The upcoming Warframe will let you spawn custom artwork during a mission

If you thought mainline Octavia blasting questionable music wasn’t enough, the upcoming Warframe could wow you with its own homebrew art. Just like the Call of Duty Emblems of old, the Follie Painter frame will allow you to spread your artistic expression as you bring different objects into existence. You can’t really import external images, but the legally featured Photoshop tool will allow you to create them in-game.

Digital Extremes is well aware of what kind of floodgates a system like this can open, too. When they unveiled this providence at its world premiere (Devstream 193), design director Pablo Alonso exhorted the community:

“I believe in you as a community to help us achieve this no “It has dire consequences.”

“We Have a Kill Switch”: Warframe Sketchbook art can actually get you banned

The new opportunity for impromptu art galleries is tied to the titular update feature, Shadow chart. This is Follie’s second ability, which allows you to draw something of your choice from among the objects you have Sketchbook To help you in different scenarios.

The Sketchbook itself has 14 different objects you can drag from, represented as a gear wheel that you open by pressing the second ability key (presumably). These range from traps and weapons to utilities such as a channel switch for use in disabling.

The interesting tidbit here is that the art of each object here can be customized outside of the quest. You can do this on a non-Photoshop-inspired palette, which gives you different shapes and sprites that you can stack on top of each other through a layer system.

Your custom art can be assigned to any specific item such as, for example, an Arc Trap that attacks enemies. When you next cast Shadowgraph to create this, it will briefly display the artwork on a holo panel that everyone can see (whichever one is there at the time, at least).

For those wondering if this gives you artistic license to send unsolicited photos to unwary teammates, the law of the land will actually restrict you. As the creative director herself confirmed, this could get you banned:

“We have a kill switch. (…) You agree not to do anything that violates our community guidelines. And if you do, if people see that, they can report you. It’s no different than if you have an inappropriate pet name. An inappropriate photo is the same thing.”

This is among the most widespread DE ideas in recent history, even by Warframe standards. Time will tell if they’ll severely restrict this feature in the coming days, if not roll back it entirely, but it’s still a testament to how open Warframe is to ambitious leaps of faith.

Check out everything that’s coming to Warframe Shadowgrapher in our full Devstream 193 recap.