Star Guardian Urgot is almost on the live servers, so I thought it’d be nice to share some behind the scenes story for how I made the SFX for this skin! I’ll try to share some workflow stuff, new things that I’ve learned, and what I could have done better.
The biggest challenge I was faced with was balancing the 3 different aspects of Pajama Guardian Urgot. Here’s what I mean:
We need Urgot to still resemble himself. Abilities cannot sound too different from Base Urgot’s sounds - like certain rhythms in his Q, W or E must stay true to Urgot. Urgot is mechanical and have lots of heaviness to him. While this is true, I knew that our players wanted to hear Urgot shoot rainbows and have super cute bouncy sounds.
Before starting work, I first needed to get to know the champion. Every time when I start working on a skin, I watch a lot of gameplay videos of that champion, especially for mechanics or combos that I didn’t even know about. Since I didn’t know what Urgot did, I watched SoloRenektonOnly play Urgot and get to know how his kit worked.
Slightly clickbait but still good content
I jumped into a few practice game to try out his combos and understand what his abilities sounded like. I started brainstorming cool ways I can make THIS specific skin have a cool “moment”. What one feature on this skin or sound would make the players want to hear again and again? I focus on that feature and highlight the hell out of it. (Nightbringer Lee Sin’s Q, Mech Kingdom Leona’s R, Cosplay Veigar’s W, etc)
It was time to get to work. To get inspired, I started listening to a lot of Star Guardian music while I walked home, or ate lunch. I bought colored lights so I can feel Star Guardian at all times.
Fortunately, we had lots of building blocks that previous sound designers left behind when working on the past Star Guardian skins. I especially used a lot of Star Guardian Ezreal sounds, because Urgot adores Ezreal. layered a lot of plastic-home made gun clicking sounds, silencer shots, along with our Star Guardian magic sounds in our in house library.
Design session for Urgot’s Q. In one ability, there are actually multiple parts that League sound designers have to design and test for, like OnCast (When an ability is first cast), OnMissileLaunch (The sound that a projectile plays as it travels in the air) and OH (when an ability hits a target).
I LOVE working on recalls. Recalls are one of the best ways to tell stories and emphasize characteristics of a champion. (Urgot LOVES Yuuto.) Design session in Reaper for Recall - I usually end up focusing on the key moments first. (Yuuto spawning, Urgot huging).
A lot of my early iteration of his ability sounds were at a rough stage. Some were sounding too magical, and also were not clearly telling gameplay queues. You couldn’t tell what ability was what because everything sounded so pitchy and shiny.
Halfway through working on Urgot, I found a bug for Urgot’s E shield sound, so I fixed that!
These are some of the feedback and notes that I addressed while I was at 2nd pass full kit on him.
You can watch this short video below to see his kit evolve over time!
Urgot came up a surprise to our players - as Tristana and Veigar were first uploaded on to PBE servers but he was briefly shown in the splash art, and few days after, Urgot was released into the PBE. Community reaction was very positive! I loved reading the reactions of our players, and I hope that many players can make great memories playing with this skin :)