League of Legends’ newest Champion, Smolder, was revealed Friday, January 5th, and released onto the PBE (Public Beta Environment) on Tuesday, January 9th. An adorable baby dragon, Smolder is the latest addition to League’s growing roster of marksmen, or ADCs. However, Smolder’s reveal on Twitter was met with harsh criticism from players about his uncanny resemblance to a human child.
Fans compared the baby dragon to a variety of creatures with similarly uncanny faces, from the animals in CGI Barbie movies, to Spyro, to Sonic’s widely panned original design from the Sonic movie. Given League of Legends and Legends of Runeterra’s wide variety of elaborately designed fantasy dragons, many players were disappointed with Smolder’s face, especially considering his lack of resemblance to the other dragons in the game, Aurelion Sol and Shyvana.
However, just like Sonic, Smolder’s design was quickly changed in response to the community backlash. Riot Lexical posted changes made to Smolder’s textures to make him look more draconic, with changes to his splash art following closely after. The design updates to Smolder gave him a longer nose, with more scales on his face and more snake-like, thinner pupils.
Although some fans were disappointed with the lack of changes to his base model, limited time and resources prevented the team from making drastic changes, given the need to model, rig and animate a new face for the adorable dragon. Currently, Smolder can be played on the PBE until Feb 7, 2024, when he will be released alongside his launch Heavenscale skin in patch 14.3.
Riot Games described their design philosophy for Smolder as wanting to create an adorable marksman who was simple to play following the complex kits of the past few marksmen, such as Zeri and Aphelios. Smolder’s base animations can be seen below and check out his Champion Insights article here. Smolder is the first champion to be released in Season 14 of League of Legends, which began Wednesday alongside the release of the cinematic “Still Here”.