Cyberpunk RED at a Glance: roles, archetypes, and the brief

Sera booked a Cyberpunk RED commission with me in January and the first thing she wrote in the brief was "I want her to look like the show." I asked which show. She meant Edgerunners. The character sheet she sent was a Cyberpunk RED Media. The two things, the visual she wanted and the game she was playing, were not the same era of the same setting, and if I had not asked, the painting would have looked like a fan-art piece for Cyberpunk 2077 instead of a portrait of her actual character. That intake call saved the commission.

This is a working overview of Cyberpunk RED for anyone briefing a character art commission for it: the ten roles, the visual implications of each, and the one question that matters more than any of the role specifics, which era of Cyberpunk you actually want the painting to live in. If you have a RED character and the visual references in your head are doing slightly different jobs than the character sheet on your table, this piece is for you.

Table of contents

• What Cyberpunk RED actually is
• The 2020 vs RED vs Edgerunners-era split
• The ten roles and what each one wants visually
• The brief checklist for a RED character
• Common briefing mistakes
• A short anecdote — the Media who became a Rockerboy
• Closing notes

What Cyberpunk RED actually is

Cyberpunk RED is the current edition of R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk tabletop game, set in 2045, after the events that ended the 2020 setting and before the events of the Cyberpunk 2077 video game. The world is in the recovery phase from a global tech collapse, the wireless NET is gone, megacorps are clawing their way back to dominance, and most characters are operating out of the rubble of Night City. The role system is direct descent from the 1988 original: ten role packages, each defining what your character does for a living and what unique abilities they get.

For a portrait commission, RED brings a specific visual register that is different from both its predecessor and its descendant. The aesthetic leans into post-collapse practicality. People wear what works. Gear is patched. Cyberware is more subtle than the late-2070s extravagance. The fashion is closer to Tank Girl meets utility wear than it is to the neon Edgerunner saturation most clients arrive picturing. Telling me your character is RED versus 2020 versus Edgerunners-era changes the entire palette and silhouette of the painting.

The 2020 vs RED vs Edgerunners-era split

This is the most important conversation I have on RED commissions, and the one most clients have not had with themselves yet. The three visual eras of Cyberpunk look different, and a brief that mixes them ends up looking like nothing in particular.

Cyberpunk 2020 is the older aesthetic. 1988 design language. Big shoulders, big hair, vinyl, leather, mirrorshades, the chrome-and-spandex read of late-eighties cyberpunk illustration. The roles existed in this edition with the same names. If you are playing a 2020 character or want a deliberately retro look, the palette is deeper saturation, the silhouettes are more angular, and the cyberware reads as visibly bolted-on. Think the original Cyberpunk RPG cover art, or the Hardwired-era novels, or Akira.

Cyberpunk RED is the current edition. 2045 in setting, post-DataKrash. The visual is more grounded. Practical fabrics, layered streetwear, fewer obvious cyberware showpieces, more wear and patch on the gear. The color palette is more muted than 2077: sodium yellows, indigos, dull reds, faded blacks. The neon is there but not constant. Characters look like they live somewhere that has been rebuilt twice.

Edgerunners / Cyberpunk 2077 is what most clients have actually seen and what most picture when they say "cyberpunk." Set in 2077, this is the high-saturation, high-cyberware extreme. Faces full of obvious implants. Neon everywhere. Chromed-out limbs. The aesthetic that the Netflix anime hammered home in 2022. This is not the era of Cyberpunk RED. Some of the visual elements have crept back into RED imagery because the video game's success rewrote what most people picture, but the actual RED book and timeline sit fifteen-plus years earlier.

The question I ask every RED client: which one of those three is the picture in your head? If you say "RED but I want some of the Edgerunners vibe," that is fine, but it needs to be on the table at the start. We can paint a RED character whose look leans toward the later era: maybe they are a bit ahead of the curve, maybe their gear came from a corp salvage run, maybe they just dress like they wish it was 2070. But if the brief is silent on this and your references are split across all three eras, the painting splits along the same fault line and ends up looking inconsistent.

The roles tell me what the character does. The era tells me what the character looks like. The two are independent decisions and the brief needs both.

The ten roles and what each one wants visually

Each RED role has a visual shorthand. These are not rules. They are starting points I use before the brief refines them.

Rockerboy

The performer. Musicians, agitators, frontmen and frontwomen. They make their living by moving crowds, often in service of a cause or a sound. Visually, Rockerboys are the most stylized characters in the game. The costume is the character. Big silhouettes, distinctive personal branding, hair that reads from across a room, gear that doubles as stage presence. If your Rockerboy is not visually loud, the brief needs to explain why.

Solo

The combat specialist. Mercenaries, bodyguards, military veterans. Solos look like the work: armored, scarred, gear that has been used. The trick with a Solo portrait is to avoid the generic "tactical guy with a gun" read. The character needs a distinguishing mark. A signature weapon, a specific scar, a piece of personal gear that is not strictly functional. Otherwise they paint as a stock soldier in any setting.

Netrunner

The hacker. Covered in detail in the netrunner portraits piece, because the role is the strangest brief in the genre. In RED specifically, netrunners are mobile and field-based. They dive into local architectures, often near the target physically. So the visual is less basement-chair, more van-or-rooftop. Deck is portable. Gear is light.

Tech

The fixer of physical things. Mechanics, gear-heads, weapon customizers, vehicle modders. Techs are the most under-painted role in the game, partly because their visual identity is in their tools rather than their fashion. A great Tech portrait shows the hands, the work surface, the gear they have built, and the small modifications they have made to their own clothes: a custom pocket, a tool harness, oil staining where the rags get stuck.

Medtech

The doctor. Combat surgeons, ripperdocs, cyberware installers. The visual range here is wide, from sterile, clinical practitioners in clean coats to back-alley body-modders working out of a basement with questionable lighting. The role allows for both. The brief needs to pick one. A Medtech portrait often benefits from including a piece of work (a tool, a partly-finished cyberware install, a sample case) to establish what kind of doctor we are talking about.

Media

The journalist. Reporters, documentary makers, propagandists, agitators with a camera. Media characters are dressed for access. They need to fit into the rooms they cover. A streetwise Media looks like the street. A corporate-embedded Media wears the corp dress code. The defining accessory is the recording gear, which can be subtle (a contact lens cam) or obvious (a shoulder rig). I ask which side of the line the character is on.

Exec

The corporate operator. Middle management to upper-tier. Execs wear corporate uniform (the suit, the haircut, the watch), but the painting wants to find the crack in the surface. A perfectly-painted Exec is boring; a slightly-frayed Exec is a story. The collar is wrong. The shoes have been on the wrong floor. There is a hairline fracture in the chrome dental work that says they have not been to a dentist in three months. The brief should give me something to break.

Lawman

Police, security, corp law enforcement. The Lawman aesthetic is built around the uniform of whoever they work for, and the question is how much of the uniform they actually still wear. A by-the-book Lawman is full kit. A jaded one is half-uniform and half-personal gear. A corrupt one looks like the people they are supposed to be policing. The painting should make the answer obvious within two seconds of looking.

Fixer

The middleman. Information brokers, deal-makers, connection-runners. Fixers dress to be remembered by the people who matter and forgotten by everyone else. Their visual identity is in confidence and minor markers of status (a specific watch, a particular jacket, a way of standing) rather than overt cyberware or armor. Fixer portraits live or die on the eye. I want the painting to feel like the character knows exactly who you are and what you want before you have said anything.

Nomad

The road family. Vehicular nomads who live on the highways between cities, in caravan-like groups. The visual is sun, dust, wind, layered protective gear, a relationship with a specific vehicle. Nomads are the only RED role with a strong outdoor visual. Most of the others read as city-shaped. The brief should mention the vehicle and the family pack the Nomad rides with, even if those do not appear in the portrait, because the character's stance and gear should reflect a life spent outside.

The brief checklist for a RED character

If you are putting together a Cyberpunk RED commission, these are the questions that, answered, make the painting go fast and land close:

• Era. RED (2045), 2020 (retro), or RED-but-leaning-toward-Edgerunners (the most common ask). Be explicit.
• Role. Which of the ten. If your character is multi-role or hybrid, pick the primary visual identity.
• One-line pitch. As with any character, the essential vibe in a sentence.
• Skin, hair, eye specifics. Hex codes welcome. Aging, scarring, distinctive features.
• Cyberware. One or two specific modifications that matter. "Lots of cyberware" is not a brief.
• Outfit. One distinctive piece, not a full inventory. What they would never take off.
• Signature object. A weapon, a tool, a deck, an instrument, a camera, a vehicle. The thing the painting can put in their hands.
• Tone. Where the character sits emotionally. Winning, losing, hanging on, on top.
• Setting. Where the portrait takes place. A rooftop, a bar, the back of a van, a corp lobby, a clinic.
• References. Three to five for vibe and palette. Trim aggressively.

That is one page. The order form has fields for each of these, and the character art services page walks through what each tier of the commission actually includes.

Common briefing mistakes

A handful of patterns I have learned to flag at intake:

• Era confusion. The single most common issue. Mixed references across all three Cyberpunk eras, no statement of which one we are in. Fix this in the first sentence of the brief.
• Role-as-personality. "She's a Solo" is the role. It is not the character. Tell me what kind of Solo. Veteran, fresh, mercenary-by-circumstance, mercenary-by-design.
• Cyberware overload. A character with eight visible implants reads as costume. Pick one or two that matter, give them a reason.
• No environment. A character floating in front of a generic neon wall is a stock cyberpunk image. Tell me where they are standing.
• Edgerunners palette on a 2020 character. Saturated magenta and cyan on what is supposed to be a 1988-aesthetic character. The eras have different palettes. Lock one.
• Generic "Night City." Night City is a city of neighborhoods and the corp tower vs the alley vs the Nomad outskirts each look different. Be specific about the block.

A short anecdote — the Media who became a Rockerboy

In February I took a brief from a player named Yusra who was running a RED street-level campaign. She wanted a portrait of her Media, a freelance reporter covering Night City's underground music scene. The brief was tight on personality and loose on visual. I sent her the first sketch with the character in a streetwear-Media look: cargo pants, a worn jacket, a small shoulder-rig camera, a notebook in one hand.

She wrote back that something was off. The character felt like an outsider in the painting. Which made sense — that is the role — but it was not the painting she wanted. After a fifteen-minute call we figured out that the character had, in three sessions of play, started dressing more and more like the bands she was covering. The brief was for a Media, but the picture in Yusra's head was a Media who had begun to look like a Rockerboy without quite committing. I repainted her with louder hair, a band-tee under the jacket, the camera still there but partly hidden, and a stance that was closer to performer than observer. Same role, same character, totally different read.

That is the kind of thing the brief checklist will not catch. Sometimes the character has drifted away from their role over the course of a campaign, and the portrait wants to honor where they are now, not where they started. I ask about this on every RED kickoff call. Has the character changed? What do they wear now that they did not wear at session zero? Those answers go on the canvas.

Closing notes

Cyberpunk RED is a wide setting that rewards a brief that names the era as carefully as it names the role. The ten roles are starting points. The era and the personal touches are what make a portrait actually look like your character instead of a generic role illustration.

If you have a RED character ready to go, the order form is where the brief lands, and the character art services page walks through what each tier includes for a cyberpunk piece. The portfolio has a handful of cyberpunk commissions across all three eras. Looking at them with the era split in mind tends to clarify which version of the genre your character actually wants to live in.

For deeper genre context, the cyberpunk character art commission guide is the broader overview, and the cyberpunk RED character art tips piece covers the system-specific painting notes. If you are choosing between two roles for the same character concept, the street samurai vs netrunner archetypes piece compares the two most-painted roles head to head. The neon palette painting piece covers the color logic across eras, and the cybernetic limb and face design references piece is the technical read on the cyberware itself.

If you are crossing into broader sci-fi territory and want to see how cyberpunk compares to the wider genre, the sci-fi character art commission guide is the sister piece. And if you have not yet decided which style you want the painting in, the commission style chooser is the right read before the brief lands.

Send the brief when it is ready. Tell me the era in the first line. The role goes second. The rest follows from there.