Street samurai vs netrunner vs corpo: archetype visual cues for cyberpunk portraits

Nadia mailed me a brief in late January for "a four-up cyberpunk party portrait," and the four characters she described were a street samurai, a netrunner, a corpo defector, and a fixer. She sent me twelve reference images. Eleven of them were street samurai. The other one was V from Cyberpunk 2077. I called her instead of painting that day, because the problem wasn't the references — it was that the references didn't tell me what made the four characters look different from each other.

This guide is for players and GMs commissioning cyberpunk archetypes — solo briefs, party lineups, NPC sets — and for the painter trying to keep five archetypes from looking like the same character in five hats. The cyberpunk archetypes share a genre. They do not share a silhouette, a posture, or a palette.

Table of contents

• Why the archetype is the first decision
• Street samurai: chrome, weight, and the visible weapon
• Netrunner: less body, more rig
• Corpo: the suit and the subtle implant
• Fixer: the layered wardrobe and the eye contact
• Nomad: dust, salvage, and the road on the boots
• Posture: the cue the brief usually forgets
• Common briefing mistakes
• Starting your archetype brief

Why the archetype is the first decision

When I open a cyberpunk brief, the first thing I look for is the archetype. Not the name, not the lifepath, not the cyberware list. The archetype tells me the silhouette, and the silhouette is the first thing the viewer reads at thumbnail size. A street samurai and a netrunner can sit at the same table in the same campaign, but if you paint them in the same posture with the same palette, the viewer will register one character in two outfits.

The five archetypes I get briefed most often are street samurai, netrunner, corpo, fixer, and nomad. There are more in the source material, but those five cover something like ninety percent of the briefs that land in my inbox. The Cyberpunk RED at a glance roles and archetypes breakdown goes deeper on the full role list. This piece is about the visual cues that separate the five most-painted ones.

Tell me the archetype in the first sentence of the brief. The next three hundred words then refine that silhouette instead of inventing it.

Street samurai

The street samurai is the genre's combat operator. Heavy chrome, layered tactical gear, weapons visible at portrait scale. If you brief me a street samurai, I am going to give you broad shoulders carrying weight that may or may not be armour, a settled balanced posture, and an outfit that has been chosen for fights rather than for photographs.

What the silhouette does:

• Shoulders carry mass. Whether the character is small or large, the shoulders read heavy — pauldrons, a stab-vest under the jacket, a slung rifle riding the deltoid.
• Chrome is visible and structural. A chrome forearm, a sub-dermal weapon ridge, a cyberoptic catching light. The cyberware is functional, not decorative. The cybernetic limb and face design references walkthrough goes deeper on functional versus cosmetic chrome.
• Street-fashion layering. Tactical jacket over base layer over body armour. Boots that are reinforced, not stylish. Belts that hold gear, not just buckles.
• Palette is muted with one accent. Earth tones, oil-darkened canvas, occasional military green. The single neon hit — a pink scarf, a cyan visor edge — is structural, not the whole outfit. The neon palette painting sibling covers the two-of-three rule that keeps this deliberate rather than chaotic.

What I sketch around: the temptation to paint the samurai as a billboard for every weapon they own. A portrait can show one or two weapons. If your brief lists seven, I'll pick the hero piece and let the rest live in the campaign notes.

Netrunner

The netrunner is the opposite read. Less body, more rig. Where the samurai owns the shoulders, the netrunner owns the cabling, the neural ports, and the half-elsewhere stare. The body is often smaller in the frame because the gear takes up the visual weight.

What the silhouette does:

• Cabling is visible. A jack at the back of the neck, ports at the temples, a deck slung at the hip with a cable that ties the character to the rig. RED-era runners are wired in; 2077 runners are more discreet but the neural ports still read.
• The body is not what the painting is about. Less armour, less layering, less visible weapon. Clothes are usually closer-fitting because they live next to the rig. Hoodies, slim trousers, soft-soled shoes. The character has been sitting still for a long time.
• The eyes are halfway elsewhere. A netrunner portrait that makes eye contact with the viewer is one who has just come out of the rig. A netrunner who is currently in the rig has eyes that are open and unfocused, often with a faint cyan reflection.
• Palette runs cool. More cyan, more sodium-yellow screen glow, less of the warm street palette. The room around the character is darker because the character lives in dark rooms.

The netrunner portrait painting another world walkthrough is a deep dive on one specific netrunner commission start to finish.

Corpo

The corpo is the genre's quiet archetype. No visible chrome, no street-fashion layering, no obvious weapon. The corpo's visual story is the suit, the implants you almost can't see, and the posture of someone whose threat doesn't have to be visible.

• Tailored clothing. A jacket cut to the shoulders, trousers that hang correctly, shoes that are clean. Sharply-cut wool over a sub-dermal weave reads more corpo than an obviously armoured plate carrier. The modern fashion in character art piece is a useful sibling on tailoring as a visual signal.
• Implants are clean and small. Kiroshi-style optics rather than chrome-eye sockets. A discreet neural port behind the ear instead of jacks down the spine. The cyberware says "expensive," not "loud."
• Hands are clean. Manicured, sometimes ringed, sometimes wearing a single high-end watch. Corpo hands have not been working on engines or holding rifles.
• Palette is restrained. Charcoal, navy, oxblood, ivory. The corpo can wear one saturated colour but the rest of the palette stays narrow.

The corpo defector is its own variant. Briefed as "ex-corpo," the silhouette keeps the tailoring but starts to fray. Torn cuff, scuffed shoes, hair grown past the corporate cut, implants still clean but posture shifted from controlled to alert. A corpo defector is a corpo who has stopped being safe.

Fixer

The fixer is the most layered wardrobe in the genre. The fixer's job is being seen, recognised, and remembered. If the samurai dresses for fights and the corpo dresses for boardrooms, the fixer dresses for the bar where the deal happens.

• Wardrobe is deliberate and read as fashion. Long coats, statement jewellery, custom tailoring, sometimes a hat. The clothing was chosen, not found.
• Cyberware is decorative. A chrome jaw etched with a maker's pattern, a forearm prosthetic with a brand mark, eyes chosen for colour as well as function. Fixers wear cyberware the way another character would wear a tattoo.
• Eye contact is direct. A fixer portrait that doesn't make eye contact has lost its grip. Default fixer pose is settled, confident, slightly forward.
• The palette can run rich. Burgundy, deep teal, gold, oxblood, jade. The fixer can wear saturation that no other archetype can pull off.

The fixer is the archetype I get briefed most often as "a cyberpunk character but I want it to look luxurious." That's a fixer. Name it as a fixer and the brief gets clearer.

Nomad

The nomad lives outside the city. Dust, salvage, road wear, family motifs. The silhouette is built around movement and weather rather than chrome and tailoring, and the posture reads steadier and less wired than any of the city archetypes.

• Dust on everything. Boots, jacket cuffs, the lower half of the trousers, the headscarf. Even a clean nomad portrait reads as someone who has just stepped inside.
• Layered for weather, not for combat. Multiple layers about sun, wind, dust, cold. A wide-brimmed hat or a kerchief. Goggles around the neck or pushed up onto the forehead.
• Cyberware is salvaged. A brass-finished chrome arm rather than mirror-chrome. A maker's mark etched by hand. The implants look like they were installed by a road medtech.
• Family motifs. A patch from the convoy, a pendant that meant something, a pattern on the scarf. Nomads carry their people on them. Naming the convoy in the brief pulls the colour code straight into the palette.

Posture

The cue the brief usually forgets is posture, and posture is what separates a finished archetype from a costume.

Street samurai: settled, balanced, weight on both feet, shoulders down. They can take a hit and they know it.

Netrunner: leaning forward or sitting back, weight on one leg, hands often in the lap or close to the rig. They have been still for hours.

Corpo: upright, weight even, hands at rest. The posture of someone who has had elocution lessons.

Fixer: slightly forward, weight on the front foot, hands often visible and gesturing. The fixer is selling something even when standing still.

Nomad: weight on the back foot, hips squared, hands often at the belt or in a pocket. Settled the way someone who has spent a lot of time outside is settled.

For a party portrait, don't line them all up at the same angle. Stagger the postures, stagger the eye lines, and let each archetype live in its own slightly different palette neighbourhood — same key light direction, same atmospheric haze, but different colour weight per character. That's what kept Nadia's four-up legible in the final piece.

Common briefing mistakes

The same five mistakes most months. Naming them ahead of time saves a round of email.

• Mixed references for one archetype. "Street samurai" but three corpo references and two fixer references is a brief that hasn't picked yet. Better to pick before you send.
• Listing all the cyberware. Twelve implants don't fit in a portrait. Three do. The cybernetic limb and face design references sibling has the longer treatment.
• Forgetting posture. A brief that names role, gear, gang — but never says how the character stands — leaves the most expressive variable up to me.
• Two archetypes in one character. "She's a netrunner who's also a street samurai" is two portraits. Pick the primary archetype for the silhouette and let the secondary read as background — a netrunner with a sidearm, or a samurai with a deck slung.
• 2077 visual register for a RED character. Different eras, different silhouettes. The Cyberpunk RED character art tips sibling walks through the era split.

Starting your archetype brief

If you've got a single character or a whole party sitting in your campaign notes, the order form takes the brief in plain text — name the archetype in the first line, then refine. The portfolio has cyberpunk pieces where you can see how archetypes paint differently in practice. The character work service page covers turnaround, styles, and what's included in the kickoff call. For original-IP cyberpunk worlds where the archetypes don't quite match the source-material categories, the custom projects service page is the right starting point.

A few sibling reads while you're here: the Cyberpunk character art commission guide sits one level up from this piece; the V Cyberpunk 2077 customizable protagonist portrait handles the V-archetype crossover question; the sci-fi character art commission guide is the related-genre reference; the anime and Souls fan art commission guide covers the V-in-anime-styling crossover. For pricing and process, the character art commission pricing page and the character art process sketch to color final walkthrough.

Pick the archetype first. The painting follows.