Legendary Skin – 1820 RP

Released 11/9/2018

(Photo from leagueoflegends.com)

Does the champion fit the theme?

The Odyssey skin line is a world/environment similar to that of Guardians of the Galaxy, think junkship crews and gigantic alien monsters. Kayn is the resident bad guy. Kayn as a character is Noxian which means he fits in with the whole bad guy status and his augmented body (mechanical arm for example) lends itself to the whole “weapons are mere tools, I am the weapon”. Yes, I’d definitely say Kayn fits the theme for this skin.

Does the skin resemble the theme?

This skin line appears to favour blue and orange combinations with greens and golds also subbed in. I think this complementary colour scheme effectively gives off the whole space vibe where brighter colours are used to give a futuristic feel but also to make characters and spaceships stand out from the dark endless void. While Kayn’s scythe gives off a hint of PROJECT with the purple/blue tinged blade I think the rest of it feels very uniquely Odyssey. I will say my only issue with this is that I think Rhaast should be gold and purple/blue to reflect the scythe and the corrupted arm and eye patch of pre-evolution Kayn. That being said I suppose that would be too close to shadow assassin Kayn but perhaps if just a darker shade of purple and blue were used then they’d still be different enough, or orange could be used instead of so much gold in shadow assassin.

Is the skin unique/original?

Yes, no other skin comes to mind when I see Odyssey Kayn. It is also very different to Kayn’s one other skin, Soulhunter, both thematically and visually.

Is the art of the current expected level of quality?

There’s not a lot I can say here because it definitely is. The level of skill of the artist or I suppose the art style is definitely on point. But everything else is perfect too, the balancing of the focus is so good they flipped shadow assassin so his hair is on the wrong side of his head. But it’s also not too perfect. Yes, Kayn is connected to both the humans in the foreground of the image, the one on the right by his scythe and the one on the left by the golden wisps running into his hand, but the person on the right is much closer to the viewer than the left. It’s not too symmetrical that it feels forced but it is enough to balance the focus point on Kayn in the centre. Whoops, I guess there was a bit I could say.

Other notes

I touched on this earlier, I find a large positive but then also a negative to be the mechanical arm and eye patch. Both are golden and they are this skins version of the corruption caused by the Darkin scythe Rhaast. While I think this is a really cool way of translating that into this theme I also think they handle it poorly when it comes to the transformations. Before he transforms Kayn has some orange details; the inner of the collar, one of his belts and also a fabric layer in his clothing but this doesn’t really show up in either shadow assassin or Rhaast. Shadow assassin is mostly blue, purple and gold which is strange because before he transforms the colour gold is mostly used to signify the corruption of the scythe. Therefore, it would make more sense for the shadow assassin version to use orange instead of gold and then Rhaast could be made to resemble the scythe more by being gold and a darker blue (instead of gold and red). It’s small but the red just feels like it comes out of nowhere. After all, it’s a skin it’s ok to move away from the classic’s colour combinations.

Final Thoughts

Overall I think this is a really nice skin, it passes all my tests and gets 5 out of 5.