Digital Extremes
Tennocon 2024
Branding & Motion Design
Create teaser films and character reveals built around the reveal of Warframe: 1999
2024
TennoCon is Digital Extremes’ annual Warframe convention, a live event in London, Ontario, streamed to the community on Twitch. The 2024 edition centered on the reveal of Warframe: 1999, the game’s next major chapter, set in an alternate late-’90s world on the eve of the millennium.
Create a series of interstitial films that work as both teasers and character reveals while carrying the broadcast from one segment to the next. Each one had to be short enough to sit between panels and strong enough to stand alone as a clip.
ASK / GOAL
Moodboard
We leaned fully into the 1999 universe: the look and feel of late-’90s computing, with its CRT glow, desktop windows, loading bars and Y2K anxiety. The audience should feel like they’re watching the reveal through an old monitor. The image is never quite clean, always slightly unstable, as if the signal itself were infested.
Six interstitials, one arc.
The series opens on fragments and ends on the full picture.
01 — Welcome. Slow, orbiting close-ups pulled from every other film, cut with CRT waves. Nothing is fully shown. It sets the tone and plants the questions
02 — Arthur. The hero stands in a wrecked subway car with Infested bodies at his feet. It’s one iconic beat, held still.
03 — The Infested. Creatures fused with vintage TVs, with organic tendrils wrapped around plastic casings. Their screens flicker with glitches and colour bars. This is the heart of the 1999 contamination.
04 — Albrecht. A grin in the dark of the station, lifted from the end of the demo. The film gives the villain his moment, held just long enough.
05 — Aoi. She rides alone, introduced through speed and motion.
06 — Key Art. Arthur, Aoi and the bike come together in the 1999 city. The full composition finally lands on the TennoCon 2024 logo.
Each piece moves through one of the event’s thematic pillars, turning transitions into short, interconnected stories. A wall of stacked CRTs connects them. The camera dives into one screen to enter the next film, or pulls back from a screen to reveal the image. Together, the films deepen the lore and build a seamless bridge with the live Twitch programming.
After shaping the stories, exploring several worlds and testing ideas with the client, we landed on a clear workflow and a defined visual style. Every render is pushed through a CRT treatment with scanlines, RGB split and phosphor bleed. The palette is built on acid green and cathode blue, the colours of a screen at 3 a.m.
Hidden across the screens, the pixelated Entrati eye flickers in and out. It’s a quiet signal for players who already sense where 1999 is heading.
The films aired throughout the TennoCon 2024 broadcast, framing each segment and building toward the 1999 reveal.
Project team and references:
Where I was involved
Writing & Storyboarding
Art Direction
3D Design
Team
Gimmick Studio
F. Zunino (Art Direction, 3D Design)
