However, the character design was stolen from iNiS. osu! needed a custom design for a dancer, so when the subject of creating a mascot was brought up on IRC one day, I spontaneously made a topic. The rest is history, and the mascot, currently known as Pippi (resembles the nick peppy), was soon born.
A bunch of 2D artists presented their drawings, and in the end, Sarumaru's design was chosen.
I'm currently working on the dancer. I post a picture every now and then, and ask the community about things to improve. The model is getting close to the finish line, and we'll hopefully see it in-game before during the start of at the end of November in 2008 When It's Done.
Pippi will most likely be cel-shaded with outlines for that anime-like look, and the triangle-count will be at approximately 10,000, which means you'll need a decent graphics card (Mid-range GeForce 6 series/Radeon R400 series or better should be more than enough for 60 FPS). If you're not sure if your computer is powerful enough, click here. If your computer is ancient, don't worry, there will be an option to turn off dancers (but you should really just spend ~$50 on a new graphics card). Look at the last/next-to-last page of this topic for the latest WIP render.
Show's over, folks. New thread will be created once everything else is finished.
July 2011 Update: Might as well post this somewhere. Super-duper-final model with a real-time HLSL material.