Her name is Vib (an OC I planned on for 3 years)

 I'm willing to guess that there is a small chance that you (as an artist) probably had an OC planned but never got around on designing them for week, months, or in my case: three years. Let's talk about the brief origin on how I got an OC planned but never followed it up until now.

THE ORIGIN

So, ever heard of 2 Mello? An electronic hip-hop artist who put out some banger albums, including their masterpiece which is the Jet Set Radio-inspired Memories of Tokyo-To. They had a contest to promote their sequel to Memories of Tokyo-To but inspired by JSR Future. The contest involves creating a Jet Set Sona OC, and the winner of that gets their OC featured in the album. 

I had the wild idea that I'm going to make the JSR Sona, but NOT for me... but for my OC. Take a wild guess who. I drew up a brief reference sheet on what she's gonna wear, and the name is fairly simple: Vib, short for Vibrant.

Vib's reference sheet (2020)

There are a few attempts to draw her in full, even used Vivi as a reference. It didn't work out.

The only reference poses for Vib.

So I decided to shelve the design until I thought about properly drawing her... And that only took 3 years to make the excuse. Anyways, ever heard of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk? That's a game I've been playing for WEEKS, because it's so damn good. This is the spiritual successor to the Jet Set Radio games by Team Reptile. I'm going to say it: It's a worthy successor. BRC didn't took long for people to mod the game, since it's a Unity game after all. The spark for Vib just ignites once I caught wind of the modding community, and I got to work.

THE PROCESS

To begin, I fire up good ol' Blender 2.79 to make the model herself. There is no such reference, apart from using Shine's model as a scaled reference... and took her hands, because fuck modelling hands. Another piece of model I took was my scrapped Quake III Vivi model for the head, but removed the furry aspects.

Earliest model with matcap

The naked model with only the accessories. The jetpack is the first model that's fully textured.

I used the old reference drawing for the accessories, but for clothing I was working on that. For the face, I borrowed Shine's as a main reference point, so enjoy looking at those thick lips of hers. The main goal here is to replicate the artstyle, which I was doing pretty well so far.

Hair, well that's easy. This is Vivi's JSR Sona, so it's short.

Closeup of her face.

The next thing to do was the clothes (duh). I decided to have a short-sleeved coat with an undershirt and a pair of cargo jean shorts with a belt to hold her bag.

Initial colors.

This took me a while for me to texture these clothes. Then I added some alternate color schemes.

Main colors (Spring)

The alternate color scheme I rejected. The leggings replaced the planned cast for her left hand.

The next thing I did was port the main file for Blender 2.8+ (in this case: Blender 3.6). It's a simple procedure, but I need this for one reason: The extended features for FBX export. Yeah, I've been told that Unity is quite picky, which you'll see why later. After modelling and rigging, I ported this to a pre-made Unity project for that to port to the game via R2Modman. There's a problem that took me a whole week. I tried the two methods, the first attempt (aka: the Ikeiwa method) was outdated when there's a superior way to do this, later.

The left arm is not a Unity issue, but on my end. It's rigged to her right arm for some reason.

I used a second method (aka: The SDK method) which does work... BUT the game crashed because it's an invalid rig or something. That, and her feet is crooked.

The same method, changed the skeleton to ProjectAlpha's pre-made one, but I later found out I didn't export the FBX model properly, hence her being a weird blob monster and sunken half of her body to the floor. You must read the tutorials carefully.

While I was dealing with the issue of dealing with porting Vib into the game, I decided to update the textures so it looks a bit better. I used Aseprite and made a "Vib-Doll" as a color reference.

The sprites have a few pet names. Top-left is the Red Spade default, the second is "Cherry Bomb," third is "Cuddly Sepia," and the last one is "Lovely Stripes." Yes, the headphones are based on the house of cards.

After all that's done, I used the latest method of porting her to BRC, and it's called the "Giygas Method." It's a more sophisticated & friendlier alternative to the first method, and yes it works, no crashes and weird bugs.

Vib and two of my custom made skateboard decks. Top is based off GIRL's My Melody deck, and the other is based off my recently-acquired Powell-Peralta "Tiki Mask" deck.

Anyways, for all that's done, there are a few problems to address: The hands are quite large (though that's probably an aesthetic thing), the jetpack is rigged to the wrong bone, and her fingers doesn't move... But then again, that's probably the result of the ported rig I used. It ain't perfect.

Maybe next time I'll think about making another one, and make it better.