Hello Hunters!
A huge “thank you” to everyone who submitted questions in the Art Q&A! Most of the questions could be answered also from a general design perspective, so the whole team jumped on them too and they had a lot of fun answering them!
Q: I would like to know more about the creation of Stygia’s Mythic skin “Clockwork” - why this specific theme was selected, and what was the thought process behind it?
If possible please also show us some “behind-the-scenes” footage of the 3D model of this skin or concepts of it that didn’t make it into the game.
A: Usually the process of the decision for a skin theme starts with some brainstorming of ideas within the team, after which the most liked idea is selected. For Stygia’s mythic skin, the concept of a marionette was the most liked one. This is followed by gathering and providing references to the art team that they can use for inspiration and can add their creative energy and ideas to. A couple of inspirations for this one were Orianna from League of Legends and Alita: Battle Angel.
Q: SOMA has three legs. What was the inspiration and research to discover how three-legged things walk? There are not too many examples of such in nature.
A:
Team: Indeed, a 3-legged Hero hasn’t existed in the game before, so it was quite a challenge to create a new 3D model and animations for it from scratch. Required a lot of research. However, 3-legged creatures already exist in the media, right? Take the tripod hoppers and striders from the Half-Life universe as an example, they were part of the research for S.O.M.A.
3D Artist: Although it may seem funny to some of you, a picture of a tripod camera stand was where the initial thought came from. And tri-point structures are usually the sturdiest ones. While watching “War of the Worlds” I also got reminded that 3-legged robots are a thing so I thought that designing one for the game would be an interesting idea.
Q: How do you guys determine the height of the characters and how big they are compared to other characters?
A: This is very dependable on multiple factors. Details like the character’s story, position on the battlefield, or element can be taken into consideration. However, to keep things interesting sometimes we can switch things up a little and have a big hero as a midline, for example.
Q: What was your favorite hero to design so far?
A: It has to be S.O.M.A. Since she was a completely new design for us, at the same time very challenging as well, which also made her all the more interesting to create!
Q: What happened to the Voltage skin and what did it look like in the design process?
A: Voltage and especially her weapon have a unique look. The weapon specifically has caused some problems on the technical side. We’re still looking into resolving these issues eventually and once we do, we’d be happy to release a skin for her!
Q: How do you decide the themes for the mythic skins? For instance, how did the western theme with the Bandit skin for Duran get picked?
A: As mentioned a bit earlier, it all starts with brainstorming ideas from the different team members. For Duran’s “Bandit” mythic skin in particular - we already liked the theme of his Rare “Wasteland” skin, so it was part of the inspiration. We were imagining a lonely scavenger in the wastes of a post-apocalyptic world as a base concept.
Q: Would there be a possibility to create some idle animations for the other heroes? Same as Fortress? Or perhaps a button where they change their stand action?
A: All heroes have an idle animation when they are behind cover, Fortress is a bit more expressive of it, we’d say. While in the Hero Screen menu, they each have a unique custom animation. We find the latter a very interesting suggestion, though it’s not currently in our scope of ideas.
Q: Shouldn’t mythic skins also come with a change in animation for the skills to add more awesomeness to the skin?
A: This is something complicated to do and implement. This doesn’t make it excluded as a possibility for the future, good suggestion!
Q: Will we see other concept art in the future?
A: Yes, we would love to show some more concept art in the future!
Q: Is it possible in the future to find a way to unequip only the look of skins? Say it shows the grade of the skin equipped but any physical skin you want?
A: We would prefer to put more effort into improving how Heroes and skins look going forward rather than implementing an option to remove their visuals. That being said, we can understand the suggestion.