Nice job, very inspiring! 
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Here is my latest exercice, I wanted to do some sword trail/ swoop meshes, so here is my try!
I used Houdini to create a digital asset using a curve input to create the meshes, allowing me to control the shape easily of the sweep meshes, the rest is a blend of GPU and CPU particles altogether!
Feedback heavily appreciated 
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Hey everyone!
I Started working on a Star Guardian Ornn Fan-Art, which is a tricky character so I prefer to be careful and ask for advices, as I’m not as experienced as the majority of people here!
Here is the first spell, any feedback would be very very appreciated!
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Hi SleepyGrin,
I’m the Lead VFX artist on skins for League, I’m going to be giving you feedback as if you’re working on this as a skin at Riot.
Overall, this looks awesome! It feels really cool and glowy, and there’s a lot of satisfaction in the spell cast. I love how glowy your pillar feels. This is definitely feeling thematically like it lives within the Star Guardian universe.
First, here’s something that you might find useful, this is a reference sheet I made of all the Star Guardian VFX in the game. I made this before starting on Star Guardian Rakan, because I find it useful to see the whole range of VFX that exist for a thematic, so I know what to make my FX look like if I want them to be consistent with existing FX:
So for me, here are the important elements of VFX for Star Guardian:
-
A strong, saturated primary colour, normally linked to the colour of their Star Gem as it’s their source of power. However, most of the more recent colour schemes have a range of hues in their FX.
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A Star motif - either in decals, or in the shapes of missiles. Note that the 5 pointed star represents Lux’s team, and the four pointed star represents Ahri’s team. As previous members of Ahri’s team, Rakan, Xayah and Neeko all have 4 pointed stars. Rakan’s and Xayahs are pointy because Zoe corrupted them.
-
Things are bright, but there’s quite a lot of alpha blend behind. Looking at Ezreal and Soraka as an example, there are some large alpha blend elements in the VFX, that help to make them saturated, and usually add a complementary colour.
Looking at your VFX, I feel like you’ve done a good job in replicating the style of Lux’s VFX. Comparing your VFX to the 3 elements I listed, you’ve done a good job on point 1 and 2. You definitely have a bright, saturated colour, though at the moment I can’t decide whether I think his gem would be orange, yellow or pink. I think you could make sure that one of those colours is the most dominant, by saturating that colour, and desaturating the other colours. You’ve definitely worked the star decal in there, reinforcing the thematic.
I feel like your VFX right now are very satisfying - the bright flashes feel really cool and bright, and the screen shake is adding impact and satisfaction. However, if you read through the VFX style guide for League:
The section in there in value talks about establishing a Scale of importance for your VFX. We try to save 100% white things for ultimates, as these are the most important/damaging VFX in the game.
At the moment, your Q pillar is reading closer to Lux’s ultimate in brightness/importance.
I think if you reduced the overall brightness of the pillar effect, it would help to make sure the relative level of importance is correct. Additionally, if you add some more alpha blend elements behind it would really help to determine which is your primary colour.
Something I think you have done really well, is to clearly show the width of the damage area of this projectile. In fact, I think it is more clear on your skin than it is on Base!
However, at the moment it is quite difficult to tell what the Primary Element of this spell is. This should be the damaging area, as it illustrates the timing for gameplay. Let’s compare your missile to Ahri’s Q.
So looking at this missile we can see a clear Visual Hierarchy. The front of the missile (which is the damaging area for gameplay) is brighter, more saturated, and has the sharpest shapes. If we look at this missile at a glance, it is immediately clear which part we should avoid. The thematic is being reinforced by the sparkly stars, but they are much less bright, they’re a clear seconary element
By comparison, on your effect, it’s harder to see which part the player should be trying to avoid, as most of the effect has the same brightness and saturation. There is no clear primary element. What I would suggest instead is this:
(please forgive my bad drawing, I don’t have my graphics tablet with me while on vacation).
These changes will help to lead the eye of your players better, and make the gameplay much clearer.
Additionally, in terms of timing, you’ve got some really great anticipation when the pillar is about to pop out the ground. The stars getting faster and faster feel awesome and let the player know something is about to happen.
However, let’s comare the timing of the Pillar actually popping up:
If you look at this gif of base, you see that the pillar basically appears almost instantly over 1 frame.
By comparison on yours, the pillar slowly rises out of the ground. I think if you sped up the timing of the pillar appearing it would make it feel much punchier, which combined with your existing anticipation would help make this feel more impactful. It would also be clearer from a gameplay perspective, as often Ornn immediately dashes into the Pillar, and it’s important to know exactly when it is ready to ram into.
If you haven’t already done so, take a look at the Timing section of the Style Guide i posted earlier, it has some great examples of giving your VFX punchy timing which I think could help you.
Overall, you’re doing awesome work though, I love seeing fan work like these, please keep up the great work.
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Woooooah that’s just awesome!
What a great post. You did it again Oli hahahahaha
Super thanks! Really appreciate the insight. Always learning new stuff.
I might be doing some VFX “fan artwork” soon too 
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Thanks Lush! Let me know if you’d like some feedback if you do that fan art
And for sleepyGrin, I also completed the post I was writing earlier the goes a bit more into depth on the reasoning behind making Primary and secondary elements. You can read through that here if you like:
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I don’t even know how to thank you for all the time you spent on your very in-depth answer!
It really puts clarity into what I should be doing, and as a student, it is so important. Especially from you, it’s an honor.
I’ll be sure to rework my VFX following the guidelines you brought up!
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Can’t expect more if a lead rioter comes here to help and suggest, with that big analysys.
Thank you very much! So inspiring
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Hi everyone!
Got a busy time with school but finally got through this Ornn Star Guardian project!
I tried to apply Beardilocks advices as best as I could, and think it really helped me understanding the process of authoring “game” VFXs, with subjects such as visibility and clarity of action.
I however cannot pretend I got it instantly right and will surely have to do more fan-arts to get it right!
Don’t hesitate to give feedback as it is super valuable to me to improve!
Have a good day and thanks so much to Beardilocks for the hugely detailed feedback.
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As internship seasons approaches and also because editing is a guilty pleasure, here is my 2019 VFX Reel, I tried to make it short, and I hope that my work next year will be in even more quantity and quality!
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this look amazing man! I really like the League of Legends Fan VFX.
Keep it up
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Thank you so much! I think yours is amazing as well!
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You should avoid result from famous tutorial into your demoreel
A recruiter see a lot of demoreel / portfolio, imagine 8 candidates about 10 having the same effect in their reel ? Do you think they will take the time to answer you, as you are “the candidate among others” ? Especially if the recruiter created the tutorial… 
You can still include these effect to say “look, I’ve done things in Houdini and created effect with it”, but you should at least change the final result, recruiters aren’t looking for a good tutorial followers, but someone who can learn from it and bring his own creativity on the effect !
Hi Jordanov!
I’m totally okay with you for the don’t put tutorial in your reel part!
Are you referring to the UE4 explosion ?
I took time to appropriate it and make it more stylised, in my opinion they look different enough when compared direclty!
But if you think this is not enough and a bad point for my reel I’ll remove it right away!
Yeah this one, and maybe the curve sweeper in Houdini remind me something…
It’s just an advice after all, you are free to put whatever you want on your reel, but I assume it’s not a very good idea to put it here like this, because I believe it’s making shadow on the other effects.
I trust you about the fact that you dig a little more than the tutorial, but I could see it on the first sight, as the way the explosion looks is very characteristic now and very popular, especially in the game industry.
Also, you can blur the similarity by adding context of the explosion, maybe something being exploded, something being thrown that cause the explosion, etc… It’s kind of weak to have explosion on an empty scene.
I guess the things that work the best are the League of Legends effect, as you included background, character, animations, and you succeed to bring clarity and lisibility with your stylization. And that’s what recruiter will judge you on, even if you are looking for an internship : do you know the constraint of the VFX role and how do you deal with these problematic, do you enhance the comprehension, etc…
Hope i’m not being to rude, overall you have good things on your reel, but I prefer talking about weak things than enhance things that already good ! Good luck then
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Seconded.
Portfolio work is supposed to represent your best work. Since tutorials aren’t your work, they don’t really belong on your portfolio.
That being said, feel free to post your tutorial results, and the way you deviated and/or experimented with that, here on the forums!
If future employers ask to see more of your work, or want to know about your developement, you can alway link them here, or to some kind of blog.
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I totally get it!
You’re not being rude at all, these kind of feedback is why I post on RTVFX in the first place!
I edited the video and replaced it on Vimeo based on your feedback!
Thanks for your time, Jordanov and Wyvery!
Hey Sleepygrin,
Awesome work updating those Star Guardian Ornn effects! He looks so amazing now, congratulations on completing basically his whole kit! You added a lot of gameplay clarity to his visuals, and I love the colours you chose.
I love the star on the Ram’s head as well!
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Hi Beardilocks!
Glad you like it
Feels good to have your approval on my work after you helped me that much!
I’ll always keep in mind gameplay clarity before anything else for game VFXs.
Hi everyone!
I’m currently in a very busy time between studying and freelance contracts, it’s hard to get time to post here! But there will be a massive number of VFX coming up on this thread in june!
In the meantime, I had the chance to drop a valorant access, and fell immediatly in love with Brimstone’s E ability. I’m posting a WIP of a fan-art I’ve been doing past midnight, just for study purposes. It’s the first time I’m actually making 2D spritesheets on photoshop, I’m learning a lot!
As far as I know, some textures are very ugly, colors are not close enough to the original and timing is very off, but please do comment as your feedback is very important to me and I’m probably missing on a lot of different aspects.
Have a good time, I’ll post the finished version soon!
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