Trevor Jacobs, Heroes of the Storm Assistant Art Director, and Andrew Kinabrew, the game’s Senior Artist, have participated in an interview to let players know what kind of stuff is happening in the kitchen to bring hundreds of accessories for in-game murder to digital life.
“Heroes gets to do so much fun stuff,” Jacobs says. “It’s like being a kid with this huge toy box. You get to play with everything. Selfishly, I feel like any dreams we have, we get to do.”
First, the artists spoke about the process of bringing skins to the game. They come from a variety of places – artists’ own life experiences, their memories of Blizzard IPs and pop culture during their childhood, inspiration from the community, jammed out during the annual team-wide Hackathon, and probably more. The team’s backlog has a variety of skins safely nestled in it, and it is no easy task to make it out: it means the skin probably combines several of the influences listed above, and it’s garnered enough admiration from the rest of the team to have accomplices to allow for its escape into the Nexus.
Later in the interview, the two slyly brought up the upcoming Greek God event that has been in works for quite some time. The Myth skin pack, a subevent coming later in the year, also came together thanks to a diverse set of influences and several years on the backlog. Once the team has appeared on the concept of Cassia using lightning as a weapon Zeus-style, the event was born.
“We were thinking, wouldn’t it be cool to see Cassia with a Zeus skin? Because her kit is all lightning. And then it started hitting like ‘what if we added this character? Or that character?’” Jacobs says, punctuating each sentence with a snap of his fingers, reminiscent of a lightning bolt striking earth.
The bolt of inspiration started from Thunder Goddess Cassia electrified the team to create a Hermes-inspired Tracer skin, a Cerberus mount, and a Pegasus mount—all of which the team can’t wait to unleash onto the live server.
(click on the image to see it in higher resolution)
Additionally, the team has taken to Twitter to announce that all Heroes will be free to play through April 2nd:
All Heroes will be free to play from now until April 2nd! pic.twitter.com/gUnp4114sX
— Heroes of the Storm (@BlizzHeroes) March 20, 2020
