Tracer.
Arguably the most iconic character in Overwatch.
She is on the box art after all.
She's cool, she's funny, she's spunky, she's unique, and you can get all this
just by looking at her at a glance.
But, how does one go about making a character with this much personality SO recognizable?
Well I'm going to tell you how because this is...
First of all, a little bit of character design 101.
Now, who is this character?
It's MARI-OH GOD.
What happened?
Well anyway, if a character is designed well you should be able to tell who they are JUST
by looking at their silhouette, or the basic shapes that make up that silhouette.
And this isn’t even one of his iconic poses he's just kinda standing there at an angle
and you STILL knew it was Mario.
And if you DIDNT... stop this video right now and go play a Mario game.
Then work aaaall the way up the timeline till Overwatch.
Ok?
Ok.
Let's take these beautiful concept illustrations by Arnold Tsang and silhouette them out.
You can still totally tell who every character is, even when they're not next to each other.
This is really important in character design because you want every character to be recognizable
at a quick glance.
In fact, every characters in game assets were created completely from scratched.
That means all the character models and animations were made from the ground up to fit each character's
unique style and personality.
Normally, base assets for game characters are copy and pasted.
That's how you end up with weird quirks like ALL the men AND women characters being the
exact same height.
Hey, remember when Ubisoft said animating women was hard?
LOL!
Now lets take just the tank characters.
You'll notice right off the bat, they're huge.
But not only are they tall, they're also much wider than the other characters.
They're intimidating.
You don't want to fuck with these guys.
You'll find most of their weight in the middle, in their core, and it'll need to be distributed
downward to the legs in order to hold all that weight, with the exception of DVA because
she's pretty light on her feet.
Now lets look at the offensive characters.
Offense is a pretty broad roll, but more or less these characters are looking a lot more...
human shaped.
Now of all of these, you can probably tell right away which one is the fastest.
It's the small size and the long skinny legs that give it away.
She's like, what 70% leg?
Tracer's pose here is also one of energy and friendliness.
She's completely open.
She's waving.
She doesn't even have a weapon in her hand.
Then you have the polar opposite here with McCree.
Hand in front of his face, he's peaking out from under his hat.
He's closed off.
McCree is strictly business.
Another major factor in character design is head shape.
Think about it, a person's HEAD is the first thing you look at...
most of the time.
Comeonnow. Eyes up. What are you doing?
Across the entire roster of Overwatch characters we have many head shapes.
But let's take a look at JUST the head shapes of all of the offensive characters.
Some much more anthropomorphic than others.
Here we've outlined the basic head shape, and what features DEFINE them.
Genji is defined by his angular armor and V shaped eye slits.
McCree is defined by his giant hat that cuts right across his face.
Pharrah is perhaps the most basic with her helmet off.
Her helmet adds a lot more angles, but leaves her jaw exposed.
More on that in a minute.
Reaper's head shape is probably the most obscure.
He has a normal shaped head under all that stuff there, but I'd say the triangular hood is what defines
the basic shape. You can see it especially well after you silhouette him out.
Soldier 76 is defined by his visor.
Men tend to have harder, more angular jaws while women tend to have more rounded jaws.
That's why Pharah having her jaw exposed makes sense.
If we left it up to the basic head shapes, then thats it, all the men would look more
or less the same, and all the women would look more or less the same.
Now with all that said, we're left with Tracer.
Tracer is defined by her goggles and more prominently her spiky hair.
It's what helps you notice her at a glance.
It helps you pick her out of a lineup super easily.
Hell you can even pick her out of a lineup of other spiky haired characters because of
the unique shape of her spikes.
THATS how effective this design is.
Her physical appearance isn't the only thing that gives her personality.
They had to take all this personality and apply it to her animation.
She's ready to go, knees bent down low, she's itching to get started.
She's FAST, but LIGHT and floaty.
Her jump gives her a lot of hang time and slams her down, but she catches it with her
legs cause they're STRONG as FUCK.
One unique thing about the animation of Overwatch is that every character model rig has what
they call "noodle bones," or simply adjustable bones so you can do stuff like THIS!
This allows the type of smear frames you'd see in 2D animation like anime.
It allows animators to give their work some extra life, some more bounce and character.
Being able to squash and stretch objects and characters at will is part of what make's
Overwatch's in game animation look so cinematic.
It's all about those little details.
And you can see those details in her jump animation.
Look at that...
HORRIFIC looking torso.
Tracers run cycle show's her floatiness.
She almost looks like she's gliding along.
Her legs are coming up high and she has a slight bounce so she's definitely pushing
herself, but her feet look like they're just skimming the ground.
Very very graceful.
We can compare this to the polar opposite, Reinhardt.
You can totally FEEL the weight here as he SLAMS down, almost like the animation speeds
up at the end of each step.
It's ALMOST as if, you can tell a little bit about the characters just from their RUN cycle.
HEH!?
HEH!? (yaknowwhatimean?)
If you think about it, this game is really all about the characters.
It's a team based shooter with like, 2 game modes.
The variety comes from switching between all these unique characters.
We feel like we know them, even though there's so little information about any of them.
All we have to go on are their voice lines, and of course, their design and animation.
Ok some of them have these animated shorts that are like REALLY cool and emotional and
breathtaking but even THOSE don't give that much away.
If anything they're more of a celebration of these character's design and animation!
And all of these traits being applied to Tracer's design and animation are what make her so
easily recognizable, so easily readable at first glance.
It's what makes us fall in love with some of these characters even though we have very
little to go on.
And this type of emotional connection is what sets Overwatch apart from all of the other
hero based shooters.
That and the perfect balance between game types.
And you know, that it's a GOOD GAME.
I'm sorry.
ANYWAY WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK about Tracer's design and animation?
If you liked this video and want to see more like it please give it a like and write in
the comments GUYS I LIKED THIS AND I WANT TO SEE MORE LIKE IT PLEASE, THANKS SO MUCH,
HUGS AND KISSES, BOB.
Oh yeah by the way HI, I'm Bob Wulff from a little itty bitty YouTube channel called
the Wulff Den.
If you like hearing my sweet, beautiful, innocent (FUCK) voice be sure to check out some of
our videos where I just talk about games and stuff.
I also do creative streams 3 ish times a week over at twitch.tv/bobwulff.
Come hang out over there and talk art stuffs.
Aaaand of course you can follow me on twitter @bobwulff if you wanna see updates on all
that.
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Thanks for watching GUYS, and hopefully I'll see you in another video, yeah?