The goal was to imagine a new attack/ability for an existing or fictional character in the game League of Legends, all in the style of the game.

I wanted to imagine an ability for Mel, whom I saw in the Arcane series (before she was released in the game), and design one of her attacks.

I wanted to combine this with the concept of the Yu-Gi-Oh card « Swords of Revealing Light« .

I’ve just put my idea on paper (more on Procreate…) to get an idea of the direction.

After that I started creating the VFX in Unity.

Here I’m simply using a twirl effect on noise and applying 2 masks on it.

One is for the shape, and the second is for the animation.

For the Helix, I’m using noise that I animate vertically and apply to a 3D mesh.
Then I use a gradient whose value I intensify or reduce to create an appearance animation via height.

Same principle here, I’m using a noise twirl, a mask, then a second noise layer where I play with the intensity to make the circle appear.

For the timing, I’m using the intersections of two radial noises, and add them to a simple round mask. For the animation, I simply make my plane grow.

Here, it’s also a principle already presented. I use a scrolling noise and apply a basic sword-shaped mask to it. Then I add a second animated gradient mask, which gives this appearance effect.

For the last one, I use two scrolling noises that I multiply together, then add yet another gradient in multiply mode as well. This gives high intensity at the bottom and low intensity at the top. I then apply it to a cylinder shape that I make grow in the animation.