“Become a kinetic blur with the turbocharged Gauss Moto. What cannot be hit cannot be killed.”
Over the past few years, we’ve worked with the incredible Digital Extremes team on their flagship game Warframe.
At Sumo, we’ve ideated, designed, and co-developed a wide variety of features for Warframe, from content to cosmetics. We’re especially proud of our work on the Gauss Moto Collection bundle, which launched in March 2026, and quickly became a best-selling Deluxe Skin bundle in Warframe’s 13-year lifespan.
To celebrate this incredible milestone, let’s take a look behind the scenes at the creative process.
The original design and the Warframe ‘feel’
Our teams describe designing art for Warframe as ‘an incredibly challenging and rewarding process.’ With an art style so distinct, unique, and complex, even concepting work can take a lot of time!
Warframe designs are usually some kind of combination of synthetic alloys and fleshy organics. However, since Gauss is Warframe’sspeedster frame, the focus was on hard, plated armour reminiscent of carbon-fibre Formula 1 cars.
Gauss’ Abilities are based around going as fast as possible, dealing high damage, and constant movement, so it was only natural that Digital Extremes wanted that theme to be reflected in the Deluxe Skin ‘Moto’- inspired by racing cars, motorbikes, and jousting helmets.
Gauss Moto initial concept supplied by Alfio Capotorto, Concept Artist at Digital Extremes
Rumen Toshkov, Senior Concept Artist and style holder for this skin, hand-sculpted the original design in ZBrush, based on Digital Extremes’ supplied concept.
His expertise in hard surface modelling, robots and all things mechanical made him the perfect choice to bring the Gauss Moto Collection to life. This proved to be very well received by players, even though this skin was the first Rumen had ever designed!
“Our art team doesn’t always stick to their on-paper job specs. We like to look at the skills people have or are trying to develop and see how they might fit the task at hand. We have as close to a dream team as you can get, and we’ve seen a lot of success by allowing people to contribute outside of their job descriptions.” – Stephen Gibson, Art Director.
As mentioned earlier, Rumen and the team faced immediate design challenges.
The Gauss Moto Collection is all mechanical and composed of flat surfaces, so how do we make this skin still ‘feel’ like a Warframe skin when it doesn’t have that biological essence?
Visor Signa Highpoly, handsculpted in ZBrush
The answer, according to Rumen, is “a lot of trial and error”. Finding places to inject that Warframe essence took time and a long creative process, but eventually the team landed on a design that still felt Warframe, despite the discreet style.
“Our familiarity with Warframe and its art style gave Digital Extremes the confidence to let us fill in the gaps and be creative. A lot of time and effort went into designing, redesigning, and pushing the quality to its highest possible level.” – Stephen Gibson
Live service demands and existing functionality
When creating something fresh, how do you ensure your creation feels at home within the existing IP?
Understanding the IP, project, and client is crucial across teams at Sumo, and having the flexibility to create and solve problems matters.
As a live service game, Digital Extremes needs to constantly churn out high-quality updates that keep players coming back. As such, they have built-in workflows to speed up development time. For Gauss, this was using the original character rig as a starting point.
This raised some challenges, though. “The default Gauss skin has ports and valves that open up during gameplay, meaning that the primary Moto skin had to reflect those in concept too, but the blockout design simply wasn’t detailed enough to map or reflect that at the start.” – Rumen Toshkov, Senior Concept Artist
Ultimately because of this, the team needed to work collaboratively to prototype the designs during the initial concepting period. Both designing details separately from the rig, and separating out details from the original sculpt to work on individually became an important part of the process that could only be achieved with multiple skilled members of the team working together, exploring different ideas simultaneously.
Panel Animation Concept Exploration
Style holder
“The phrase ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ can ring true a lot in artwork- but in this case, having Rumen be ultimately responsible for the project pipelines and workflows worked in our benefit” – Stephen Gibson
A style holder, on our project, is someone put in charge of maintaining the specific style of a particular asset. Materials, sculpting techniques, overall theme, so that as the assets pass through different hands, they can maintain consistency. Keeping everyone aligned toward the end goal is extremely important in projects involving rapid iteration.
Rumen described their workflow as jumping from part to part to “keep the excitement going” during iteration. Rumen would keep parts of the model separate, sculpting and detailing them in isolation, always making sure to refer back to the full model similar to flipping a canvas in 2D art. This workflow allowed Rumen to identify areas that required further refinement, helping the model develop gradually and naturally.
Gauss Moto progress video, showcasing the evolution and refinement of the skin through multiple iterations.
Rumen found this project to be a great way to learn new ZBrush techniques, from extracting parts from the initial sculpt to previewing the animation, ensuring the model would continue to work in a game context without becoming overly complex.
Rumen’s strong vision and leadership meant that, despite the tight deadlines, the team was able to design something with enough time to start adding accessories.
Gauss Moto in-game turnaround preview showcasing redline state and cosmetic attachments, highpoly done by Rumen. Re-topo, UV’s, Implementation by Marcelo Pinheiro. Texturing, Implementation and Supervision by Ryan Ashfield.
Final Product and Player Reaction
Creating a skin for an established live service game is about far more than producing great-looking art.
It requires balancing creative ambition with technical constraints, respecting an existing visual identity while finding opportunities to push it forward. The Gauss Moto Collection reflects that balance, and we’re honoured that the players love it too.
In fact, Art Director Stephen Gibson met a Gauss Moto cosplayer at TennoCon 2026, whose carefully crafted costume showcases the love and passion players have felt for the latest skin; it has truly been an honour to be a part of creating these fresh experiences for Warframe’s dedicated players.
Stephen Gibson and Gauss Moto Cosplayer BagaProps at TennoCon 2026
Cosplayer credit: BagaProps
“This is hands down the best skin in the game.” – Reddit user
“Got the dual bundle, always willing to support DE if they’re willing to put in this kind of effort for affordable prices.” – YouTube user
“Warframe just dropped new Gauss and Grendel skins and I had to check them out 🔥 these designs are actually insane, from the details to the overall vibe, Digital Extremes really cooked with this one” – Instagram user
If you’re looking for a partner that can integrate with your team, adapt to established pipelines, and deliver high-quality art for live service games without compromising on creativity, we’d love to talk.
Visit our Warframe case study page to learn more about our work with Digital Extremes and learn how we can support your next project.
