This week we are chatting with Wench, a "Artist, writer, VPer, occasional modder" who does NSFW art from time to time. Also, she's a Goro simp. ;) She has a lot to say about her art and 2077 which we were very fascinated to hear her take. So enjoy and comment below. Please note; some of her images in the gallery below are NSFW

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First can you tell us a little about yourself, where you grew up and what attracted or inspired you to get into digital creations?
Sure! I grew up in the suburbs of the metro-Atlanta area, where I still currently reside with my husband and our two cats, and I'm just a creative nerd at heart. I've always loved art, writing, traditional photography, cosplay, doing random crafts, etc., especially in a fan capacity. Tomb Raider, Star Wars, and 90s-era Disney movies--These were my main muses when I was growing up. My family was late to get on board with having a home PC, but once we finally did, my getting into digital design and art was really just a natural progression combining my innate love of making stuff with my new love of technology.

Specifically, being active in the online roleplaying forums scene in the early 2000s was what really got me interested in digital art. I used to design avatars and signature images for my characters in Photoshop rip-off I can't remember the name of (no, not GIMP--It was so obscure). Although I would approach that process differently these days, because, in hindsight, there was a lot of copyright infringement there. I would just take whatever cool pictures I found online and mash them up with my celebrity "face claim" and upload them without a second thought. Definitely not a method I would recommend now, especially since there are so many free stock resources available, but that was the norm at the time, and that was how I learned my way around digital image editing programs.

How did you learn your digital creation skills?
I'm mostly self-taught when it comes to digital media. I did take art classes in high school and college that established some fundamental knowledge, like the elements and principles of design, but everything I've learned when it comes to virtual photography, graphic design, digital painting, etc. has mostly been trial and error with a few art book/magazine tutorials, YouTube videos, and helpful friends sprinkled in for good measure.

Could you tell us about your process for each both art and modding?
Modding is chaos, haha. I usually need to be in a very manic, determined mood, hyped up on coffee, and ready and willing to sit at my computer for 5 hours uninterrupted while I beat my poor CPU to death by loading and reloading the game to test out minor changes to an .archive file. I try to be somewhat organized and methodical, but it's just a really messy process for me. I've actually been putting off doing some new clothes for Goro because the stars haven't aligned yet for me to make that happen.

Art isn't really any less chaotic, but it is a lot more intuitive since I've been doing it for so long. I usually have a scene in my head, whether it's just a pretty portrait in a pretty location or a full story I want to tell, and I just kinda do it. Which is probably a kind of unsatisfying answer, but I think anyone who has that drive to create understands on some level. Sometimes I do sketches or rough drafts, especially for really big pieces or VP stories, but a lot of times, I just dive into it.

What drew you to cyberpunk 2077 or/and the cyberpunk genre as a whole?
On a superficial level, I've always enjoyed the aesthetics of a grungy, futuristic city with overcrowded skyscrapers, flying cars, and neon lights, but thematically, I was actually never really a huge fan of cyberpunk as a genre until I picked up the game. Not all cyberpunk is bleak, of course, but it does often trend that way, and I'm a big sap who can only handle so much cynicism about humanity and our precarious future. I wasn't even sure if I was going to play it since The Witcher series never vibed with me, and Cyberpunk obviously had a pretty rocky launch. But it was on a Steam sale 6 months or so after the release, I generally like RPGs that let me fully customize my character, and I had heard some of the more egregious bugs had been fixed, so I decided to give it a shot.

I rolled a corpo for my first run, and I was just immediately compelled by this world. Talking with Jenkins, riding the AV to Lizzie's, settling into V's apartment, chatting with Jackie and Vik after the opening scav mission--It all just felt so alive and captivating. Even though I knew very little about the game (I avoid game hype like the plague) or the TTRPG, I never felt overwhelmed by the lore, which I think can very easily happen with an RPG of this scale. It was just immediately familiar. Night City is my trash home away from home.

What message or warning, to you, does the cyberpunk genre imply or relay as a viewer, fan?
I think the big warning that stands out to me is the threat of the super-rich and unregulated megacorporations controlling our lives, often through an irresponsible integration of technology into humanity. Which is alarmingly relevant to many of our current real-world problems.

What drives you to keep making content for 2077?
A love for the world and its characters, including my own V. There is just so much to explore and so many stories to tell.

What about the 2077 characters specifically got your interest? All time favorite NPC in 2077 and why?
Goro is my absolute favorite character in the game, and he has joined the ranks of my all-time favorite characters ever in any piece of media.

I generally have a fondness for very pretty and grumpy old men, so he already had a few points in his favor. But I really adore the complexity of characters who have very strong and arguably "good" principles guiding them internally, but have had that sense of honor warped for a bad cause. It's even better when they have to finally challenge that cognitive dissonance, which is why I love the Devil ending so much. Like many Goro fans, I would love it if V's affection and support (platonic or romantic) could be enough to save him from Arasaka, or if you at least didn't have to side with Hanako to keep Goro alive, but I think he needs to really confront the betrayal and depravity of Saburo in order to begin the process of moving on. I will sell my soul every time so Goro can save his.

In general, I think most, if not all, of the characters in Cyberpunk are incredibly nuanced and well-written, and my favorite parts of the game are often those little moments of conversation that reveal so much about the person and how they feel about the world they live in.

What tools do you use to make your mods? How long does it take to go from idea to posting the mod? What's the process?
I primarily use CP77 Tools, Noesis, 010 Editor, and Blender. I did download WolvenKit a few months back--I was supposed to learn it over my winter holiday break, but time got away from me, as it often does. I've only made photomode pose packs, which alas, are kind of obsolete now, and some new clothes for Goro using in-game assets.

The pose packs were easy once I figured out how the files worked, but kind of tedious to make--It was a lot of line editing in 010 Editor and loading and reloading the game to figure out what poses I wanted to include, and the first one I did probably took me the better part of a week, including doing the reference photos and graphics to put it up on my download page. Making NPC clothes I think is a lot more fun in the moment, especially getting to play in Blender to make little adjustments and refits. Time spent on those varies a lot, though. Sometimes it's as easy as swapping out a line in 010 Editor in 5 minutes, and sometimes it's another week of loading/reloading to check for clipping issues.  

What 2077 mod are you most proud of so far that you made and why?
Definitely the nomad outfit I put together for Goro. I had never used Blender before making this mod, so learning how to use the program and how to import/export modified meshes into the game was a pretty big deal to me. (Also, a huge shoutout to 86maylin for answering all my noob questions and helping me troubleshoot!)

What are your favorite 3 mods by other creators for 2077 and why?
The big one has got to be the Appearance Menu Mod--I wouldn't be able to create most of my VP, especially anything with Goro, without AMM. I also recently started using PhotoMode Unlocker/PMU, which is another powerful tool that has made doing complex scenes with a lot of characters so much easier.

Trying to pick a third is so hard because most of the other mods I use are for hair and clothing, and I don't know that I could pick out a single favorite there. I'm just going to give it to all clothing modders who include a .txt doc with the CET codes in their ZIP files so I don't have to track down the Nexus page or Discord server to find them again later, haha. Y'all are the real MVPs!

Same question for your virtual photography/art, what tools do you use and how long does a picture take to create?
Some of the tools overlap--Like Photoshop is one of my mainstays for most of the things I work it--But it does naturally vary depending on the medium:

• Traditional art: Graphite, multimedia paper or bristol board, colored pencils (I'm partial to Prismacolor, alcohol-based markers (also partial to Prismacolor), waterproof ink (Micron pens my beloved), acyrlic paint (no brand preference)
• Digital art: Adobe Photoshop like 95% if the time, but sometimes Adobe Illustrator and Corel Painter
• Virtual photography:
• In-game tools: AMM, PMU, ambient lights (I use the AMM ones), Reshade (only for Cinematic DOF and Real Long Exposure, which gets rid of crunchy hair), Otis (mostly for hotsampling, which I only started doing at the very end of 2022)
• Post-editing: Adobe Lightroom (I prefer using my own Lightroom presets for color editing rather than Reshade) and Photoshop

And the amount of time it takes to create VP or art depends on so many things. So many things.

For traditional artwork, like color drawing of Valerie, that probably takes me about 15-20 hours from sketch to final product. But I have been known to sometimes start a drawing, not touch it for a year, and then come back to it, so I don't really time myself, haha. Digital paintings usually move faster, but that can also depend on the detail that I'm aiming for. A simple portrait? 6-8 hours. A full body image? 12 hours. Adding a background? 20+ hours. But being in "the flow" or not also contributes a lot to how quickly I finish something--Just being happily immersed in the creative experience and having minimal external interruptions, like my cats demanding attention, means I can work a lot more efficiently.

For virtual photography, it can range from 30 minutes to two weeks. A simple portrait or fashion shot of Valerie is usually pretty quick, especially if I know exactly what I want her to wear and where I want her to be. Adding a lot of props, like the Ophelia-esque "goddess" shot I did, will increase the time--I think those were probably about 2 hours of in-game and post-editing work. Couple pictures with Goro, especially if I want them to be physically interacting with each other, are probably closer to 4+ hours depending on the scene or story I want to tell. And the long photostories I make are usually done over the course of at least a couple days, but usually a week or two. The individual shots themselves might not take that long to set up, but figuring out the story and making even minor posing or expression adjustments adds up when you're doing it across 70 or more frames.

How long have you been doing VP/art?
I've been making some kind of art since I was old enough to hold a crayon, so pretty much my entire life. Up until late high school, I mostly worked with traditional 2D media, especially graphite, charcoal, acrylic paint, and colored pencils, and then in college, when I finally had regular access to my own PC and didn't have to share with family members, I started to work a lot more with digital painting and graphic design. Buying my first Wacom tablet in 2007 was a huge turning point for me, and I really leaned into digital painting almost exclusively for about a decade or so after that.

Virtual photography is a lot newer to me--I actually wasn't even familiar with the term until I started creating for Cyberpunk--But I've always loved taking screenshots in games, even going way back to the original Tomb Raider games on PC in the early 2000s. I actually remember taking a close-up screenshot of Lara and going into MS Paint and editing pixel-by-pixel to clean up some of the sharper lines and edges on her figure. But I think learning about the Dragon Age Inquisition flycam in 2015 was probably my official introduction to VP as I understand it today. The tools are a lot more limited, but the foundation of learning how to manipulate a free cam and adjust FOV, DOF, etc. is there.  

What photo/GFX tools that are not in 2077 would you like to see in the sequel Project Orion?
It's sort of in 2077 already with Johnny and Nibbles, but I would love to see an extension of the catalogue of characters available in photomode. PC players of course have mods that can do this, but I think it'd be a really great base feature to include the majority of the main characters/companions that the protagonist can interact with. Maybe even include synced poses so they can easily "interact" with each other in a shot.

What are your thoughts about AI art, cyberpunk or otherwise? Is it really 'art' in your view or just several 'stolen' images mushed together? What is your take?
I think trying to answer whether or not it's "real art" is a philosophical quandary that kind of detracts from the bigger issue, which is the ethics of how the AI is producing the images. I'm personally less concerned with whether or not it's "real art" and more concerned with the human artists who are having their work replicated without their permission or who are losing jobs and money to programs that couldn't exist without scraping the hard work of the human artists they're imitating. I think it could potentially have a place as another tool that artists could use--prior to looking more into the issues with AI art, I had used ArtBreeder to help me visualize new characters so I won't say there is absolutely no value here--but not without thoroughly addressing concerns about intellectual property and artists' rights.   

Do you think these are skills you'd like to make a career of on some level or you prefer it as a hobby?
They already are a foundation of my career, although it's less on the creative side and more on the technical side. Literally--I'm a technical illustrator by trade, so I make black-and-white line drawings that go into user manuals and whatnot. It's something I waiver on a lot, though: I have considered expanding my professional portfolio to include virtual photography, but I've also been very protective of keeping my passions away from my finances--I'm not sure that's a route I'd really want to pursue as a job. I think in general, I usually prefer to keep my creative outlets as hobbies and an escape from the workspace, not an extension of it.

I've seen a lot of memes from artists that imply if you do vanilla art you will hardly get any notice, but if you do spicy art you'll get tons of attention. Do you feel those memes are accurate for better or worse? What are your thoughts on that?
Coping with the pitfalls of "sex sells" has been something I think a lot of artists have been dealing with for a long time, but it does feel exacerbated in the digital age. Often when I see complaints in the spirit of "only VPers with scantily clad female Vs get any attention," it reminds me a lot of the "titty streamer" complaints that were the hot topic on Twitch a few years ago. (I guess it might still be a hot topic, but I stopped following it, haha.)

From what I saw then and what I see now, I think there are usually three factors at play here when people say that sort of thing:

• The broader topics of sexuality and sexual objectification in media (especially American media, which can dominate conversations about these things)
• Personal struggles that a lot of creative types have when they feel their work is devalued, and they try to make meaning of that, sometimes at the expense of other creators
• Understanding what audience/platform is best suited for what kind of art as well as consideration for what kind of audience you even want

The first factor is too much to get into here, but I think for the other two, it's worthwhile for all types of artists to consider a few things if they're feeling out of place: Like, for instance, are you sharing work in communities that are relevant to your creative interests? Do you even want an audience that's more interested in sexy ladies over, say, cityscapes or avant-garde portraits? What kind of creators or creative hashtags are you yourself following? There is an audience for all kinds of arts and a community for all kinds of artists, but it might require a little introspection for you to find them.

From my personal experience: I do find that the more boudoir-type shoots I've done with my Valerie do tend to get the most attention on Twitter, but not so much on Tumblr. Conversely, the more narrative-based VP and story sets I make do much better on Tumblr than on Twitter. So I don't really think "only sexy female characters get attention" is as much of a universal phenomenon as it might feel sometimes. But again, that's just what I've experienced. Someone else might have a totally different experience and perspective.  

And my most controversial question... Which of the following labels would you assign to whom (one each)? ;)
Marry, BFF, FWB(friend with benefits), Casual Friend, Indifferent, Hate, Kill

Oof, this probably isn't going to make me any friends, haha.

Evelyn: FWB
Goro: Marry
Johnny: Kill
Judy: Casual Friend
Kerry: Hate
Panam: BFF
River: Indifferent

(I feel I need to state for the record that I don't really hate Kerry, but the Tumblr discourse around his sexuality did tire me out to the point that I avoided a lot of Kerry content for about a year. Otherwise, he and River are really side-by-side in the "indifferent" category.)

And finally what are the socials people can find you, and do you do commissions? Any final words to the readers? Thank you for your time!
I'm fereldanwench in most major fandom spaces, but Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram are where I'm most active, and I keep my mods at my Ko-fi shop (100% free). I don't take commissions, but every now and then I am open to art trades with other members of the community.

Thanks so much for inviting me to participate! 💙