2 will be available in Australia from August 1. Sometimes we want to make you cry, Sometimes we want to make you be like, “Oh, snap, that’s just crazy!” At the end of the day, we just want to move people.’ Visually, we pursue that with the art, from the lighting to the animation to the voice direction, to the music… in every aspect. Even in our darkest pieces, the idea is that the world can always use more heroes. ‘ a first-person shooter, but I think we always strive to have hope front and centre. ‘I think it’s this constant thread of hope,’ Johnson said. I asked the directors about any overarching creative decisions that might point to what makes the shorts so consistently celebrated. If you peruse the comments on many of these videos, it’s clear that the characters and storylines as depicted in these films have resonated with the audience on a much deeper level, a level that warrants plenty of repeat viewings and has fostered an immense affection, in the same way that Toy Story audiences can’t get enough of Woody and Buzz. 2, an art book that showcases the development of the game and its cinematics, I learnt that neither of them really expected to find themselves directing animation for a video game studio.īut that discounts the enduring, wide-reaching appeal of the Overwatch universe. Speaking to them ahead of the release of The Cinematic Art of Overwatch Vol. They’re responsible for, among other things, leading the creation of the Overwatch Animated shorts. Both entered as college graduates when the company had less than 30 employees, and both now serve as Cinematic Directors who have led teams in a company of over 200. THE ACCIDENTAL CREATIVESīen Dai and Jeremiah Johnson are both 20-year veterans of Blizzard. But those cinematics never went away, In fact, many of the people who worked on those animations in the late 1990s and early 2000s are still at Blizzard today, and continue to use their skills to produce animated shorts that are no longer just a technological feat and worldbuilding tool, but are impressive, self-contained pieces of storytelling in their own right – like the Overwatch Animated Shorts. And in the Western industry, no studio was pushing the boundaries more than Blizzard.Īs technology rapidly accelerated, Blizzard, as well as other game studios, would create games that matched and exceeded the once lofty ambitions of their cinematics Blizzard is of course known for the seminal multiplayer role-playing game World of Warcraft. But beyond the cinema, the best place to witness the then-unreal spectacle of top-end CG was in videogames, where short, pre-rendered animations stuffed into CD-ROMs became impactful narrative tools that visually realised characters and worlds in a way that consumer-grade computers and game console hardware just weren’t able to yet. In cinema, Pixar led the charge with two Toy Story films and A Bug’s Life, with Dreamworks Animation forming and following suit soon after. The late 1990s was an exciting time for CG animation. But it’s hardly the first time its developer, Blizzard Entertainment, has used CG animation and linear storytelling to expand its worlds far beyond the bounds of their games. With an accumulated viewcount that sits well past the 200 million mark at the time of writing, Overwatch undoubtedly has countless fans who have never actually touched the game. Instead, what’s helped flesh the Overwatch cast out as fully realised characters – complete with backgrounds, flaws, motivations, and morality – is a long series of exceptional animated short films released outside the game on YouTube, over the course of 6 years.
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