Warframe 1999: Aoi, Amir, Eleanor, Quincy, Lettie - The Hex

Artist's comments....
After making 1999 Excalibur Arthur and establishing a style, creating 1999 Mag Aoi was easy and quick. The Mag Warframe is rather simple character, with not much to embellish being an older styled Warframe. So, we decided to emphasize the most characteristic parts of Mag she does have; her coiled arms, and the shell-like bands up the torso. This we translated into an agent's submarine suit inspired look, creating a more top-heavy composition. Added with short pistol holsters, as the suit's silhouette narrows down Mag's body leaving her legs practically untouched.

There is a small amount of development art, due to Aoi coming into realization rather quickly. The leads desired a Harajuku-inspired Japanese young woman, so we wanted to emphasize stylish and colorful hair to add to the established top-heavy composition. While simple, this is our favorite agent design thus far.

EDIT January 2025 - With blessings of our leads, we are finally allowed to share with you the rest of our work on the Hex. Including various development bits and pieces.

Amir was at first called Volta and was the second in development after Arthur, before the rest. I focused on creating gear that could suggest the Volt character was a technologically savvy agent, only later adding more colorful details such as his GameTenno and light-up shoes after we learned of his personality by the writers. This lead into an interesting issue where he is more geared and ready as he is with his fellow agents, but Amir himself was not a military man. Interpret this as you wish.

After Amir, we made Eleanor, Aoi, Quincy and Lettie. Eleanor we found rather easy-going to develop, as she is Arthur's twin sister hence the pension for black and white monochromatic hair. We chose a long ponytail hairstyle that felt like an "interpretation" to the Nyx horns or crests the Warframe has as a defining feature. For Trinity, the Warframe is a rather old and curious design that gave us trouble, but ultimately we decided to focus on her most defining feature - that being the "lobster tail" armor around the waist. So much so in fact we simplified her legs in contrast to bare skin. The leads loved this idea so much, we decorated her now sporty legs with grungy tattoos to match her personality. However Lettie changed a lot between art and final. We saved Quincy for last, as his Warframe was still in development at the time causing us to have to paint over unfinished concept art. Cyte-09 was first known as Frumentarius. We saw his helmet appeared like a military hat, even a "walkie talkie" like device on his chest, hence we went on a more soldier-like direction for this character with the bomber coat lapels and beret. Later adding a handsome silk scarf, learning of Quincy's propensity for fashion and good appearances.