Is project tarkov thing? I always wondered why the 3 of the had similar names and I never could find any connection besides them being friends and Tarkov
The connection is mostly around the tidbits of their characters designs and that the artist,
JIZILZUMI has been drawing tarkov/tactical girls before.
The elements that makes it tarkov were:
- Whiskey Project wore USEC baseball cap and is mentioned in her lore that she's part of it. In Tarkov USEC is one of the PMC side you can be part of, representing the western-focused ones. She also has Jack Daniels on some of her picture, something that you can acquire in game.
- Sleepy meanwhile has a BEAR hat and holding a bottle of moonshine. BEAR is again, one of the PMC you can join in Tarkov, representing the "russian" focused ones and the moonshine is also something you can find in game. And this might be a reach, but her adidas-like jacket is almost similar to that of Killa, a hostile scavenger boss you can fight in Tarkov that wore such jacket along with armored vest and steel masked helmet painted to match the adidas 3 white lines.
- Rye herself, while not based from either BEAR or USEC, is drawn wearing a steel russian helmet that you can find and wear in Tarkov. And her name is based from the Rye croutons snacks that you can find in-game.
As Sleepy has explained it, basically she designed her avatar and then a modeler saw that and designed her model. But in order to use it he requested her to add the Project to her name. I assume that it's the same case with Whiskey and Rye. I don't know anything past that because that would imply that he stopped doing it after those three for some reason.
Whiskey came first, so I guess that when Sleepy comes in, Jizi decided to merge the design Sleepy got to fit with Whiskey's, while making new one to fit Rye when Rye started out.
Also funnily enough, it wasnt really started on Whiskey either. Jizi did the design of a japanese twitch vtuber named ChocolatteGames (currently on hiatus) whose very first design is basically "Whiskey but with pink hair"