In one of the classier moves in recent gaming history, Blizzard artist Roman Kenney has taken a young Overwatch fan's character drawing and given it the full concept art treatment. As spotted by Kotaku, Shane Hickey wrote to the Overwatch Twitter account about his daughter's home-made character, Birst, asking for the Blizzard team's thoughts.
@PlayOverwatch hi team! my daughter created a new character.Her name is birst. She'd love to know your thoughts pic.twitter.com/b31YWUPqSs
— Shane Hickey (@shanehickey) May 20, 2016
Clearly their thoughts were "this is cool", because a day later Kenney had taken her drawing and description (key specifications: offensive boomerang, healing powers, wings, lasers on suit), and created a very Overwatch-y new character:
Blizzard's take on Birst.
The move has gone down very well, as you can see in the video Hickey made of her first reaction to the news:
@PlayOverwatch hey again team, Here's Ava finding out about the character you did for her #Birst Thanks again! pic.twitter.com/nqRFLykRPs
— Shane Hickey (@shanehickey) May 23, 2016
And, of course, because the internet can sometimes be an exceedingly cool and confusing place, people have now started creating fan art of the concept art of the fan art:
@PlayOverwatch @shanehickey birst is such a cool character! i hope we can all play overwatch together soon :) pic.twitter.com/9J5JxVu1P2
— iguana jones (@gransmells) May 22, 2016
Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK News Editor, and as child he designed his own Magic: The Gathering card. He still keeps it around as a reminder of what never to do with his free time. Follow him on Twitter.
