Were you given guidelines for what the Duviri paintings should express or look like? To me they're pitch perfect between some kind of unearthly beauty and an elaborate fairy tale visuals - a style I really like
Hi! I'm happy they come across that way, thank you! 😊
I was actually given a ridiculous amount of freedom!
They never said anything about the 'storybook' thing, but they told me a little bit about Thrax since he was supposed to be the focus of the paintings - Duviri is his kingdom and he's the Main Character™ so they wanted me to portray his elevated view of himself and some of his 'supporting characters'.
They gave some ideas for what I could draw (mostly the characters) but they left it always pretty open should I have any ideas - which I did! The giant hands+head in the sky on the Orowyrm piece is there because I loved it so much when I saw it on the gameplay demo (I love how dramatic it is, the sense of scale, and the hands' gesture just had something that spoke to me), and so is the fractal-ish shape that frames Thrax on his throne that you can see on the Duviri landscape (the shapes reminded me of stained glass windows in cathedrals and I really liked it)!
It was a lot more exploratory than the usual illustration jobs I've done so far, I did a lot of different sketches, but we had the time and there's a world of difference when you feel like your input and your ideas/opinions matter, and when the person on the other side understands what you do (thank you Mat).
I think it was just a really good marriage between the world they created and my style and things I like to paint. I really leaned into the whole theatricality of the characters and environment because I really love to draw stuff like that. It's about the symbolism rather than a realistic depiction or even a narrative.
Which just goes to show that they knew what they were doing because when I first got the email I was like "me??? painting Warframe stuff??? are you sure???" - I had never played the game but if there was one thing I knew about it, it was the insanely complex designs! I was a little worried™ and yet it turned out to be a truly lovely experience :)
Kudos to DE's art team, they did the hard work of creating and designing the world and its characters, I just got to play with it!
