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My Phorid Rework Art Concept, from Sketch to Final

Cyborg-Rox

By Cyborg-Rox,
in Fan Art

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Cyborg-Rox

Cyborg-Rox

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I thought it'd be fun to share the details of a long creative process in my latest art piece, and my first attempt at an actual concept. Thankfully I saved my gradual process of it.

If you want, you can find the Fan Concept I posted here. It has all the details of how this reworked Phorid will be like: https://forums.warframe.com/topic/714208-phorid-rework-with-art-concept/

When I decided to make a concept for Phorid, it was because he was currently one of 3 "placeholder" bosses without any known rework planned (Phorid, Raptor, Ambulas), and I thought a detailed art concept along with a detailed description of its fight could inspire the Warframe devs if their development with Phorid was early enough. Surprisingly, while I was working on it, the Raptor was reworked kinda out of nowhere, so that made me a bit nervous, but I kept going nonetheless.

Something that bothered me about Phorid was that it was an infested Grineer unit, even in Corpus Infestation Outbreaks. So I wanted this concept to finally fix that, not by making Phorid neutral, but by making two Phorids. This had great potential for really inserting the factions into each Phorid, and I instantly knew I had to make the Grineer Phorid an infested mining machine, using its drills as some sort of weapon.

I started drawing a rough sketch of a mining machine, then moving its parts around trying to imagine how it would be deformed. Then filled the blanks with infestation. Now for the record, I have never drawn infestation before, so in these first few sketches it looks kinda odd.

Here's the result of my first day drawing it.

 

5NF0rQo.png

I posted this image on the Forums, trying to make people guess what it was. The guesses were anywhere from infested Jackals to testicles e-e

When I continued working on it, I noticed it looked kind of small, so I extended the legs a bit, really trying to give it that Lephantis size I wanted. For some reason I really liked that one leg I managed to sketch at first, but couldn't find a fitting leg on the other side, so I switched it over to that side and drew a bulkier one. After drawing in some more details, I got the idea of including the Grineer Charger's tendril-like thingies at the top of its head, but spreading it across Phorid's body.

 

CQ9Fdda.png

 

At this point I started thinking about the head, and I had this cool idea of having the pilot that originally got infested act as Phorid's face, exposed through the metal hull. I tried several iterations of this, though I forgot to save the first one I tried. Here's the second and third iteration.

gnDrUGA.png

 

I realized that none of these really looked much like the original Phorid, and that's something I really wanted for this concept. So I broke off a bigger part of the mining machine to act as the head, and instead of having the infested tissue holding the mining tools go sort of into it, I thought of having a giant mouth there instead, and having the exposed face above it, though I wasn't gonna draw that until later. Now I had redrawn the infested tissue to look more real, drawn the 4th leg, and added some detail.

dNVJJpO.png

Then there was time for the face. I was really happy with how the mouth turned out, so it stayed that way. As for the body, it looked a bit too symmetrical. In fact the first iteration reminded me of Fallout 4's Assaultrons, so I redrew the head. I also added the tendrils on top of Phorid's head, to make it really recognizable as the old Phorid we know and love.

RAdv0gO.png

 

After that, I changed my mind about the front leg again, because looking back at the first sketch, it looked much better on the original side. So I switched the legs, added a lot of detail on the skinny leg, and worked on figuring out how the bulky leg could work.

CqC7ijW.png

Then it hit me. I could use the chain tracks to connect the leg to the body. But it wasn't enough, so I drew another bulky limb further to the side, loosely holding onto the leg, and it looked perfect. I also got the idea of using the second chain tracks as a tail, and making the bulks on the side stomach appear as the wheels turned infested. Along with that, I added some more detail and reshaped the lower part of the rightmost leg.

pAhkpdz.png

One thing that started bothering me was the face still. It looked too symmetrical, so I decided to redraw that, making it more gross and deformed. I kept the head though, as I really liked that.

CjGjopx.png

 

To finalize the outlines, I redrew the mining drills, this time using a reference image as it was a really complicated shape. I added a second infested body sticking out of the escape hatch, added a lot of detail, like on the various machine hull pieces, and infested energy dots.

BfEGRU1.png

 

As for the colours, they took a bit of time to nail down. I knew I wanted red and gray-ish on the infestation, but mining machines are green coloured, so I messed around with some greens and browns and grays, even making all the colours slightly red-ish at some point, until I decided to make all the colours as close to good old Phorid as possible. I made the mining machine completely gray, saturated the infested red, made the infested grey a very slight cyan and eventually put on the energy colours, with a slight darker shade around the edges, along with glow on the main energy points. So now, the art concept was finished.

KUxVYqv.png

 

I did start adding shading as well, but I realized after a while that it obscured some of the detail, specially on the face. So I decided to drop it, so that some of the features would be better visually explained. Something very important when it comes to art concepts.

zeOxpqx.png

 

So that's it. Thanks for sticking around through the topic. I hope this was an interesting insight on my creative art process. This was a very fun project to work on. I learned a lot while drawing it, and I'm very happy with how it turned out!

If you want to support this to be added to the game, provide feedback, or read all its details, please head on over to the Fan Concept I've posted here: 

Oh yeah, and the programs I use are Paint Tool Sai for linework, along with a Wacom Bamboo tablet with pen, and Photoshop CS5 for colouring, shading, and effects.

So, what do you think, Tenno?

Edited by Cyborg-Rox
Grammar tweaks
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Cyborg-Rox

Cyborg-Rox

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15 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

So basically: same basis, but it seems Phorid has eaten a little bit too much metal...
I would love that. Generic oversized charger feels... Cheap. So is his fight - he dies pretty quickly and there is no gimmick - just shoot him until he dies.

Indeed, the current Phorid's gotta be the easiest boss in the game. At least with the Sergeant you need a few seconds to find him, and he's getting reworked soon as well

Just getting Phorid to spawn seems to be harder than actually defeating it sometimes lol

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Cyborg-Rox

Cyborg-Rox

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On 11/8/2016 at 5:07 PM, GinKenshin said:

The art is so awesome, I just wish it's not just another bullet-sponge boss though : / 

Well, if you look at the concept topic, you'll see the fight will be a bit more interesting than that. Shooting weak spots while dodging powerful telegraphed attacks and running for your life. This boss fight structure really isn't like anything else in the game, specially with the branching stages.

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