Tue Oct 14 08:00:00 UTC 2025: Okay, here’s a summary and a news article based on the provided text:

**Summary:**

Riot Games’ upcoming free-to-play fighting game, 2XKO, featuring League of Legends characters, is in early access. A rigging technical artist, Mason Smigel, shared some behind-the-scenes information about his work on the character Warwick. His responsibilities included rigging Warwick’s model, implementing physics, troubleshooting, and creating Warwick’s initial skin. A significant part of his work focused on developing a new facial component based on an existing system, which involved prototyping, planning joint layouts, and creating a rig that allowed animators to achieve desired expressions with a concise joint count.

**News Article:**

**Riot Shares Insights Into Warwick’s Development for 2XKO**

**Los Angeles, CA** – Riot Games is offering a glimpse behind the curtain of its highly anticipated free-to-play fighting game, 2XKO, currently in early access. A recent post highlights the work of Rigging Technical Artist Mason Smigel on the fearsome wolf-like champion, Warwick.

Smigel, responsible for the character’s technical artistry, detailed his involvement in rigging Warwick, implementing Unreal Engine physics, and designing his initial skin. He emphasized the challenges and rewards of developing a new facial component for Warwick, building upon the foundation set by Alyssa Diaz.

“The goal was to create a system that would allow our animators to faithfully recreate the expressions from the concept art,” Smigel explained, “but we also needed to keep the joint count concise for performance reasons. It involved a lot of prototyping and careful planning.”

The article includes a gameplay trailer showcasing Warwick in action.

2XKO is a 2v2 fighting game featuring iconic League of Legends champions.

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