WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN OVERWATCH CONCEPT ARTIST

 At first, when asked to talk about his work, concept artist Daryl Tan doesn't even mention art. “I'm a salesperson of ideas,” he says.

The same can be said for Daryl's other colleagues on the Overwatch development team. Their job is to get a lot of people (at Blizzard and beyond) to believe in their ideas.

When players are faced with the work of artists, she must convince them to close their eyes to the impossible. To take you into a fictional world, the artist must come up with believable details and elements for him, and also make sure that they remain so after they are embodied in the game. Today we'll show you how the Overwatch development team, armed with PhotoShop and 2D illustration skills, achieves this.

Characters and weapons

Senior Concept Artist Qiu Fang joined Blizzard in 2016 and was soon tasked with developing the Talon agents who were sent to stop Blackwatch agents during the Retribution mission featured in the Overwatch Archives. Such combat units never become the highlight of the program - this honor always falls to the playable characters. However, they should pair well with Overwatch's vibrant and memorable team of heroes. Despite the fact that players had to deal with these opponents easily and quickly, Qiu wanted to make their design special.

Concept Art - Early Talon Enemy Lineup - Toughs

“My decision to become a character designer was greatly influenced by my childhood experience as a child. Then I often played games tied around one memorable character. So I dreamed of working on the concept of a hero from the beginning, ”said Qiu, who was to design the 31st Overwatch hero, Sigma. He managed to realize his aspirations, creating the first concepts of enemies from "Claw", and he treated them like "mini-heroes".

Concept Art - Early Talon Enemy Lineup - Long Range

During the Idea Phase (a period during which artists experiment and tweak game content in development), Qiu Fang collaborated with the Overwatch devs and writers to learn more about the gameplay and storyline associated with the Talon ". As soon as he learned that some of the Talon agents would have special weapons and abilities, such as knocking opponents down, climbing walls, or grabbing onto ledges with a grappling hook, his imagination was set in motion.

Qiu describes his task at this stage as "finding visual solutions to gameplay problems." He had to make it so that players could distinguish each of the different Talon agents at a glance, while maintaining their overall visual style. One of the agents, nicknamed "the guy with the shield" because of his role in the game, had all the necessary qualities: he had strong armor, a reliable shield, and a beam weapon. He really was a mini-hero.

Early Concept for "Shield Guy"

Although everyone liked the concept very much, the developers could not turn it into a holistic hero - it turned out to be too abstract compared to characters who had a specific role - for example, "sniper" or "fighter". Despite the effectiveness and versatility of this character, his abilities often overlapped with those of other agents from the Claw Squad. The gameplay developers noticed during testing that it was inconvenient to play against a hero with a ray weapon, and his silhouette was difficult to distinguish from other characters. Qiu sketched out several new concepts, trying to stay within the existing gameplay environment.

Concept Art - Variations on Shield GuyHe and his colleagues also looked at other options. In the mission "Retribution", the organization "Claw" sent a rapid response squad against the main characters: won't a huge shield only interfere with them, especially since they already easily take cover? As a result, it was decided to remove the shield, and a more tactical Claw squad was created for the Rialto battlefield.

Concept artists can't just go and come up with a whole new unit: they have to work out every detail. For example, in order to come up with new types of futuristic weapons that are used by both the Null Sector omniks and Overwatch heroes, Daryl has to study many images of real modern weapons, tracing the development of technology. "When small arms designers want to show that they are reliable and easy to use, they redesign the weapon to make it look more aesthetically pleasing." Therefore, it is logical to assume that with the development of new technologies, weapons in the world of the future Overwatch will follow the same principles as in real life: for example, more automated, 

Concept Art - Sniper Ana's Rifle

Transformation of familiar heroes

The sense of realism and naturalness should also be maintained when changing the appearance of the heroes already familiar to the players.

With new looks, the artists try to emphasize easily recognizable ideas - Qiu starts with simple and familiar objects, and then adds elements of the futuristic Overwatch style, such as hinges and LED lighting. "As a result, larger and more recognizable shapes are closer to the ch