What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
It’s been a while since we talked about some awesome fan skin concepts, and we always
enjoy showcasing what the talented League community comes up with.
So we spent a bit of time searching for some fan-made skins that we haven’t shown before,
and today we’ll be going through 10 of our favorites!
The first skin on our list today is Angel of Death Kayle by Ann Marie Cochran.
Even though Kayle is considered to be a hero trying to eradicate evil, Riot often experiments
with skins to make a champion portray a very different character.
The artist here has done the same thing—Angel of Death Kayle is a darker take on her character,
featuring a scythe instead of her flaming blade, and bulky, skull-covered armor to show
that she’s not here to make friends.
One of the really cool parts about this skin design is all the different masks that Ann
Marie iterated while looking for the perfect match.
Some of the mask designs are similar to human skulls, whereas some look more like a knight’s
helm, although the final design is pretty unlike both of those styles.
Either way, it looks seriously cool and we’d love to see Riot take some inspiration from
this design in the future.
Our next skin to talk about today is by concept artist Noah Warner, and it’s called Oni
Poppy.
In terms of production quality, this might be one of the best fan made skins we’ve
ever seen, the level of detail is just insane.
The oni theme actually really suits Poppy, to the point that we are surprised it’s
never been done before, and the red/blue color scheme really stands out well on the Rift.
Noah used the same concept iteration method that Riot themselves use, testing different
versions of Poppy’s clothing, horns, hammer and buckler to find the version that best
suits the Oni theme, and there’s quite a surprising amount of detail present here too.
One of the most awesome things about this skin is that Noah spent the time to recreate
Poppy’s abilities with new VFX to match the oni theme, and it’s honestly just perfect.
If we hadn’t seen this on artstation, we would not have been surprised at all to find
out this was an actual Riot product, so amazing job Noah and we hope to see this skin in action
one day!
Midnight Soraka by Jean Lee is up next, and we want to take this opportunity to talk a
little about the player preferences.
There’s quite a few players out there that avoid particular champions simply because
they don’t really appeal at all to them visually.
This tends to happen more with supports than other roles, but now and again a skin comes
along that transforms their appearance so much that those players will actually pick
up the skin and try out the champion.
We’ve heard a few times about people avoiding Soraka for similar reasons, and Riot’s Reaper
skin probably fixed that issue for a few people.
Unfortunately Reaper Soraka is a legacy skin, so a lot of players never had the chance to
buy it.
The Midnight Soraka skin by Jean Lee is a super clean concept that accomplishes a similar
thing—it appeals to players that generally don’t like how Soraka looks or feels.
The skin is a lot darker than most of Soraka’s available skins, and the moon theme would
likely help it go down well with a lot of players.
If it really is possible to get players to try a champion just by releasing an awesome
skin, we think Midnight Soraka might be a good candidate for an official Riot release.
Jean Lee is also the mastermind behind our fourth skin for today, Popstar Sona.
Riot occasionally creates a new skin that goes down so well that they end up turning
it into an recurring theme, and Jean’s next concept is imagining what the Popstar theme
would look like if it was applied to Sona.
As an effeminate and music-focused champion, Sona would be a really good match for a Popstar
skin, and we really like the direction than Jean took the skin.
The concept flows really well, and color scheme matches up well with Ahri’s skin.
It’s also pretty distinct from Sona’s other official skins, which is pretty hard
to achieve with a champion that is always going to have a musical focus.
Overall it’s a solid concept, although it would probably struggle to compete with the
highly popular DJ and Arcade Sona skins.
Tumblr user PenTheSilence is up next with the Bride Katarina skin concept, and it’s
a pretty interesting take on a skin that we’ve never really seen before.
Wedding dresses don’t typically make it high up on a list of ideal combat clothing,
but if anyone was going to kick ass on the Rift in their wedding outfit it would probably
be Katarina.
Unfortunately, this skin is probably the least likely to make it into the game because it’s
a pretty big jump from the kind of skin Riot usually makes, plus it would probably take
a ton of modelling and animating work to give the dress the flowy feeling that it would
require—otherwise it would just seem weirdly stiff and rigid.
That being said, it’s still a really cool concept and we hope that ideas like this will
help Riot become even more adventurous with their skins.
Maja Deke is an illustrator and the mastermind behind both of our next skins, starting with
Project Diana.
Like Star Guardian Ahri, the Diana concept is designed to be an addition to an existing
and highly popular skin line.
Like the other Project skins, Diana is fitted with cybernetic armor and a really futuristic
looking blade, and it actually suits her insanely well.
It bares a few similarities to Project Fiora in particular, although thanks to Diana’s
long hair and curved weapon, you would never confuse the two.
That’s pretty important for Riot since skins can really change quite a lot about a champion,
but those two features in particular are very recognisable.
Project skins are typically well known for their amazing VFX and sound effects, so it’s
a shame we don’t get to see Diana in action—but who knows, maybe Riot will draw some inspiration
from this design when they consider adding new champions to the Project lineup.
Academy Taric is the second Maja Deke skin for today, and it’s
actually just as fabulous as you might have hoped.
Instead of playing the role of a school student, Academy Taric is instead modelled after a
teacher, so he’s dressed pretty sharply with the exception of the open shirt revealing
his bare chest.
You have to keep skins kinda true to character after all, so it would make sense that Taric
would never want to button that shirt up.
My favorite part of this skin has gotta be his hammer though—smacking people with a
hammer made out of two massive books is a pretty novel idea, and it helps tie the skin
together as being part of the Academy line rather than being a standalone skin.
The biggest issue with this skin is probably the name—as Taric isn’t a student, the
skin would probably be sold under a different label, kinda like Headmistress Fiora.
It’s not really an official addition to the skin line, which justifies it looking
considerably different from the other Academy skins.
Headmaster Taric might be a good way to sell it!
Ninth on a list today is something straight out of World of Warcraft; it’s Gatekeeper
Karma by concept artist and illustrator Vlad Bacescu.
Most people were really happy with the changes made to the Gatekeeper Galio skin after his
VGU, and Vlad has used that updated skin as inspiration for his take on Karma.
Visually they are extremely similar—they appear to be very demonic, with red skin and
the jade green horns and trim.
Vlad also included examples of Karma’s VFX, and even a side by side with the official
Gatekeeper Galio skin, and they just look absolutely amazing next to each other.
One of Karma’s defining features, her ‘wings’ have been well adapted to suit the Gatekeeper
theme, becoming more demonic in nature with a creepy looking set of jaws following closely
behind.
It’s not known currently whether Riot want to keep the Gatekeeper theme to be Galio-exclusive,
but honestly this has very quickly become one of the best skins I’ve ever seen—both
inside and outside of the game.
Our final skin for today is
Pulsefire Jhin, another design by Vlad Bacescu.
Like Gatekeeper, Pulsefire was originally exclusive to Ezreal, although Riot later expanded
the line to include another marksman, Caitlyn.
As with Gatekeeper Karma, Vlad goes into incredible detail on his iterations of Jhin’s helmet,
clothing and weaponry, and he even spent the time to create his own versions of Jhin’s
VFX to match the Pulsefire lineup.
Something we’ve never really seen before is that Vlad also attempted a few different
recolors, basically doing Riot’s job for them by creating his own chroma pack with
a few different styles.
All five chromas do justice to the Pulsefire skin line, although the base skin is definitely
the best match overall.
We are incredibly impressed with the work of all the artists we featured today, it just
goes to show that the League of Legends community is full of extremely talented people, and
Riot has no shortage of awesome concept artists and
skin developers!