Blizzard artist turns kid’s Overwatch drawing into polished concept art

A young fan who tweeted her Overwatch fan drawing to Blizzard was rewarded when one of the developer’s artists produced his own take on the character.

The daughter of StarCraft 2 and Overwatch fan Shane Hickey came up with the look and traits of ‘Birst’, a flying character armed with a “Boomer rang”, “lasers on her suit” and “a bag on her dress” and “[medical] Box in her Bag”.

Hickey tweeted the drawing at the Overwatch Twitter account, asking for the team’s thoughts. Blizzard responded that the concept was “absolutely amazing and adorable”, before sending Hickey a proper mock-up of Birst created by in-house artist Roman Kenney the next day.

Hickey’s tweet has since gathered more than 1,000 retweets and close to 2,000 likes, while the Overwatch sub-Reddit has begun a campaign to convince Blizzard to include Birst in the final game, which is due for release this week.

Our artists were so inspired by this that they created their own fan art! Hope your daughter loves it! pic.twitter.com/c1ToeH1MJF

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) May 21, 2016