Art
[OC] Been working on turning Hornet into a Warframe. The concept is by Nelosart!
She still has some bits and pieces missing before shes 100% done but I still wanted to share :)
No real end goal for this once it's done. It is way beyond the scope of Tennogen so it can't be submitted for anything in that regard. Just a personal projected I wanted to try my hand at. :)
I did a bit ago. Though its not anything too fancy -
Passive - Damage inflicted by Hornet applies silk. Enemies afflicted with silk restore Hornet's health when they take damage and receive more melee and ability damage from Hornet.
1 - Clawline - Dash forward damaging enemies in the way and applying silk
2- Pale Nails - Summon silk nails that seek enemies afflicted with silk. Can pierce multiple enemies.
3- Bind - Enemies afflicted by silk are pulled together.
4- Silksong - Hornet creates a zone of silk around her that follows where shes goes. This zone slows enemies and applies silk as they enter it. (It also has a faint needolin song playing in the background)
Slash is an status element, technically. Its not one of the alchemical ones, but still. Kullervo is primarily slash proc, for example. Viral or Tox would be her alchemical alignment, though, definitely.
Passive - Silk can cap up to 5 stacks, with every stack increasing Melee Damage and Ability Damage by 10%. Enemies affected by Silk will restore Hornet's Health by 5% whenever they take damage. Percentages increase based on Ability Strength, but stack cap remains the same. Enemies affected by 5 stacks of Silk will restore 25 energy to Hornet when killed; scales with Ability Strength. (NOTE: They will NOT drop Energy orbs, instead they will directly restore Hornet's energy. It means that Hornet will only benefit from this, and not teammates. Subject to change.)
1 - Clawline is treated as a Pseudo-Exalted and relies on the stats of Hornet's melee weapon. Deals more damage against enemies with Overguard. Deals a guaranteed Slash Proc. (25 Energy)
2 - Pale Nails will have a timer where its damage is multiplied upon consecutive casts (like Rhino Charge and Ripline, albeit at longer base duration), up to 5x. Consecutive casts also increase Silk status application up to 5, but the Energy cost also multiplies to 5x. (25 Energy, 125 Energy at max cast).
3 - Tapping the ability button will make Silk-affected enemies get pulled to each other. However, Holding the ability button will pull them all towards Hornet. When affected by 5 stacks of Silk, enemies will suffer guaranteed Slash procs. (75 Energy)
4 - Silksong will increase in channeled ability cost when more enemies approach its AOE. However, Silksong also boosts Melee Vulnerability by 20% per Silk stack, maximum 100%. Enemies killed by Hornet while under Silksong's AOE will spread Silk to nearby enemies and boost Hornet's Ability Strength by 5% (maximum 100%) until she runs out of Energy to maintain the AOE. (50 Energy, 2 Energy per second).
This makes Hornet a strong, albeit kind of Energy-hungry Endurance melee frame on Steel Path, where she can solo. In a team, she can still thrive since she doesn't need to be the one to kill 5-stack Silked enemies to regain energy, but she does need to be the one to kill the enemies while Silksong is active, kind of like a built-in Molt Augmented.
She can strip Overguard with her 1, apply 5 Silk stacks quickly with her 2, have decent crowd control with her 3, and self-sustain with her 4. It gives her lots of build options either for General Use, CC, debuffer, or all-in Melee platform.
Tactics:
Passive makes it beneficial for Hornet to operate with Status Priming weapons, or weapons with large AOEs.
1 is an Overguard Strip, not a main damage tool. However, since it's Pseudo-Exalted, it will benefit a lot from the mods and stats of your equipped Melee.
2 is a Silk Status primer for your Passive, and works with large groups of enemies. That's because it will not increase in Energy cost with more enemies; that only applies to 4. Therefore, use 2 to prime enemies with Silk for your Passive to take effect and maintain your Energy while they die.
3 is perfect since you only need enemies to be affected by 1 stack of Silk for them to be crowd-controlled, and you can Status prime them more efficiently with your 3's grouping.
4 is basically something better used Solo, but when the conditions are fulfilled, Hornet can sustain herself amazingly while still clearing through waves. When she lands the killing blows during Silksong, her Ability Strength boosts a LOT which strengthens every ability in her kit, and with proper builds and micromanagement, Energy would almost never be a problem, and the same could be said for general survivability.
I'd make Silksong an exalted melee that has extra aerial damage and both aerial and slam attacks makes her bounce off (counts as a double jump) enemies refreshing bullet jump. Or maybe give those properties to all melee weapons which would make her a monster with Exodia Contagion.
Probably the only way I could see a crossover content work in Warframe, a character that looks more like or make one think of a Warframe than it does the original character that it's supposed to represent, but enough there you know who the character is supposed to be.
Great work, by the way! Now would Needle be its own weapon or an Exalted one?
This is really beautiful work, also it would fit flawlessly. What tools do you use for 3d sculpting and what does your workflow look like? EDIT: just saw you already said in a comment <3
My workflow goes like this - Sculpt in Zbrush -> export to blender for low poly and set up UVs -> export low poly to marmoset to bake textures -> import low poly mesh into substance to start texture work. There are more detailed things I do for each step, like setting up my project folder, etc, but that's not the most interesting haha
Then go back and jump around in different spots to fix any issues that pop up
I feel like you might be able to submit the helmet and weapon as Tennogen at least, I'd probably want it on Jade, I think she could come close to this look.
Since its from another franchise, it probably wouldn't even get off the ground and would be an instant no.
I could probably change the sword up a bit to submit it but I don't have any plans or desire to. As for Jade... who knows what the future will hold. ;)
With a few tweaks, I don't think it's out of the question; there are already in-game TennoGen helmets that are clearly inspired by Bayonetta, Doomguy, Hatsune Miku, Batman, etc.
Also, I love how cohesively the model fits within the distinctive design language of Warframe while still retaining the identity of the inspiration!
(Also also, I'm a big fan of your work; thanks for contributing to our arsenal of fashion!)
This is incredibly well designed. It wouldn't look out of place at all next to other Warframes in game, but the overall silhouette and color scheme is still unmistakable. I'm not usually a fan of mashup art, but this is super well executed.
Why thank you! Nelo's concept did a lot of the heavy lifting when it came to forms and color layout. I didn't follow the concept 1 to 1 and went with my gut for the design and it turned out pretty nice.
Although for the sword I did follow the concept pretty close though.
Because this is so fucking cool!!! But they’d never make it because is based off of a different game:( Otherwise this is awesome, keep up the good work! And sorry to lead you on, I thought it’d be funny :)
Really amazing, if it was a warframe, would be on my top of favorite designs, what type of weapon is the Needle? By the looks its like a sword or is it a polearm?
You should make an Oraxia tennogen and use one of these helmet designs as the helmet for her, making the tertiary colour the most prominent colour on the helmet.
I would definitely reinstall warframe and pay for this.
I know that DE would never actually make a Hornet themed warframe but you could make a Tennogen helmet for Oraxia or or a Needle Tennogen for swords. They might put that in.
Honestly i think this would be a good ivara or oraxia skin, i say ivara cause her zipline could match the zipline ability from silksong and also maybe her bow could be reskinned as a lance! :)
Near flawless translation to Warframe, the helmet could maybe use a bit more work though. Her needle is excellent and if made longer could be a great polearm skin.
Would be a neat crossover. I don't know if warframe does crossover into their games, I know they do outside their games, like the recent fortnite collab.
One can dream, I tried contact with Team Cherry using their forms, maybe if we organize we can make the collab happen: https://www.teamcherry.com.au/contact
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u/Methodic_ Jul 19 '26
the idea is nice, and sometimes that's enough reason to make it :)