We may earn a commission when you buy through links in our articles. Learn more.

The sounds of walruses and alligators were used for Valorant’s Elderflame skins

That's one way to record dragon noises

If you close your eyes and listen to the roar of the new Valorant skins, you hear a dragon, right? Wrong. You actually hear a mix of walruses, tigers, alligators, camels, and more.

According to a blog posted on the Valorant website, producer Preeti Khanolkar and art lead Sean Marino’s journey to breathe life into the Elderflame skins wasn’t exactly straight forward. Since there aren’t actually any real life dragons for Riot Games to base its design on, the team had to improvise. And improvise they did.

When it came to sound, the team’s sound designer Isaac Kikawa got creative. According to the blog, he “mixed all sorts of sounds to create the dragons roars: walruses, Bengal tigers, and of course the Yellow Backed Chattering Lory, among others.” He even included the sound of an alligator that Marino’s mother managed to record on her phone.

The team also had to study the anatomy of a dragon so they could perfectly animate it as a weapon. Eventually each and every dragon was given a different personality that came to life when their components worked together.

The finishing touches to the Elderflame skins are being added as we speak, but after ten long months of hard work and dedication, the Valorant design team can be proud of what they’ve achieved.