Netflix × BUCK
Lunar New Year
Contribution • Animation
Riot Games approached BUCK to create a cinematic trailer for League of Legends, designed to launch a new set of character skins with a fully papercraft aesthetic. Given the tight timeline, our team developed a faux-papercraft system to deliver the look efficiently. The process began with untextured Photoshop files from the design team—often containing more than 100 layers. These were brought into After Effects, where each layer was carefully textured to replicate handcrafted cut paper. Once complete, the characters were exported and handed off to the 3D department for final compositing into the scene.
My Scenes
Below are the scenes I worked on. I was responsible for animating and texturing five shots in the final edit. It was a pleasant mix of environment and character animation. Below, you can see final scenes, and some R&D early phases.
Behind the Scenes
One of my tasks on this project was developing our texture library. We wanted enough variation in the paper textures to really sell the “paper cut” look. In real life, even the same paper shows subtle differences. I created multiple types of paper textures, and the system allowed them to be randomized so that no two layers felt the same. The intensity, direction, and random seed were all adjustable to create natural, believable variation.
In these GIFs, you can see the process of texturing the characters to appear three-dimensional—starting in Photoshop and finishing in After Effects. The character’s separate layers are arranged in 3D space, allowing them to cast realistic shadows.
