[2018] New Forum baby!

A lot of it has to do with ‘what feels right’ for the character. What fits their personality, etc, but it’s largely just the whims of the Animator working on that hero, haha. Yrel’s dance, for example, is a combination of a video I found on the interwebs, and my personal go-to move on the dancefloor.

Many heroes will date themselves with their dances or taunts, which I kind of revel in. If there is a pop culture reference that is rather viral at the time, the animator sometimes draws inspiration from that. I animated Junkrat’s dance in the heat of that trend. He wasn’t released until 6 months later, or something - unfortunately outliving the fame of the moves, themselves.

Thank you! I will!

Whyyyy thank you.

If our artist had bandwith at the time, absolutely! i.e. Chromie has sand clones that show up and dance with her.

Additionally, sometimes there are elements of a character’s fantasy or lore that we really want to bring into the Nexus, but can’t fit into the ability kit. Hearths, taunts and dances are the perfect place for us to geek out and add the tiny bits of flair that speak to the character, or sometimes our own personalities.

A personal example of this for me is the Portal FX for Deckard Cain’s Hearth. There was a heavy sentiment across the team that Deckard just HAD to use a portal for something, but it didn’t fit with the design of his abilities. It was great to be able to retain that fantasy using his Hearth animation though!

I agree that would be awesome!

As for the process, it really comes down to time. Between our incredible community and our awesome developers we have absolutely no lack of amazing ideas being generated. We only have so much time to develop assets though and a skin takes a lot more of that time than something like a spray. But anything can happen in the Nexus and if you’re particularly passionate about an idea, we definitely want to hear about it!