“It’s really the limits of your imagination,” Day says.
She also thinks that Overwatch’s style allows for more freedom, as opposed to games that are more hyper-realistic.
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OK… it’s too big, it’s whatever, let’s dial it back a little bit.’ We’re constantly playing the pendulum game of ‘swing it too far, OK, bring it back a little bit more.’ That’s the fun of the balance of this work.”įor Overwatch, Day worked on Hanzo’s dragon (“Figuring out how to make a giant portal with two dragons that are the size of the map be performant, look good and be impactful was a super-fun challenge”) and Orisa’s entire effects package (“I really think the colors on that are harmonious”). “When we’re making a system, I’ll put 20 or so different assets in and go, ‘Oh wow, that’s amazing. I like to push everything to 11 or 12 and then dial it back a little bit,” Day says. “That’s the fun part of my job, honestly. That’s not to say that the effects can’t sometimes go too far in one direction. Does it feel impactful when a projectile hits the wall? Can you tell that something happened immediately? Are you giving that feedback? It’s important.” So it’s really this relationship, back and forth between us and design and gameplay engineering, to create the experience that people are having. If we have a projectile, they’re telling us how fast it should go, and I tell them what it looks like when it’s flying through the air. “So we work hand in hand with the designers. “In my perspective, VFX is the visual telling of gameplay,” she says. “It’s insane.”Īs for the role of VFX in a game like Overwatch, Day thinks having that visual feedback is a very important part of a game. “It is terrifying to think that 35 million people, or however many it is now, have seen my art and interacted with my art on a daily basis,” Day says. “I get to have a little bit of design influence, flex my logic skills creating shaders and things like that, and I really get to be an artist, visually creating what people are seeing and how they’re playing.”Įven as Day works on Overwatch, the popularity of the game is something that she hates thinking about. “I’m a pretty technical person, I like to dig into the logic and problem-solving side of things, but I also love color and animation and impact and gameplay, and VFX in video games is really the trifecta of those three things,” Day says. She thought she wanted to be a technical artist, but her lead suggested she try out VFX. That led to Day joining the team of Diablo III as an associate technical artist. “I consider myself a smart person because I took that time in college to talk to everybody at Blizzard that I could, and network and tell people, ‘I really want to be a technical artist when I graduate college.’ And that paid off, because four months before I graduated I got a call.” She then returned the following year to intern again in QA for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty.
One of her friends got a job at Blizzard, and not long after that Day went to the Art Institute of Orange County to become a gamemaker.ĭay’s first industry job was interning at Blizzard in quality assurance during the development of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King in 2008. “That was the first time where I was like, ‘Yeah, this is cool, I really like video games.” Now Day works at the very company that was responsible for Warcraft II.Įven though she grew up gaming, Day isn’t sure why she didn’t think it was a job. “That was the first game where I would come from school and hurry up and get all my homework done immediately so that I could just play until I fell asleep,” Day says. “From the time I can remember anything, I had a controller in my hand,” Day says, but if she had to pick, Day named Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness as the tipping point when she realized she was really into gaming. “She’s not only a great artist but an amazing game developer and collaborator, using her technical skills, artistic eye and flawless communication to always help us push the boundaries of what’s possible in the world of Overwatch.”Īs for gaming, Day grew up with Atari and the likes of Pitfall and Pac-Man. “Working with Rachel is always one of the highlights of my day,” says Renaud Galand, Lead Character Artist ( Overwatch), for Blizzard. That’s how far around the world the game has reached. Teams for the league represent cities such as Los Angeles, Seoul, Shanghai and New York. The game has over 35 million players worldwide, and has even spawned the eSports Overwatch League, whose first season started in January of this year. Originally released in 2016, Overwatch has been a phenomenon for Blizzard. Now a Senior VFX Artist at video game trailblazer Blizzard Entertainment, Day works on Overwatch.
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