![]() ![]() The real challenge was getting the audience to relate to and fall in love with Bastion as we had, and we used his insatiable curiosity about nature to accomplish that. You know the boundaries you have to work with in order to make it work. There’s something very liberating about working under those sorts of a restrictions. By limiting the means in which we can convey information, it strips the complexity out of the storytelling and boils it down to the basics. We found we were able to get a decent amount of communication conveyed through subtle body movements and various robotic sounds. We knew going into it that the lack of dialogue would be a challenge, especially having a main character who is also unable to emote through facial expressions. ![]() The film won a Webby for Best Writing, but there’s no dialogue in it-what’s it like telling a story with only visuals and sound effects? What were the challenges and advantages? The bottom line is that a lot of great creative minds from the game and animation teams collaborated to make what ended up on the screen. It was much closer to the pacing we had originally intended, and it was probably for the best that the original use for this short didn’t pan out. This was no longer the case, so Ben, Jake, Matt, and the storyboard team could let the piece breathe as needed. In the earlier iteration, we were limited by running time. ![]() When we decided to pick it back up, Ben Dai was available to take over as director of the project and bring it home. Through their relationship and how Bastion interacts with the forest, we were still able to explore his dangerous potential and how it would affect the world around him.ĭue to events outside of our control, the intended use for this short fell apart and it was shelved. We ended up removing the girl and her father, shifting our focus entirely on Bastion and his bird companion, Ganymede. We saw this moment as a chance to explore how humans perceive Bastion as a dangerous weapon of war. In the original version, a young girl and her father stumble across the inert, moss-covered Bastion while hiking in the woods. It then went to our talented storyboard artists, who created an animatic alongside our Editor, Jake Patton, who continued to improve the story.Īs often happens in development, the story evolved in small ways as time went on. Matt Burns had a few great ideas to add and took over the writing responsibilities. When I got home I wrote out a description of what I was imagining and sent it to the crew. I ended up going with my son for a several hour long walk (luckily, he had fallen asleep in his stroller), and got lost in the challenge of trying to mentally create the whole short shot by shot. ![]() I had to take off work early that day and got fixated on this story. It was a wandering robot of war that had lost its original purpose and found an interest in nature.įor the short, a few of us in the writers’ room came up with the foundation for the story in the last few minutes of another short’s creative jam session. Arnold Tsang, Assistant Art Director for Overwatch, created the original concept for the title character. The story for Bastion developed fairly quickly and, like most things here at Blizzard, it was a great collaborative effort. How did you come up with the idea for the video? ![]()
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