Link Recreated as an Overwatch Hero

Aaron Walker has presented his amazing Link model built as an Overwatch hero. The artist came across the Overwatch Link concept by Jeremy Vitry and decided to recreate it in 3D. 

Art by Jeremy Vitry

Aaron has shared tons of details on the production process on Polycount. The thing, of course, started with a blockout. Then he drew out the design idea he had for the front of his shield to make it mesh with the Overwatch style. The three cylinders on his chest are idea placeholders for the colored potions link often uses in his game. 

Here are early versions of shield/weapon/details:

The artist dealt with the high poly version and then focused on the low poly one. 

“Finished the bakes! Its on to texturing”

Overwatch presents specific hair reflections, so Aaron had to something about it to match the game’s style:

“My only real plan so far was to try and tackle the flow map as best I could to match their anisotropic hair effect. It will be interesting since Link has unique “chunks” in his hair as well. I felt the young Genji skin was one of the closest to what I have – so I am going to aim in that direction. I don’t have a bunch of experience with that so it will be a learning process for me too!”

Then he adjusted the face/eyes and changed the Link’s silhouette to make him seem a bit thinner. He put all the base materials on him and tested the decals. 

He tackled his hair, face, sword, shield and material details with the next update:

“O.K! Calling it on the textures, minus a few tweaks here and there and continuing on to the rig.”

Here’s how the final model looks like:

Make sure to check out more of his artworks here.