[jwplayer p9g5um21]One of the artists on the Overwatch team has gone into more detail about the inspiration for this year’s awesome All-Stars skins for Reinhardt and D.Va – and they actually continue a theme started all the way back in 2018.
Every year the Overwatch League All-Stars skins are some of the most anticipated by fans, since Blizzard tends to absolutely knock the designs out of the park.
That’s no different this year, with the amazing new Celestial D.Va and Gaia Reinhardt skins blowing us away. D.Va’s is the first new skin for the hero in more than a year, but it definitely seems to have been worth the wait.
Besides looking amazing though, the pair of exclusive tank cosmetics actually continues a theme for the All-Stars Weekend skins started back in 2018 with Genji and Tracer, as explained by Qiu Fang, a senior concept artist for Overwatch.
“The first year we started with sort of a tropical, tribal theme, and for Genji, the fantasy was kind of like he was this Volcanic god,” Fang explained. “For Tracer, she was like an Atlantean diety. I thought it was really cool because it was these ancient, mythical cultures from either side of the world.”
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In 2019, the trend continued with Lucio and Mercy’s skins representing the Sun and Moon, respectively. This year, D.Va represents the all-encompassing, endless cosmos, contrasted with Reinhardt representing Gaia, also known as good old Mother Earth.
“D.Va, we wanted her to represent the Pacific, or Eastern Hemisphere, drawing influence from more Asian themes of mythology and the heavens,” he continued. “Very different from the European inspiration I drew for Reinhardt, which I thought was perfect because he’s German, so I was looking for something Celtic or something Norse. You can see that in the tree inscribed on his chest, kind of like the tree of life.”
Fang also revealed that the most interesting ideas for hero skins in general “usually come from something drastically different from what the character started off as.”
If you want to grab these skins (and why wouldn’t you?) they’ll only be available from Sept. 29 to Oct. 12, after which Uncle Jeff will be locking them away for good. Like other All-Stars skins, they will cost 200 OWL Tokens to unlock, but if you don’t have enough there’s still time to earn some for free by watching the 2020 Grand Finals and All-Star Weekend events.
