I first met Chesney Lattuga when she charismatically spoke at an event for digital artists, and I knew immediately I needed to know more about her job. Lattuga is a marketing creative director for League of Legends at Riot Games. As such, she is responsible for establishing an overarching creative vision and execution for a “moment,” whether it’s the release of a new champion, a bigger event like the League of Legends World Championship or marketing campaigns like HEARTSTEEL. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Lattuga spoke about her responsibilities, good habits for a professional artist and the time she met Harry Lloyd (“Arcane”).
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
The Michigan Daily: What would you say are the skills that you need to do your job? Is it more visual arts? Do you think having something like choreography or performing experience is important?
Chesney Lattuga: I have a degree in motion media animation, so that is my specialty. But I actually think the biggest part of my job is communication and soft skills. So, not only being able to understand from a crafts level of “the proportions look off” or “we should be in this color space instead.” A lot of it is communicating with my team and external vendors and making sure the feedback we’re delivering is very clear and concise.
TMD: What would you say your day-to-day looks like? How much time in a day or in a week is dedicated to creative stuff, and then how much is administration and that kind of stuff?
CL: I would say the majority of it is creative. We thankfully have a large team of brand strategists and producers and people who handle the timelines. Since I’m mainly responsible for creating, my day-to-day revolves around feedback and communication. We partner with a lot of external vendors to create a lot of the work we do. For example, if we get an animation delivery, I work on crafting the feedback and making sure the vendor is heading down the right path. Then, if there are any additional details or feedback from specific teammates like art directors or narrative writers, I communicate with them to make sure their thoughts and opinions are included, and I gather all those. So it’s a lot of people management, but the basis of it is always creative.
TMD: Yeah, that makes sense. Would you say this (process) is something that’s pretty common among all game companies, or do you think it would vary with different styles of games? Riot is a very big company. Is it different compared to a smaller indie company?
CL: Yeah, I don’t have a ton of insight into other companies, but in terms of Riot, I think the really interesting thing for us is we’re a live-service game, so we’re not necessarily a studio that produces a single narrative-lead game. We get to explore different universes and experiences of our characters. They’re always changing compared to a more traditional studio that works on single-player, narrative-driven games.
TMD: How do you approach making sure new ideas work for players but making sure they’re not derivative? Do you do a lot of market research?
CL: This is my personal take on it: I feel like a big portion is to just be aware of current trends from an organic perspective, right? I personally spend so much, maybe too much, time consuming media. Whether it’s socials or TV shows and movies, I’m constantly aware of trends from an organic perspective.
Where it gets a little cringey is when you’ve got these brands or these companies who blindly see a trend and follow it but they don’t have any of the context — they don’t know why people are hopping on. It feels superficial and fake. If you position yourself within the current, you avoid making creative (choices) that feel superficial.
TMD: Do you find that there’s overlap between your personal work and your “work” work, or do you try to keep that more separate?
CL: I actually think there’s a lot of overlap. For me and my personal work, this is something that is really hard to balance as a professional. Since my job is being a creative, coming home and doing creative work is sometimes really hard to do because you feel a little bit of that burnout. But, I feel very lucky in working at a company and on a team whose champions and intellectual property I really, really love. So, a lot of times my personal work will reflect what I’m currently working on.
For example, one of my favorite projects I’ve ever worked on was HEARTSTEEL. It’s this boy group music universe. We came out with a music video, and a lot of my personal work was just illustrating them, doing dumb things and just expressing my personal outlet through what I was creating at work. It definitely didn’t feel like work because I was very excited by it. They kind of go hand in hand a little bit, at least for me personally.
TMD: If you were to give advice to people that are looking to pursue art professionally, how would you suggest finding balance between professional stuff and personally fulfilling stuff in their work?
CL: I would suggest avoiding forcing yourself to do things. There’s a lot of pressure as a creative to always be creating, and we tend to kind of get into these art blocks where there’s no inspiration. I don’t feel motivated to do anything. I can’t, but I know I need to be drawing, and I feel this pressure that I need to be creating. A lot of times, when you force yourself out of that, it just makes you spiral.
Taking creative breaks and immersing yourself in something completely different helps me personally. This goes into my job as well — if I can’t nail an idea and I’ve been looking at the same stuff and the same references for days and nothing is clicking, I pause and go pencils down and I’m like, “OK, I’m actually just going to go watch a movie.” I’m just going to go outside. I’m just going to go somewhere else, and either I find inspiration there or when I come back to the work, then I go, “Wait, this is the idea.” Take a little bit of a break and allow yourself to just do nothing, knowing that when you go back to doing creative stuff, you’re going to be in a better mindset.
TMD: Have there ever been instances where you’ve had to just push through an art block, and if so, how?
CL: Oh yeah, absolutely. What I do in those situations is I always go to my colleagues and say, “I need fresh eyes on this. I’m bashing my head up against the wall. I’m out of time and I just don’t know what to do.” Getting that fresh perspective, whether it’s them saying something and I go, “Oh, that’s it,” or they suggest something and I’m like, “That’s a great direction.” Getting help from other creatives is my fail-safe in those situations.
TMD: I’m very protective over my own work and find it very difficult to hand off to other people. Do you ever feel that? How do you deal with that if you do?
CL: 100%. I feel like, being a creative, when you create something, that’s kind of your baby. It’s your idea. You feel like you have this vision and personal picture of what it will look and feel and sound like. Working with other creatives is something I still struggle with, but for me, I always remember that digesting art is a very personal experience, and everyone interprets things with their own unique twist. You can create something with one idea in mind, and then someone else interprets it completely differently. That happens to make it more resonant for them as an individual and makes the original idea that much stronger.
That’s why I’m a big fan of headcanons and the idea of seeing an existing character, an existing story, and taking that idea and putting it in your brain and being like, “Yeah, you know what, this is what I think they would do.” It feels that much more fulfilling. So that’s something I try to remember, but a lot of it is just sucking it up and biting your tongue.
TMD: Are you involved a lot with the League of Legends fandom online? I know some creators don’t want to be involved with fandom — what are your thoughts on creatives and creators being in fandom spaces?
CL: I personally love it. I am somebody who is constantly online. Twitter is where I’m the most active, and it’s always exciting to see what people think, and it’s also important to understand what a community is feeling. A lot of our job is just experimenting because we want to keep things fresh and exciting. Sometimes we’re like, “Let’s try this,” and it doesn’t work. I think it’s very important to have insight into what the player base is feeling and have a connection. I think that really humanizes this idea of this giant corporation making a game and puts a face and a name behind the logo.
TMD: Have there been times that you haven’t nailed it? And then you’ve been online and you’ve just been like, “That didn’t really go well?”
CL: Yes, but as a creative, we’re so critical. The tough thing about creative stuff is that it’s never done. It’s not like a math equation where you end up at the end and you’re like, “OK, this is it.” Art can always be improved, and that’s something that I personally have learned to take it as learning and take that into your next project or build upon that. We’re always going to be critical of the work that we do because it could always be better, but we have to live with that and take those learnings from that project and use them elsewhere, which I do almost every single project I work on. It’s just the idea of this constant absorption and utilizing it right. It’s not personal, it’s never personal.
TMD: What are some cool experiences that you’ve had at your job?
CL: One really cool thing was a couple of years ago: Worlds, which is our end-of-year championship where our professional League of Legends players duke it out, and it’s in a different region every single year. A couple years ago, it was in South Korea and that was the time that I was also working on that as a project. I got to go to Korea, and this is also the time where HEARTSTEEL came out. We did a bunch of pop-up events and it’s just really cool to go to another country and interact with the (players) there and see the spectacle of it all. A lot of the stuff that we create lives on the internet, so it’s always extra special where you get to go somewhere in person and you get to see the reactions of the people who are watching it for the first time or hear the conversations that happen. When I’m feeling stressed, those times bring me back, and I’m like, “Yeah, I love what I do.”
TMD: What did it feel like to be able to finally see the faces of players and the people that your work has reached?
CL: It’s so funny because I’m such a sensitive person, but every time I go to Worlds, I cry every single time. It’s like the emotion of it all. It just feels like Disney World, except that it’s made specifically for you. I obviously try to stay professional through it all and sit back and let the fans take center stage because it’s really about them, but sometimes really cool stuff does happen, and I do get selfish. Like, when I met Harry Lloyd, who is Viktor’s voice actor in “Arcane,” who’s been one of my favorite characters and champions for a long, long time. I was trying to play it cool, but I definitely did not.
TMD: As an artist, have you heard much about artificial intelligence making a big impact on the games industry specifically? AI backlash has been more focused on movies and cartoons, and not as much on AAA companies.
CL: I think that’s a really good point. I really haven’t seen it touch the gaming industry in the same way that it’s affected sort of just “general illustration.” I’m very curious as to why that is. I wonder if it’s because video games are a lot more complex in terms of the creation and experience versus, you know, movies or television, which (have) a singular format of storytelling. But you don’t necessarily have to walk through levels or beat puzzles or stuff like that. So I personally haven’t seen it affect the video game industry in the same way as others. I’m very thankful that it hasn’t though.
TMD: Video game creation is a very hard job. What would you say is the importance of your role in making video games, and what does your specific job really bring to the world of gaming?
CL: I work on the publishing side of things, so my job focuses on creating all of these elements for a specific moment that exist outside of the game itself. I’m not necessarily responsible for creating a new champion or creating cosmetics. I’m really responsible for everything that happens outside of the game, which is a really fun challenge because the things that we create are very community-focused, and the goal is to get everybody talking and get everybody excited.
Especially now, where video games are relatively mainstream, it’s very important to keep things authentic and real and transparent so we don’t turn the world of video games into this weird corporate cash grab. You can tell there’s an advertisement or a collaboration or a commercial where they have no idea what it means to be somebody who plays video games. I’d like to think that we are keeping the original experience of playing video games authentic.
TMD: That’s great to hear. Now just some fun questions that I like to ask people at the end of interviews. First of all, what are your top three games right now?
CL: Oh geez. Well, I’ll say my favorite games right now because I think I’ll be here for days trying to figure out what my favorite ones (of all time) are. Monster Hunter Wilds, I’ve been playing that nonstop. I’m also loving R.E.P.O. R.E.P.O. is so fun. I’m a big fan of Lethal Company, and it scratches that same itch. Unfortunately, I do love League of Legends. It sucks. I hate being like, “Yeah, I work at Riot and I love League of Legends,” but I do. I’ve played this game for years and years and just keep going back to it.
TMD: Are there any upcoming releases that you’re really looking forward to, or are there any new releases that you haven’t had the chance to check out yet that you’re planning to in your future?
CL: Hades II. Oh, I’m so excited. I missed the bandwagon when Hades first came out. I don’t know why I just didn’t play it when I’ve had so many people in my life be like, “This game was made for you.” I played it like a year or two later and was completely obsessed, so much that I had to get special controllers for my Nintendo Switch because my hands kept cramping. So Hades II is probably my number one. I’m also excited for Witchbrook. It’s sort of like, you’re a witch in the city, kind of Stardew Valley-esque. I love very sweaty games, but I also like very cozy games.
Daily Arts Writer Lin Yang can be reached at yanglinj@umich.edu.
