Progression Reel for the stages Eclipse Leona's Spawn Animation went through. Hit me up if you have any thoughts are questions on the process!
(sorry for posting this 1 day late; we had an animation stream on Friday and I completely forgot to schedule the upload T^T)
Jesse Baumgartner and Nick Matthews did a lot of the heavy lifting for this Leona skin, though I helped contribute to the stylistic direction with some references + pose explorations. My initial idea for the spawn idea for Leona was to have her beam from the heavens (from the sun or the moon) and basically leave an impact crater. Having just been summoned, she brandishes her shield then her weapon. The concept was pretty straight forward and didn't take too many versions, but it heavily relied on VFX to sell the impact + ambiance.
When doing simple brandishing moves, a trick we use in League is to spin characters 360; this is because from the top view, rotations and lateral translations are visually pleasing and more readable than other actions. We are also normally limited to staying in one place (because the character isn't moving unless the player gives movement commands) so spinning in place is an easy to way to add interest to a motion without breaking the animator's back with more problems.
Anyway, this seems to be a popular skin an I'm happy to have been able to provide an exciting entrance for this version of Leana. :v