The character that became Ibuki has been originally conceived as a ninja boy before the gender was swapped, and the male version's design might have been re-used for Ibuki's sparring partner Yūta Homura. "Street Fighter III" producer Tomoshi Sadamoto recalled that while Ibuki was the first "real" ninja character (unlike Vega), in her case they did not have a problem with finding reference materials in Japan, as they did with African fighter Elena. However, "the difficult thing about making Ibuki was putting her hair together" as "she had 1.2 to 1.3x the character data, compared to the other characters." The task of attaching her hair parts took several months to complete, with Sadamoto himself doing this work in the end.