League of Legends' Annie Now has a Hand Painted Trailer

League of Legends has never been a game to disappoint. From the beginning, it has always been one of the reigning champs in the MOBA world. With over 7.5M concurrent players, you can imagine why Riot Games can't help but create amazing visual content to support their ever-growing cast of champions. At the end of 2017, Riot Games realized they needed to give their champs more backstory, which would connect where these characters come from and how they ended up becoming who they are now. Like many multiplayer-only games, it is sometimes hard for the community to connect on an emotional level with the characters and so visual trailers or character bios are a great way to show the players what each character is made of. The most recent of these visual representations is the 'As We Fall' music video that you can watch here.

Now Riot is bringing one of the original champions, Annie, into the limelight with a "hand-painted" origin story. Riot wanted to set the record straight for Annie. At first glance and just by reading her bio, she seems like an evil little girl who has the ability to play with fire but after watching the trailer it is realized that things aren't as black and white. Annie is a child who lost everything and watched it burn; through this unwilling sacrifice, she gains the confidence she needs to survive. Their goal with this visual story is to help players connect to Annie on an emotional level and feel for her. With a mixture of 2D & 3D techniques, the creative team at Riot really put together a beautiful piece to tell Annie's story. Check out the video below and enjoy the rich and fantastical art style used to create it.