Rio

Battle	🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Empathy	🟩🟩🟩🟩
Knowledge	🟨🟨🟨
Identity	🟨🟨🟨
Temperance	🟨🟨

Bio

A laborer working an a bleak future until she uncovers the Heart of Diamond, a necklace that gives her the memories of a parallel world and a far happier version of herself. By applying pressure to the necklace, she can summon her Neon Diver Argent armor around herself. Using this, she fights for change and the creation of a world that she knows can exist. Usually she is the type of person who becomes annoyed at seeing a person in need and having to help, the type who becomes depressed and frustrated and negative, but while in her armor she acts quite different... How selfless or selfish her motivations are, and which version of Rio is the real one, both remain to be seen.

A high-ranking officer in the Gestalt Divers, protecting the idyllic seaside city from rampaging machines that emerge from the ocean depths. One day the Heart of Diamond appears around her neck, and with it terrible nightmares of another world gripped by exploitation. Gripped by a desire to help others she does everything she can to help her other self, searching for people in the parallel world through the versions of them she can meet, passing along information, fighting harder than ever to save both worlds. Chipper and energetic, she barrels through life punching first and shaking hands later, aiming to someday stand beside her idol Sable. Whether she's driven by altruism or grandeur, and which version of Rio is the real one, both remain to be seen.

Character Relations

Whitney

Opposed to her idea of reviving the Neon Knights rebel group, she's content with just helping out with small scale things and gets frustrated with her lofty ambition of destroying the entire Royal Guard. However, she respects her drive and agrees with her end goal enough to work towards it as well. Simultaneously her best friend and most annoying co-worker. She can't entirely ignore Whitney's complaints about her own lack of direction.

Sable

The most prominent idol in Rio's life, inspired by her cool and stylish demeanor she modeled herself after Sable in an attempt to be more popular, but now so much of her identity is wrapped up in Sable that it's difficult to fight against her. However, if Rio exists to ask why society is the way it is then Sable exists to answer "because it was programmed that way", so she's resolved to fight against her. If it's ever going to be possible to reach out to her it's only going to be after an arduous battle...

Azure

A frustrating person, evidently manipulated into propagating the suffering the status quo causes but too caught up in her own fears and pain to recognize the position she's in. It might be possible to win her over, but there's just so much to untangle.

Gallery

An update to the reference sheet, lately I've been drawing Rio's eyes too big and I don't know how it keeps happening.

Default reference, somehow doesn't look quite right. Maybe with more practice I'll come up with something more consistent.

Rio's battle forme. It's vaguely clam-themed purely in service of using an axe as a weapon, which can fold into a hammer. Another reference sheet may be needed to express this.

Various sketches showcasing Rio's personality, all from group draw sessions at the moment. I'll come back to do more doodles later.

A rare complete illustration. Maybe shows off some of my issues with shading, but I'm mostly content with it.

Solidifying the Argent armor as something two-tone with less grey mucking up the values. I should do another one where it's clear the blue accents glow in the dark, it's very important that they do that. That's where the Neon part of the name comes from.

Various alternate outfits based on ones I saw at the store once.

Old material

Title screen of a prototype demo I made in 2021

Sprites used in the prototype, made by roughly tracing a 3D model.

Practicing using Aseprite to create shading and highlights.

2022 reference sheet.

2022 site icon.

Supplementary material for the 2022 reference sheet.

Early version of Rio and Argent's armor from 2019. I showed this off in college as a pitch for the final game development project. I don't know if anyone voted for it above 3rd preference. As you can tell from the notes, I was thinking about changing her transformed name from Neon White to Argent even in this early stage. Neon White (2022) coming out made me feel both extremely relieved and wanting to shake my monitor.