Diary of a Casual League Player

I think this pretty much gets at why the new Sivir splash was such a disappointment for me. The thing I loved about her old splash was her pose, and while the composition in her old splash was boring and emphasized her cleavage more than her face, at least it didn't detract from anything. Her current splash reminds me of the Spectacular Sivir splash, which I loathe because her pose looks like she's about to take a dump. But it's difficult to explain my immediate dislike of the new splash because, as a different poster said:

The art is mechanically well done in that the image is high-quality with much attention to detail and well drawn... However, there really is no reason for her to be in the pose she's in. It's intended to be in an action pose, but she looks like an awkward flamingo... when I first saw this picture it took me awhile to analyze the image and figure out what pose she was in and where/what everything was on and near her body. A successful splash art should get its message across with little to know analyzation needed...

Of course, then some Riot employee comments to say that "the pose is a very deliberate style choice" but thanks for the lighting advice, which is frankly idiotic, because if Sivir wasn't bent at a complete right angle, she'd make a much more fluid and dynamic shape than she currently is without any fussing with the background lighting. Deliberate exaggeration can be a valid style choice, but exaggerating an action pose to the point where audiences can't tell what's happening in the picture is a bad deliberate style choice.

I mean, the Snowstorm Sivir splash, which is also foreshortened all to hell, shows Sivir in a way more dynamic and impressive pose:

... being as it isn't immediately obvious that she's about to faceplant into the ground. Although she should get to L.L. Bean and buy real winter clothes, stat! This is what I expected the new classic splash to look like: unnecessarily visible boobs, major foreshortening on her arms and legs, chakram flying at the viewer's face, the same swivelspine problems Lux & Karma have, & generic animu face. Which, by League standards, is pretty damn good, or at least not disappointingly awful.

Instead they picked an image where her distinctive & incredibly cool weapon is obscured, there's no decent focal point for the viewer's eyes, and she looks like a paper doll that's been crumpled up in someone's fist-- plus cropping the splash to fit a vertical frame means letting Sivir's rear end run off the frame- which, depending upon the champ to the right of her, can get rather lewd. Not great to let that happen with a champ's default skin. :P