Hey, everyone! We’re the Overwatch 2 animation team, reporting in for our first Weekly Recall. Many of you wanted to learn more about the processes that bring your favorite Heroes to life and we’re more than happy to show you a peek into the animation pipeline.
From idle poses to big, bold Ultimate abilities, our team is responsible for creating the movements that make every Hero fantasy feel satisfyingly real. Today, we’re going to walk you through our overall process for animating Heroes and then dive deeper into how our team helped Wuyang find his fierce, flowing groove.
Getting Things Moving
The process of animating a new Hero kicks off with exploratory meetings with their strike team—a small group of folks on Team 4 collaborating on a specific goal—to learn more about their origins, inspirations, and general vibe. We work closely with that team, especially our narrative designers, to figure out what kind of movements would fit that Hero’s history and personality. Think about it: if we put Soldier: 76’s well-trained, stiff gestures on a Hero like Mercy, it wouldn’t make sense, right? That’s why we develop a solid foundation of information about that Hero before opening any animation programs.
Next, we work up a “rough draft” of the Hero, often by borrowing existing animations from other characters. For example, Moira’s orbs served as the first iteration of Wuyang’s primary weapon! This lets us get a Hero into playtesting so we can see if we're headed in the right direction. If the strike team isn’t feeling it, we go back to the drawing board.
Once we’re all on the same page, the actual animation work begins. You might think that we go straight for the splashy ability animations, but we actually start with more common movements first. You're much more likely to spend time standing in the lobby, using your Hero’s primary fire, or running around the map. We get the basics perfected—and ensure they align with the Hero’s personality—before getting to complex animations like Ultimates.
Playtesting is a massive part of our process and we send Heroes to the rest of Team 4 as often as we can to make sure everything aligns. New perspectives or Hero assets, like interesting sounds from the audio team or impressive VFX renders, can also inspire us to go back in and refine an animation. The entire animation lifecycle, from initial meetings to the final product, can take up to a full year!
Discovering Wuyang
Overwatch’s newest Hero, Wuyang, is a cheerful, agile guy with years of training under his belt—even if his grades might not reflect it. When first plotting out his animations, we dove headfirst into martial arts references to identify moves that would reflect his personality. Many of them would’ve worked well enough, but we found that most styles were too harsh or aggressive; at the end of the day, Wuyang is a support Hero who embodies the mutable strength of water.
Tai Chi proved to be the perfect practice to draw from. The moves are well-practiced, defined, and continually flow into one another with a satisfying cadence. By combining Tai Chi with other martial arts movements, we set up a balanced and graceful baseline for Wuyang.
We tried to work this mixed martial arts vision into all of his animations, even the simplest ones. Every Hero in Overwatch has a quick melee ability that has a set timing and range and for Wuyang, we drew additional inspiration from martial arts legend Bruce Lee. His “one inch punch,” a swift yet intensely powerful move that packs a hit with minimal movement, fit Wuyang’s character and history of training. When the animation is slowed down, you can spot specific poses we used for reference—we put that care into every frame we can!
Rolling with the Tide
At Water College, Wuyang had to think outside of the box to set himself apart from the crowd. Our team really resonated with that story during his animation process! Wuyang creatively challenged us to dream up new ways to express his personality while remaining grounded.
Most of our Heroes are poised to attack in their idle pose: think about Cassidy with Peacekeeper at the ready or Reaper waving around his Hellfire Shotguns. Early on, we tried the standard battle-ready pose with Wuyang where his staff was visible, but it felt out of place. He was essentially running around with a stick aimed at other Heroes. His overall silhouette also didn’t read well when he was viewed head on since his staff was facing the same direction as his body.
If you pay close attention, you can see how we solved this issue (after a lot of iteration) when Wuyang first throws out his primary fire. The transition between his new idle pose—holding the staff to the side—to his attack pose is embedded within that animation. Since the focus is the flowing movement of his hands, it’s easier to shift that staff from an idle position to a more offensive one.
One of Wuyang’s most impressive abilities is Guardian Wave, in which he slams his staff on the ground and casts a massive knockback wave. We used Reinhardt’s Earthshatter animation as a placeholder during playtests since it accomplishes essentially the same movement loop: pulling a weapon up and slamming it back into the ground. It felt okay in playtests but still didn’t seem quite right for Wuyang.
A solution hit us once we took a renewed look at his Xuanwu Staff. It’s a thin and light weapon that wouldn’t linger on the ground like Reinhardt’s bulky hammer: it would bounce against the ground due to its weight. Changing the slam to a light ricochet made the animation feel more realistic, but the dramatic over-the-head pose Reinhardt takes also didn’t fit Wuyang’s agile style.
Looking into staff-based martial arts moves, we noticed it was more appropriate for the swinging motion to arc over the shoulder to maximize velocity while maintaining speed. We also added a spin into the third-person animation to reflect Wuyang’s swift battle style and his support Hero mindset. Reinhardt wouldn’t care about quickly repositioning to avoid another hit after an Earthshatter, but Wuyang would likely focus on casting an ability quickly and dodging a retaliatory attack.
Next time you’re playing Overwatch, maybe you’ll take a second look at your favorite Hero’s animations and see some of this thought process in motion! Thanks for reading and let us know if there are more Heroes you’d love to learn more about.