Meet eXcel Vector's main character, René Belle Amelia Kiel-mars. That name may be a bit of a mouthful, so you can just call her by her first name, René Belle (both names together are her first name, and she doesn't much like it when people try to shorten it).
René Belle is a jack-of-all-trades; bounty hunter, cargo runner, private investigator, and (when work is scarce) space pirate, operating from an extra-orbital position aboard her ship and home, the Paradox, as a work-around to various planetary laws (deep space is more or less the equivalent of international waters). Incredibly skilled in many fields, with social skills being a glaring exception. her lack of social skills aside, she's quick-witted and resourceful, necessary traits when growing up on your own in the undercity streets of civilized Mars (humanity has depleted Earth's resources ages ago, and with the discovery of so-called "excel vector" technology, taken to space to colonize and explore other galaxies of our solar system).

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This image actually has a fair bit of backstory to it, so gather 'round, everyone, as I tell a tale of misfortune, perseverance, and glory...
...well, not quite so dramatic. Anyhow.
René Belle has actually been rendered before, and well over a year ago, right here; she's been one of my characters for even longer, though she wasn't originally a badass spacefaring girl, but simply a for-fun visual design that I ended up falling in love with.
Back in June of this year - just about a year after that previous render - I suffered from an unfortunate botching of my data backups before reformatting my computer (a simple case of overconfidence; I was sure I'd backed up all my important stuff, and didn't double-check my 3D content folders before the reformatting process). As a result, René Belle's 3D model was lost, along with a fair bit of related projects. I didn't much feel like working on anything eXcel Vector-related after that.
Fast-forward to the present; working on commissions and various other personal projects, I've been feeling a building urge to bring René Belle back to life. In a stroke of good fortune, some 3D models of René Belle from even earlier were still floating around (terribly outdated designs, but important, hard-to-replicate details like her face were still intact). After only a couple hours of work, I was able to get her back to nearly her former glory; a few more hours today pushed her design to even-better-than-before status, and after rendering and postworking... here we are.
The rest of the characters from eXcel Vector are unfortunately further gone, as they don't have older models to rebuild from; luckily, however, none of their designs are terribly important, and needed to be re-done anyway. My models of her ship are the only big loss, but I have so many images of it, recreating it shouldn't be too hard to do.
With René Belle back-in-action, it sets the stage for some progress on the rest of the story. Nothing will happen for a little while - I've got commissions to work on, other story projects, and non-art stuff to do - but things will be much easier from here on out.
We'll see where things go from here!