At 1pm today, Blizzard artists Arnold Tsang and Ben Zhang went on-stream to perform a live sketch of Hammond's Legendary skin as well as answer questions about his design history.

Ben stated that when a new Overwatch hero is released, they release two legendary skins alongside with them and they aim to make the skins different enough to push beyond what the default skin is. But since Hammond is already very different from the rest of the cast, they decided to base his two legendary skins on his lore, which is Horizon and Junkertown.

▲ For Hammond's Horizon skin, inspiration was drawn from Winston's Space Pod.

Hammond's Design Process

While Ben was sketching, Arnold went over Hammond's design history which turned out to be an amazing journey through multiple designs that may even hint towards other future heroes.

▲ The team wanted a cute hero. These were their first explorations.

▲ They toyed with a "free-flying flamethrower hero" design.

▲ Arnold: "We'll see about jetpack cat"

The first direction into Hammond's ball-form came from Junkrat's initial concept sketches.

As for Pilot Hammond, the initial design was pure mecha.

The team explored Tracer's design to fully flesh Hammond out.

By this point, Ben has completed his first sketch and also included a disco ball on fan request.

Before Ben began his next sketch, he explained that each hero has a base image they reference to ensure that new skins don't stray too far from the initial form.

▲ Hammond's base design.

As Ben worked on his second sketch, they answered more questions on Hammond's design. For Hammond's interaction with his mech, they first went with arcade sticks. But since Hammond's hands don't work that way, they went with big buttons and a trackball design.

Hammond's eyebrows were inspired by Torbjorn's.

Horizon's escape pods were designed for human and ape-sized lifeforms, so Hammond needed to jerry-rig a fuel pod in order to escape.

His original escape pod is the core of the ball that doesn't move, as the ball around him moves. Wrecking ball is a ball inside of a ball.

The final design

With roughly 10-15 minutes left on the stream, Arnold and Ben revealed the final Horizon skin and designs for Hammond.

The new skins are now live on the PTR.