Warframe Character Artist on Designing Follie and Evolving Silhouettes

Few live-service games have sustained creative momentum quite like Warframe.

Now in its 13th year, Digital Extremes’ sci-fi action game continues to expand with new systems, storylines, and, perhaps most notably, new playable frames. With each addition, the challenge of creating characters that feel both fresh and instantly recognizable becomes increasingly complex.

As part of the new Shadowgrapher update, the team is introducing Follie, the game’s 64th Warframe, alongside a new game mode and continued platform expansion.

We spoke with Michael Skyers, Principal 3D Character Artist at Digital Extremes on Warframe, about how the studio approaches great character design at scale, how their philosophy has evolved over time, and what it takes to create silhouettes that stand out in a game with over a decade of history.

Warframe is now in its 13th year, which is rare for a live-service game at this scale. How has your overall character design philosophy evolved over time as both the game and player expectations have matured?

Michael Skyers, Principal 3D Character Artist: Over the 13 years of Warframe, our design philosophy has largely remained the same. Thanks to the overwhelming reception of our characters, we’ve been able to continue with our special take on sci-fi. With the changes in our tech capabilities, it has only become easier to create the beautifully weird designs we imagine together. Bringing each character to life has been its own unique adventure. 

What defines a “modern” silhouette in today’s character design landscape, such as with Follie, and how does that differ from earlier Warframes?

Michael Skyers: For us, a “modern” silhouette needs to say more than just “Hero Character.” With the reveal that Warframes were once people, we get to tell more complex individual stories for each Warframe. Sometimes the character doesn’t fit the typical front-line Hero role, and we get to play around with what that might look like.

I started simple with Follie’s theme. A Warframe with art powers. Artist characters have been done in games before, and to create something special, I had to think outside the box. I started thinking of ink, then the Rorschach Inkblot Test, and eventually, my thoughts of her turned into a Tenno's drawing come to life as an imaginary friend. Cute and cuddly, but a twisted reflection of the trauma they’ve gone through. The origin point of each Warframe we create is never the same, though. Oraxia’s concept was somewhat based on passionate player requests, and we worked outward from their wishes to turn them into something real.

With over 60 playable Warframes, visual clarity becomes increasingly important. How does the team ensure each new frame feels distinct and instantly readable, both in gameplay and at a glance?

Michael Skyers: With over 60 Warframes, the thing I find most important is building on their “theme” first. On the art side, we do our best to make the Warframe a personification of that theme. If the theme is playful and mischievous, they may have more frills or round bubbly shapes to exemplify that. Warframes that are more stoic or sinister may be designed with more hardened shapes or spikes to give them that stand-off-ish vibe. If the theme is Mushroom child, well, we make them look like a mushroom. Shout outs to Nokko.

Warframe designs often balance function, lore, and visual spectacle. Where do you typically start (gameplay mechanics, narrative themes, or visual exploration), and how do those pillars influence one another?

Michael Skyers:  When I pitch a design for a Warframe, I generally start with the previously mentioned theme and then jump into visual exploration, as those are my areas of expertise. Working on new Warframes is a very collaborative process, and all those pillars eventually need to be considered.  I’ll sometimes create bullet points around ideas for mechanics that explain what the theme relationship is to them, but I generally leave that stuff to the design experts, as they have a better sense of what the gameplay needs in that regard.

It is definitely nerve-wracking to pass an idea I spent time dreaming up to others, but great things can come from working with other talented people. When I pitched the idea for Follie, I never would have imagined she would be haunting a relay on the other side of a painting. My initial wish was that she could have some kind of drawing ability, but I never imagined her Shadowgraph sketchbook of items would give her access to the Thermian RPG on a whim. 

Can you walk us through the pipeline for creating a new Warframe, from early concept art to final in-game implementation? What stages tend to evolve the most during production?

Michael Skyers: I can only really speak to this from my perspective of the art team. When I have an idea, I’ll sketch something up. Generally, this happens during my lunch breaks. I start thumbnail sketches in 3D or 2D. Oftentimes, the end product is a combo of both. I’ll send the pitch off to our Creative Director, Rebecca Ford, and Design Director, Pablo Alonso. If they like the idea, it gets kept in the Warframe idea vault until there is a spot for it in the update schedule, usually dependent on that update’s narrative and aesthetics.

I pitched the idea for Follie in December of 2024, and the studio had already made plans for the next year plus. When it finally came time to work on Follie, I did some more visual exploration to hone in on her final look. Once we were getting close to the final design, I created a rigged proxy model to see her in the in-game Arsenal, using test animations, and figuring out what we could do for the ink FX.

Once we were happy with how she was feeling visually, I finalized her default look and designed an Alternate Helmet for her. We sculpt primarily in ZBrush, and once we get our major forms and details locked in, we transition to creating our low-poly meshes and create test texture bakes so we can get them to the Technical Animation team for rigging. We then continue to polish the hi-poly sculpt and refine our textures. As more team members get hands-on with the character, we can go back to problem-solving various issues that may have popped up.

From a technical standpoint, what are some of the biggest challenges when designing characters that must work across animation, VFX, customization systems, and performance constraints?

Michael Skyers: I find that cloth physics elements are often the biggest hurdle when designing characters. Warframes are highly customizable and agile characters, so we have to be careful about where we use dynamic cloth on the character so it doesn’t impact the players’ ability to customize them with attachments and colors.

With Follie and newer Warframes, are there any specific artistic or technical breakthroughs the team is particularly proud of?

Michael Skyers:  With Follie, it was definitely getting the Ink to be iridescent. It took a few tries to get the effect to work how we envisioned with a variety of colors and lighting situations, but for the character art team as a whole, it would be our development of the Protoframes. 

For most of Warframe’s lifetime, characters with normal faces that we could get up close and personal with were few and far between. With the dawn of Protoframes, we had to develop new tech and workflows to create characters that players could truly connect to without that uncanny valley feeling. Those advancements ultimately led to the large Operator/Drifter graphical remaster, which came with a whole host of new ways to customize your personal character. 

Warframe has a very dedicated community that often engages deeply with character aesthetics. How does player feedback influence your approach to new designs?

Michael Skyers: I might spend too much time reading comments online. I really appreciate both the positive and the negative comments. When I come across a comment that is truly constructive, I do my best to keep that in the back of my head for the next Warframe. Knowing that it’s impossible to make everyone happy at the same time, I try my best to create something fresh and different in each design to give the community more choices. Luckily, the world of Warframe really allows us as artists to explore any theme or aesthetic and make it feel at home in our game.

For character artists looking to break into the industry, what lessons from your experience on Warframe would you say are most important when it comes to designing memorable, production-ready characters?

Michael Skyers: I think the most important thing to do when creating memorable, production-ready characters is to find what the focal elements of the character are and hone them. First impressions are important for game characters, so having strong Primary and Secondary shapes goes a long way. I sometimes get lost in the details and have to remind myself that players are often running and jumping through video game worlds, and it is the primary shapes and silhouettes that will grab their attention first. I try to spend 70%-80% of my time making sure the major forms pop. I can always go back and add those last 20% details later if time allows.

Michael Skyers, Principal 3D Character Artist at Digital Extremes on Warframe

Interview conducted by David Jagneaux

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