Overwatch 2 x Street Fighter 6 Collaboration Interview

Blizzard Entertainment recently stunned everyone by announcing a highly unusual collaboration - Overwatch 2, a world-renowned hero shooter was getting partnered with Street Fighter 6. And the characters from OW fit the SF personas shockingly well. We were obviously curious to learn just how this entertaining and curious collab came to be, so we spoke with the people directly responsible for bringing these fighters alive in OW2 - Overwatch Art Director Dion Rogers; and Azuki Art Director and Former Character Art Director Arnold Tsang. Enjoy the interview!

Overwatch 2 has massively increased the amount of collaborations lately. When picking out such an opportunity, does art design play a role in picking the source, or do you fit whatever you got post-factum?

Dion: Art absolutely plays a role in the selection process. Sometimes we approach an IP holder, or sometimes they approach us. How the characters fit together visually is critical to our team—not only to faithfully represent IPs we’ve been entrusted with, but to ensure they are true to the Heroes in our own game.

That said, the entire Overwatch team has a say when it comes to collaborations and the Heroes we choose to represent. Art, systems, hero design, you name it. We are all a bunch of nerds who love our game and the franchises we get to work with.

How did the collaboration with Street Fighter 6 come to be? Did you approach Capcom, did they reach out to you, or how did it happen?

Dion: I actually forget who reached out initially, but we started the planning and production for the collab about a year ago. That was when I reached out to Arnold to get him involved.

Arnold: Street Fighter has always played a part in the DNA of Overwatch, so when the opportunity came up, we couldn’t say ‘no.’ Back in the day, when I was first designing some of Overwatch’s original heroes, I was inspired by Capcom’s artists and the global approach to Street Fighter’s rosters. Much like Street Fighter, Overwatch has characters that represent different countries and backgrounds, and those play a role in their designs and lore.

You guys made a very interesting anime-style video for Le Sserafim collab, and now you outdid yourselves with the SF6 crossover. Were these made in-house at Blizzard, or did someone else help you with them?

Dion: The SF6 animation was made by our friends over at Titmouse. We worked in close collaboration to ensure all of our Heroes and the characters from Street Fighter are represented properly.

Outside of the animated video, we brought Arnold back in to help us create special key art for the collab, which will show up on the home screen in the game.

Arnold: I was super honored that Dion and the team asked me to come back and help with this. Before I joined the Blizzard team to first create Overwatch, I actually worked in the comics space, as one of the founders of Udon, and we were excited to get the Street Fighter licensing rights. I helped illustrate Street Fighter Issue #0, #1, and #2, before I left to enter the video game side of the art industry.

When I was working on this key art, Dion encouraged me to use poses and imagery that felt true to Street Fighter. That’s why you see moves like Sonic Boom and Shoryuken in the artwork. Even if they didn’t all actually make it into Overwatch for various reasons, we wanted it to evoke that Street Fighter brand of power and personality. As I was drawing, I sometimes forgot who I was drawing; a Street Fighter character or an Overwatch character. That’s how well these two franchises fit together.

Should we expect any more collaborations from Overwatch 2 in the near future? Maybe some other fighting game?

Dion: Since we’ve been discussing and planning Street Fighter since last year, I think you can guess that more is on the way ;)

But truth be told, we are always looking for opportunities to bring Overwatch to new audiences. Whether those are fans of other fighting games, anime, KPOP, or iconic brands like Porsche and Transformers, only time will tell. Stay tuned!

What was the driving force behind picking the characters you ended up picking from SF’s roster? And how did you choose the characters from Overwatch 2 to represent these SF heroes? Or maybe it was the other way around and you picked your own characters first?

Dion: The characters we picked for this collab were actually the eight ones we all agreed upon from the very start. This is significant because eight is the MOST Hero skins we’ve done for a collaboration ever.

We initially started with five, but the team kept wanting to push it further, to do more.

We actually had full control over which SF characters to choose; Capcom gave us their suggestions and advice on how to adapt them, but it was really up to our team to pick them and make them feel authentic.

Personally, I am a Chun-Li main in Street Fighter 6, and I have been more of a Juno main lately in Overwatch 2. So when it came to deciding that pairing, I wanted to make it happen.

Otherwise, we really look at which characters fit closest with our Heroes abilities and archetypes. Widowmaker and Cammy both fit that femme fatale role. Sigma and M. Bison shared their use of purple energy, through Sigma’s gravity and M. Bison’s Psycho Powers. And other pairings like Winston and Blanka, or Zenyatta and Dhalsim, were no-brainers.

What are the main criteria when adapting a crossover character into a skin? Clarity and silhouette readability are probably the main considerations?

Dion: Clarity and silhouette are definitely important to the selection process. However, we did play around with silhouettes a bit more this time. For example, Sigma doesn’t normally wear a cape, but we gave him one to fit Bison’s appearance. While it gives him a slightly different silhouette, we don’t think this should disrupt gameplay, as Sigma’s posture, effects, and abilities are still very readable.

Juno also normally wears a space helmet and headphones, but we pushed it further by giving her the space buns like Chun-Li has. While maintaining clarity is super important, we want to have fun stretching the boundaries a little bit.

When we do collaborations, we like to think that our Heroes are cosplaying as characters from other franchises. So the goal of these skins is to be transformative, the same way our Heroes would look different than normal if they were actually cosplaying the characters themselves. We feel like Juno would totally commit to the Chun-Li look.

Any final words to the players eagerly awaiting to click heads as Cammy or wreak havoc as Blanka?

Dion: We can’t wait for players to get their hands on these skins, and to see all the extra details and touches we put into this collab. The emotes and victory animations came out so well. You’ll even notice that we added fighting game sound effects to some of them!

Arnold: Dion and the team knocked it out of the park with this collab. While I’m not on the Overwatch team anymore, the characters I helped create are all still super important to me. Seeing how the Overwatch art team adapts these characters for collabs and shows them so much love makes me incredibly proud. They’re carrying the torch on art and absolutely killing it!

Dion: This was a labor of love for our team, as we all adore Street Fighter. And we hope fighting game fans will jump into Overwatch and check them out, too.