Yuzu's New Look Contest

Intimidated by Mocha's explosive popularity, Yuzu is putting out a call for intrepid artists to help him discover his new look! Like to draw? Think you can make Yuzu shine like a diamond? Read on to find out more!

osu!catch might be one of our smaller gamemodes, but Yuzu isn't content to let Mocha reign in the limelight forever.

It's time for a refresh, and we're trusting it to our amazingly talented community artists to make it happen!

There's a few things to keep in mind, however. This contest is about giving Yuzu a new look, not redesigning him completely. We want to keep some things the same, but the rest is up to you!

Who is Yuzu?

Yuzu is the osu!catch mascot. He's most commonly seen in the base game skin, holding up the catcher.

The official colour for osu!catch is blue, and thus Yuzu's primary colour should be blue in your character design as well.

His skin should be skin coloured, though. Not blue. When we say blue is his primary colour, we mean in his design, not in his skin.

Yuzu is male, and a teenager. While we're all about new looks, he needs to stay as both of those things and not magically become anything else.

Any special features?

The main theme we are aiming for with the osu! mascots is coloured bangs.

This should be the centrepiece of your character design in some way - Yuzu's bangs should be unique and recognizable compared to pippi and Mocha.

Any entries without unique, identifiable bangs will be disqualified. Super important to take this into consideration when considering a new design.

Yuzu should always be recognizable as Yuzu regardless of what form he's in or what he's wearing, even if he's wearing nothing at all. A flashy outfit is good, but a flashier character is even better.

Yuzu is also moving around a lot, perhaps the most of all the osu! mascots. Giving him features that portray motion would be an excellent idea. Characters with long hair often have no difficulty expressing emotion. Characters with short hair usually use props or an element of their costume to achieve the same thing.

What's this about props?

Props are great, as pippi and Mocha have demonstrated. Yuzu would very much like to have one as well. You should create some sort of key prop that helps make Yuzu identifiable.

This can be something like a headband, a wristband, a sleeve tag, facial scar.. a medallion, anything like that. Mocha has her bandaid, Yuzu needs something too.

Tattoos are not okay, though. Yuzu isn't into those.

What about his personality?

Yuzu doesn't really have a personality at the moment. No cohesive backstory has been made, and his current look doesn't really give much of a hint as to what that can be.

Design Yuzu's new look with an emotion design in mind. Imagine a brief backstory and try to visualise Yuzu's emotions and interactions as they'd show in your illustrations.

Breathe some life into his character.

Can I add anything else?

You could consider something like an assistant or a sidekick. 2B from NieR: Automata has Pod 042, so why couldn't Yuzu have his own assistant too?

Perhaps a floating plate, a cat holding a net, or some nifty gadget that helps explain hyperdashing are all things you could consider.

This is a little different from our previous osu! mascot design contest, where we asked for a full redesign instead of a refresh. To clarify, Yuzu's going to remain Yuzu, but he's going to look a lot better after this is all done.

Interested in giving this a shot? Head on over to the contest page and submit your take on Yuzu's new look.

The contest will remain open for 31 days from the date of this post - you can check the contest listing for a handy countdown timer if you're unsure.

We'll be putting all of the prospective entries that meet the criteria we've laid out here for public voting. The top three entries will receive 6, 4 and 2 months of osu!supporter respectively.

When choosing Yuzu's new look, we'll consider the weight of the community's votes in the top choices, but we will ultimately choose who we feel best suits what we're looking for. First place in the votes might not become his new look, but we'll definitely keep it in mind!

We're excited to see what people come up with. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below and ask!

—Ephemeral