My Cyberpunk Characters

piercingwhistle

Hey everyone,

There was a Cyberpunk themed CC that took place a couple of weeks ago that I couldn't attend because of timezone differences which bummed me out because my main aesthetic is Cyberpunk. My approach to creating my cyberpunk looks is trying to emulate the harsh neon lights against the gritty, dark cityscape. A lot of my costumes are dark because I realise that dark colours serve as good backdrops for the neon lights. I'm going to be posting my designs in the posts below. I'm going to be posting my characters which are originally cyberpunk, and in the future whenever I give some of my existing non-cyberpunk heroes cyberpunk skins (or just make a cool, appropriate design), I'll be posting here!

By the way, I did try to post this a few hours ago but it said it was pending approval, and this is my try again so if I accidentally spam, I apologise in advance. This should be the main thread, though.

piercingwhistle

My first hero is a hacker named RUB1X_CUBE. He's an Imitator (my version of a Replicant) who is adept and well-versed in cybersecurity - a sort of grey hat hacker. My vision for his costume was a mobile, wearable computer build - his clothing emulates civilian clothing embellished with his customised computer build that almost look like armour. Of course, like any other enthusiast, his computer have different lighting profiles for different themes. Here they are:

Powered Down:

Miami Vice:

Miami Vice (Back):

Flamingo:

Chinatown:

Red Light District:

Hornet:


His nemesis is a man named Mikhail, Director of Caird Corporation that manufactures Imitators. His look is more subtle and restrained - I wanted him to look corporate but with an edge that shows he is more of a visionary-type and not the bottom-line type.

piercingwhistle

My next one is CALISTA, an AI hologirl light show. She is a product of Caird Corporation - as a product, she is a customisable holographic AI companion. Because of this, my vision for actually playing her was to look like a holographic advertisement encased in neon light. After farming the right devices and the right auras, the execution looks like this.

Default:

Red Light District:

Raver:


The fun thing is that she has a costume for every event (Saloon Girl for HN, Ghost Bride for Bloodmoon, etc.), but these three are the ones I find capture her character the best.

Her nemesis is Eva, Mikhail's right-hand woman. She created CALISTA out of necessity to maximise profits, allowing Mikhail to focus on advancing his Imitator technology. Her look, like Mikhail's, is also more corporate and luxurious (clock the red bottoms), substituting gold jewellery for gold wearable tech.

piercingwhistle

Not sure about her story yet but currently she's called Project MICHAEL, designed of course by Mikhail. I made these after I'd finally farmed enough Nemesis Recognition for the Tech Wings. They do not disappoint - I love how they look more like head pieces than back pieces.

Default:

Hacked:

bulgarex

Very striking designs. More of an anime take on cyberpunk, with more color and elegance than grim and grit.

Note that the default setting doesn't feature widespread manufacture and sale of artificially-intelligent androids; but covert sales to select clients, including national governments, criminal or terrorist groups, or supervillains, represents a narrower but still lucrative market.

FWIW your Caird Corporation, while fine as a unique entity, would easily fit the setting as a subsidiary/front company for ARGENT. Cutting-edge tech, particularly cybernetics and robotics, is their forte, but they're notably lacking in the ethics department.

piercingwhistle

bulgarex wrote: »

Note that the default setting doesn't feature widespread manufacture and sale of artificially-intelligent androids; but covert sales to select clients, including national governments, criminal or terrorist groups, or supervillains, represents a narrower but still lucrative market.

FWIW your Caird Corporation, while fine as a unique entity, would easily fit the setting as a subsidiary/front company for ARGENT. Cutting-edge tech, particularly cybernetics and robotics, is their forte, but they're notably lacking in the ethics department.

Thanks for the notes. I never fully fleshed out the world I'm trying to create because it felt wrong to impose it on a setting that wasn't necessarily cyberpunk. The way I see it, Imitators would be sold on the down low like you said while products like CALISTA, I think, could be mass marketed and distributed to virtually anyone, acting as a front to collect and store data from their consumers. Thanks for the note on ARGENT! I didn't know that about them. Is there any way to read up on them that doesn't require doing missions?

bulgarex wrote: »

Very striking designs. More of an anime take on cyberpunk, with more color and elegance than grim and grit.

Thank you. Yeah, I agree. I'm really inspired by how Roger Deakins lit Blade Runner 2049. I guess that's why the lights take centre stage in my costumes. I am looking to make more cyberpunk looks that are grounded in technological decay and move away from uses of black/dark colours.

bulgarex

piercingwhistle wrote: »

Thanks for the note on ARGENT! I didn't know that about them. Is there any way to read up on them that doesn't require doing missions?

There is indeed. If you look up this thread on the "Champions Pen and Paper RPG" forum, you can read all the information officially revealed about ARGENT. (Since the lore the MMORPG version of the setting draws from is very extensively detailed in the numerous books for the PnP version, that forum is usually the place where lore-related questions are discussed. And by this point there are a lot of threads covering many subjects.)

BTW our community's own Scott "Thundrax" Bennie, both a veteran CO player and one of the major writers for Champions PnP, wrote a very good free PDF Lore Primer for Champions Online, incorporating info from the game as well as the books. Admittedly it just skims the surface of this world's potential, which is laid out in literally dozens of source books; but it does provide a solid overview of who's who and what's what.

jonsills

Protip: When taking pictures of dark costumes, try to find a lighter background. Otherwise, one darkness just blends into another in the picture. (That was one of the problems I had getting a good shot of Sonrise; his costume is mostly black, so there are a lot of backgrounds in MC where he looks good on my screen, but just sort of fades into the background in the screenshot.)

piercingwhistle

Thanks for the notes above, bulgarex and jonsills!

My latest design's has no context as of yet - just a vision. I had this idea of colouring costume pieces that "float" on the character's body flesh-coloured to look like skin that retracts and reveal the android's robotic interior.

themightyzenith

That's a nice design, @piercingwhistle

kimanoa

Hi, I'm @tatatiger, the host of that Cyberpunk CC! x) Sadly I don't hang out a lot on the forum and found this post only now. I've looked through your outfits and they look stunning! I can say with confidence you would have won, if not 1st place with these! Very good job! Absolutely love the last posted screenshots as well. (Also I am seeing my own cyberpunk inspired SG outfit kind of looks a bit similar to your RUB1X_CUBE hehe) @piercingwhistle

piercingwhistle

kimanoa#6766 wrote: »

Hi, I'm @tatatiger, the host of that Cyberpunk CC! x) Sadly I don't hang out a lot on the forum and found this post only now. I've looked through your outfits and they look stunning! I can say with confidence you would have won, if not 1st place with these! Very good job! Absolutely love the last posted screenshots as well. (Also I am seeing my own cyberpunk inspired SG outfit kind of looks a bit similar to your RUB1X_CUBE hehe) @piercingwhistle

Thank you for the comment! Like you, I also don't spend a lot of time on the forums and was sad when I found out a cyberpunk costume contest had happened because it was something I would've participated in. Your validation means a lot! I actually updated RUB1X_CUBE's colour scheme since this post.



I've also made some cyberpunk costumes for my non-cyberpunk characters. Take a look







Hope you enjoy!