices Malzahar. Mignogna also did the initial set of voice lines for God Fist Lee Sin.
- Lee Sin was voiced by Vic Mignogna, who also voices
- During development he was simply called BlindMonk, Marty Punchman,[4] and later Xizun,[5] and he wore a straw hat and a staff in a wildly different design.
- Xizun appears to be a near-homophone for 'season'.
- Lee Sin is an approximate homophone for listen.
- In the Chinese version, his name is written as 李青 (Mandarin: Lǐ Qīng).
Media[]
- Related Music
- Related Videos
- Main article: Summoner icon
- Main article: Emotes
References[]
- ↑ Champion Sneak Peek: Lee Sin, the Blind Monk
- ↑ Dev Update: Champions, Lore, Modes & More
- ↑ Scounting Ahead on ASUs
- ↑ Marty Punchman
- ↑ Founding Interns of League of Legends YouTube video
- ↑ Schuessler, A. The ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese, p. 349
- ↑ Schuessler, p. 431-2, 459, 460