Chapter 19

That afternoon, Pei Qian woke up.

He had been sleeping extremely well for the past few days and he could not understand why.

Was this the power of money?

The thought of having 300,000 to splurge on while breaking free of his state of poverty soon gave Pei Qian a peace of mind.

He turned on his laptop, logged into the resource site and received a notification – it was Ruan Guangjian’s original arts.

Even though the download speed was not slow, the original arts were of extremely high quality and so the downloads took some time.

“He really completed it on time, how efficient.”

“I wonder how’s the quality.”

“He had better not give me something too beautiful! I’ll die if it’s too beautiful!”

There was almost a week left to settlement and Pei Qian had to get the game published as quickly as possible.

The system stated that Pei Qian must not have any unannounced products a week before settlement.

In order words, the system would only allow Pei Qian to engage in a proper business workflow to calculate profits and losses a week after the products were published.

If there were any unannounced products, the system would postpone the settlement date and that was something Pei Qian could not accept.

He opened up the original arts that Ruan Guangjian had sent.

When he saw the first piece, he was stunned.

“What the f*ck! How is it so detailed?”

“Is this original art really bloody just 700 yuan apiece?!”

Pei Qian thought he was seeing things.

Even though he wasn’t too knowledgeable about original arts, it was easy to tell the difference between a good and bad drawing – the most obvious way was to look at its details!

After all, for original arts, each detail would be painstakingly drawn by an artist. The more details there were, the more effort that the artist had invested into drawing it.

Normally, for original arts that are at a poster level where the prices could easily go up to tens of thousands, the artists would have to spend an entire week drawing it and the details would be extremely rich.

Whereas original arts that cost a few hundreds of yuan were usually made in batches with a tight schedule. Even if the artists wanted to make it more detailed, they wouldn’t have the time to do so.

However, these original arts were way more detailed than Pei Qian could have imagined. Not only that, the styles were extremely fresh!

This original art was meant to be Guan Yu, the Martial Saint of the Dragon clan. Previously, Ma Yang’s requirement form had only requested for it to be a dragon without any mention of the details.

However, there were all sorts of details on this original art!

The background was an ink drawn hill where it was surrounded by clouds and filled with greenery, giving off the feeling of Chinese paintings where white spaces was the motif.

The focus of the drawing was then at Guan Yu who wielded a Crescent Moon Blade.

This was an extremely overhauled image where he was the traditional Chinese dragon. His face, arms and any parts of exposed skins were all green with horns on his head, clearly resembling a dragon.

However, through his clothing, it was still clear that this was Guan Yu.

He wore green robes and the shoulder pad on the left side was golden with a red decorative – these were all elements that were commonly seen in traditional drawings of Guan Yu and they fit into the original art seamlessly.

A single look at that original art and one would be able to tell that it had Guan Yu’s characteristics and yet, his image was totally overhauled.

Most importantly, the artistic style of it was entirely unique from most of the original arts out in the market; infusing the style of ink and oil painting, it was definitely eye-catching.

Pei Qian then looked at the other original arts – be it in terms of quality or style, they were extremely similar to this.

But of course, their general images were still based on Ma Yang’s requirement form and were not beasts just like Guan Yu.

There were beasts, freaks and even characters who despite retaining human form, had their images completed overhauled… such as Lu Meng the Dragon Slayer Lolita.

Using Ma Yang’s requirements as a basis, Ruan Guangjian tweaked the details of the characters and further designed the style and image. Finally, under the prerequisite of ensuring that the style of the original art is coherent, he accentuated each character’s distinctiveness to its greatest extent.

Pei Qian was completely dazed.

He had spent 3,000 yuan to purchase four pieces of such original arts?

Was this a joke?

The artist was definitely making a loss!

Was this truly done by Ruan Guangjian?

But, if you had something so impressive, why the hell did you post only cartoonish images on your resource site’s portfolio?

Pei Qian was totally on the brink of tears. Even though he was the one who had stood to gain, he could not get happy at all!

He had initially looked for someone who listed around 700 apiece so that he could acquire some inferior original art. He had even looked for someone who seemed like he was only capable at drawing cartoon characters!

But, how in the world did he end up coming across a future hotshot?

Others may not know, but Pei Qian knew it all too well.

This style of art was extremely amazing!

That’s because in his previous life, there was a concept art designer, Yang Qi, who loved this style and he had a strong following!

No idea who Yang Qi is?

The game, Asura Online1… heard of it, right? Yang Qi was the chief art designer.

That’s right, the set of original arts that Ruan Guangjian had just given to Pei Qian bore strikingly similar resemblances to Asura Online’s style!

But of course, it was still less detailed as Ruan Guangjian had rushed to complete this job after all.

However, the style and feel it gave off was extremely similar!

If Pei Qian had known that Ruan Guangjian could have produced work of such quality, he would have never looked for Ruan Guangjian to produce his art!

But… what could he do now?

Money? Already paid.

Work? Already received.

Ask for a refund and breach the contract? Impossible!

Besides, Pei Qian’s game had to be published in two days time or the system would postpone the settlement date.

More changes might happen if he were to drag things out!

Pei Qian could not resist the temptation of the 300,000 and every single day more would be a torment!

“Calm down, calm down.”

“Things are not that bad yet. Think on the bright side.”

“Firstly, Asura Online isn’t an extremely successful project.”

“Furthermore, no one can be sure whether this fits the preferences of this world’s gamers.”

“Even though the style of these original arts have fresh designs, that doesn’t mean that the gamers would like it.”

“Right now, the trend’s on cartoonish designs. These original arts may very well cause a reverse effect…”

“Yes… that’s right, that’s the way.”

After calming down, Pei Qian felt that things weren’t as bad as he had thought of it to be.

The original arts may be detailed and their designs may be fresh such that it would leave a deep impression at first glance, but, was what the market really wanted?

Not necessarily!

Pei Qian had seen the death of too many exceptional games. It was clear that logic wouldn’t always work in determining market trends.

And, what was the hottest trend in mobile games in this world right now?

Cartoons!

Qute Three Kingdoms got popular because of that and it was a general representation of the beauty ideals of the gamers.

Original arts like Ruan Guangjian’s production that had a sense of epicness, some darkness to it and a fusion of ink and oil painting elements may not necessarily be what the gamers like!

Besides, Pei Qian’s hopes weren’t placed entirely on the original arts.

His game itself was made using a template with a singular gameplay.

Other than art and music resources, he hadn’t spent much effort to create it nor were there any striking features.

Besides, he did not intend to use money to publicize it as well. He was just going to let it be published on the platform and die on its own.

Once a week passes without him earning, that would count as a successful loss.

Therefore, after much consideration, he could only use those original arts.

Pei Qian opened the game editor and implemented the original arts as cards into the game. He then had Ma Yang check for any bugs.

After looking at the original arts, Ma Yang spoke after a long time, “Amazing!”

He was truly stunned – he had not expected that the images he had spent so much effort in designing had been drawn so amazingly!

Pei Qian replied indifferently, “The main point was because you did a good job in filling up the requirement form, giving the artists inspiration.”

Ma Yang beamed brightly. “For real? That’s great! To think that I was so talented in this aspect!”

A casual compliment from Pei Qian was enough to make Ma Yang so happy he could almost forget his surname.

To that, Pei Qian was extremely pleased. As long as Ma Yang kept up with this working attitude, he would be of great help for future projects!