Super Art Power Hour
The Riot Games Super Art Power Hour is a long-form educational segment spotlighting artists at Riot. Each episode features a Riot employee demonstrating their artistic ability and talking through their work. Each episode guests will share advice to other prospective artists on how to get into the industry, demonstrate top-level industry workflows, and inspire others by creating new and fun art. Some of the past episodes have included roles such as illustrator artists, 3d model animators, and character texture artists.
Photo of Zachary Dripps sitting in and prepping lights. Photo by Jimmy Sudekum shot on the Pentax 67 film camera
I had a wide breadth of involvement in this series. My role on Super Art Power Hour as a content producer included the tasks of casting talent, building the soundstage set, designing the lighting, setting up cameras, filming, and then editing and color grading each 1-hour episode with the addition of 90-second cutdowns for social media.
Episode 5 - VALORANT Key Art
This multicam show had 5 cameras set up. I would film handheld on a Ronin gimbal during production. Each episode was 3-5 prep days building the studio with 1-2 shoot days.
We filmed on the Arri Amira, Panasonic BS1H, and Panasonic EVA1 with the Amira and BS1Hs using DZO Film Catta Ace Cine Zoom lenses and Sigma zoom lenses on the EVAs. The footage would range from 3-6 TB of footage disk space.
Episode 4 - Animation
The goal of every episode was to create a product that players enjoyed watching, to amplify Riot Games as a brand, and to provide educational tools for prospective artists. Fans have left overwhelmingly positive comments on each episode of the Super Art Power Hour series.
Sound operator Jimmy Sudekum sitting in for the team to check lighting
Each episode was released globally with subtitles translated into 24 different languages. We worked with Riot’s localization team to translate each episode and ensure this would be a seamless effort on the launch of each episode. Episodes are released on localized platforms such as Bilibili in China. The title and description for each video are translated into different languages on YouTube’s regional sites.
live on set with VALORANT artistsSu Ke and Brandon Meier filming episode 5
Creating this series required collaboration across multiple teams at Riot Games. Through this video series, we established better communication pathways with the art-focused teams at Riot.
For episode 4, we worked with the Riot Animation Team (RAT) to include an animation contest competition using the 3D model in the episode. Fans of the episode then went on to submit their animation work to that contest. For episode 5, we collaborated with the VALORANT social team to create cutdowns for their channels, such as TikTok and Twitter.
Episode 1 - Concept Art
Lighting setup for episode 3
For lighting equipment, we used Arri 1000w fresnels angled to create far-side key lighting. For fill light, we wrapped light around the same side as the key with a variation of Arri Skypanels or Kino Flo Diva lights through diffusion. Mat lights were used for top fill. Then we used v-flats as negative fill. In a few episodes, we created an artificial window-casted light on the back wall.
3D environment artist Nathan Rogers live on set filming episode 2