My name is Eric Angelillo, I’m the Creative Director and Co-Art Director for Convergence: A League of Legends Story. I also co-founded Double Stallion games 10 years ago with a mission to create vibrant & transcendent experiences with players all around the world. I love making bold action games with vibrant stylized visuals inspired by the very best of animation and comics. I believe great games are made when art and interactivity perfectly intersect.

From the start, our goal with Convergence was to showcase Zaun not just as the dark, polluted metropolis it’s usually portrayed as, but rather as a vivid, lively city teeming with colors, characters, and wonders waiting to be discovered. By seeing Zaun through Ekko’s eyes, we aimed to reflect his own perspective on his home – a city of progress and a playground for adventure.

Our unique approach to the Art Direction was informed by framing everything through Ekko’s perspective. We expressed this through 3 core art pillars; BOLD, ELECTRIC and VIBRANT. Riot Forge provided guidance on portraying technology, fashion, and other elements, but we were ultimately able to express our own creative vision.

Staying true to Zaun’s technology and architectural style was a priority, but we pushed the envelope with colors, design shapes, line art, and more. Comic books served as a significant source of inspiration, leading us to incorporate heavy lineart, black inked shadows, and color halftones. The use of halftones not only posed an exciting challenge but also helped make foreground elements truly pop.

Centering the experience in Zaun, Ekko’s home, we sought to explore its diversity by creating a variety of exciting locales – streets, sewers, factories, carnivals, gardens, and more. The Cultivair, a large enclosed garden from League’s lore, offered a refreshing change from the urban settings and became a focal point in the game.

Drawing from short stories and comics about Zaun and its Champions, we featured environments like Factorywood, which was mentioned in a story about Ekko, and created new locations like the train-like Chaincrawler. Convergence presented an excellent opportunity to expand upon Zaun’s environment, which had not been fully explored in the MOBA.

As the city of Zaun is home to so many amazing champions, we sprinkled in easter eggs throughout the game that reference the undercity’s most famous denizens. We hope fans will enjoy discovering these hidden gems.

In order to make Zaun feel like a bustling city, we prioritized having multiple layers of parallaxing assets in our 2D game. This allowed us to create depth and make environments feel immersive. Additionally, we made it a priority to keep the world feeling lively by having constant on-screen movement, whether it’s steam, dripping water, flickering lights, or little critters scurrying about.

Through our 2D environmental storytelling, we’ve aimed to stay true to the League of Legends world while presenting a fresh, vibrant

We were fortunate enough to sit down with famed sci-fi director Neill Blomkamp to discuss how he adapted the legendary racing simulator, the innovative camerawork devised to capture all the action on the track, and where he found inspiration from racing films of the past. 

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PlayStation Blog: The Gran Turismo Movie is a notable departure from previous films you’ve directed—it’s not based on one of your screenplays, nor is it dystopian sci-fi. What drew you to this project?

Neill Blomkamp: So, it’s actually a dystopian science fiction script I sold to Sony that started the conversation. As the pre-production process went on I started to get very eager just to work on something, and at that point they said, “How about Gran Turismo?” My first thought was, “Wait, how do you make a film out of a racing simulator?” But I read the screenplay, and I personally own three [Nissan] R35 GTRs—I have a personal obsession with Nissan and the whole Nismo lineage—so I was immediately intrigued as a car lover. 

I’ve also been very close to video games in a lot of ways throughout my career, and I had never come across something like Gran Turismo where the movie itself treats the game as a game. It’s based on a true story about Jann Mardenborough who learned to drive playing the game before driving professionally in real life, competing against other real drivers. It’s just an amazing story. 

Another reason I signed on was because my stuff tends to be a lot darker and more dystopian, as you mentioned, but this movie felt, well, very inspirational. It had never crossed my mind that I would direct a movie where the audience would leave the theater feeling uplifted and inspired. This was really appealing to me.

Are there any particular creative challenges—or benefits—to working within an IP like this? 

One great thing is that there weren’t a bunch of executives who would say, “Well, actually, we think it should be like this.” If you’re working on another IP with a more established universe or narrative everyone has preconceived ideas about how things should be. But, with Gran Turismo, you have a well-known IP that doesn’t carry these preconceived notions about what its film adaptation should look like. This gave me a ton of creative freedom to just go out and, you know, make it. 

Without an established plotl