Overwatch players have fallen in love with an adorable new skin design that turns Hammond into a little axolotl salamander.
A pair of creative Overwatch fans have put the downtime before the Lunar New Year event to good use, coming up with an unbelievably cute skin design for Hammond that turns him into a salamander.
And that’s an Axolotl salamander to be exact, which are delightful little amphibians from Mexico that seem to always be cracking a grin.
Reddit user ‘u/Kid0nCoffee’ was the one who came up with the idea to swap out Hammond for the creature and came up with some early concept art to illustrate their ideas.
Axolotl Hammond is doing his trademark pose pointing out some poor, unsuspecting supports he’s about to ruin, from on top of a Wrecking Ball mech that’s now a giant tank of water.
The legs and cannons are a bit more rounded and do match with the overall aquatic theme going on here, but a 2D sketch can only do so much. That’s where another Reddit user named ‘u/XxSushiCatxX’ came in and really brought it to life.
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Working from Kid0nCoffee’s original drawing, they created a full-on 3D rendering of the skin, adorable little protruding axolotl and all. The water would be moving around inside while the mech rolls around, which is something we’re surprised Blizzard hasn’t thought of already.
Seeing the skin concept like this makes you realize the one glaring issue going on here: there’s nowhere for the legs and cannons to go when Hammond goes into ball form.
However, it’s just so dang cute sitting up there that we’re willing to overlook this slight technical issue. Plus, we’re talking about a game with a sentient gorilla and hamster as main characters, so why not add a super-intelligent amphibian to the mix?
As far as in-game skins we can actually unlock go, we should be getting a new batch for the Lunar New Year event, which will be starting soon. Whether Hammond will be getting new cosmetics remains to be seen, but even Blizzard themselves would have a hard time topping this one.
