So, here's a thing. Yes, Sunbathing/beach bash Leona will most likely be a reality barring some major issue or slotting problem. That does sometimes happen. I never want to set certainty that could be subject to change.
It's past the concept phase, having been fully fleshed out, and will move onto modeling. I reconcepted her after PAX for better readability and some other more thought-out touches. She'll probably move onto 3D very soon, then through the animation and particle pipeline. Depending on priority, this could be a few months, we'll see.
One of the reasons it's been a while since she's had a skin is because we actually brought a couple skins of hers up to the modeling phase, and plugged them into the game, but then realized they either weren't cutting the quality/theme bar, or the skin had to be bumped because of saturation of similar themes. These skins might some day come to release, but I'm not certain of that at all.
I don't want to really delve into what those skins were because at least one wasn't terribly strong in differentiation from her other skins. It might even only really equate to a model swap. I made a call to kill the skin and possibly focus on a legendary skin for her down the line that would be a much stronger theme than what I had produced. You actually have seen the beginning of that skin in one of the videos that was released about champion production. A picture had been circulated of an armored figure from the bust up that was very early on in iteration. That was a potential Leona skin, but again, in the end it wasnt very strong.
This can happen. We actually had a mecha-cho'gath finished and animated but it was really lame. We scrapped it and decided to make him a Battlecast skin which was a MUCH stronger theme. While sometimes skins can be cool, and we feel they're neat ideas, until we get it plugged into the game we don't really know if the skin will work.
Concept art can't solve all the problems up front. Concept, meaning "idea", is just that. Until our 3D brows get that thing walking round, only then can we know that it works 100%. So while it can be unfortunate that we have to kill content that we know some players will want, we want to make sure we're delivering the right thing at the right time, and these particular unreleased skins weren't hitting the bar. My hope is that we can revisit them and make them work! Who knows!
