Chapter 19: You’ve Got Quite a Few Ideas

Du Xi focused her attention on Su Cheng’s notes for the art department.

[A muscular man with flowing blond hair tied back at the forehead with a white athletic headband, wearing a white tank top under a red jacket, paired with military trousers and leather shoes.]

[He has a tattoo on his arm, brown hair parted down the middle, likes wearing black sunglasses, a white tank top, and a yellow vest, with a loud, flamboyant expression.]

[A girl with long blond hair tied in a ponytail, pure and cute in appearance.]

[A girl with long brown hair tied in a short ponytail, wearing an army-green vest and a cap bearing the organization’s insignia.]

Anyone could tell.

Su Cheng was indeed a typical straight guy, and he knew next to nothing about art.

Still, it wasn’t terrible. Even if the descriptions were rough, he had at least provided the essential traits.

For one of the female characters, Su Cheng had written: [Ran away from home at age twelve to wander the streets. Fierce and hot-tempered, she even became a gang leader before being discovered by the authorities to serve as an intelligence agent. Later, tired of assassinations and bombings, she was transferred to the Sparrow Squad to carry out special operations.]

That was all.

A proper concept artist could easily expand on a character’s background and story from that.

However.

When Du Xi looked below and saw the rough sketch Su Cheng had personally drawn of his vision for this female character…

She finally couldn’t hold it together anymore.

“Did… did you draw this?”

“Yep, poured my heart into it. Not bad, right?”

“It’s drawn well. Don’t ever do it again.”

Right then, Li Lei and Shen Manman flipped a few pages further as well.

Shen Manman burst out laughing.

“You draw worse than me!” Li Lei laughed uproariously. “Why don’t you sign up for a class? Start from children’s stick figures.”

Shen Manman teased Su Cheng about his artistic talent. “Why does this look like a certain director’s storyboards?”

Xiao Wen: ??? I feel attacked.

“All right, all right, enough about my drawing skills. That’s the general concept.”

“The programming is simple, and the workload isn’t huge. You two just focus on producing the designs for the four characters first. It works out nicely since I have a lot of classes over the next few days.”

Du Xi blinked in surprise.

“You’re teaching classes on the side?”

Su Cheng’s situation seemed a bit like a restaurant owner delivering takeout to subsidize his business.

It was actually rather touching.

Su Cheng’s answer, however, caught Du Xi completely off guard.

“No, I’m attending classes,” Su Cheng explained. “We’re all students at Ye University.”

Du Xi: ???

“You’re all students?”

What kind of bizarre studio had she just joined?!

Working with three college students?

…

That afternoon.

【You have a new quest】

【Quest [Displaying Slight Skill^[1]]: Host a gaming tournament with over 100 participants within seven days】

【Quest Reward: 280 honor points】

【Upon quest completion, unlock the achievement title [Esports Pioneer] (Equipping this title increases honor points absorbed from gamers by 10%)】

Wait a minute.

Did this mean it wanted him to organize an esports tournament?

In this parallel world of Blue Star, there weren’t even many games, let alone an esports industry.

This definitely had potential.

Su Cheng could host a King of Fighters Championship.

Besides, the quest didn’t mandate whether it had to be offline or online, so he could run it as an online esports competition.

The title would boost his absorption rate by ten percent!

That buff was seriously good!

Su Cheng absolutely had to conquer this [Displaying Slight Skill] quest!

Right now, he had only a single honor point to his name, leaving him unable to do anything.

Su Cheng was still hoping to upgrade his game engine.

“Accept quest!”

Su Cheng immediately called Li Lei in to discuss his idea for the [King of Fighters Championship].

“That’s a great idea.”

“It can raise our studio’s profile, boost activity among King of Fighters players, and sell more copies of the game.”

“If it’s online, though, we might need to push an update with anti-cheat measures.”

“Our 《Metal Slug》 project was just approved, and we’re short on hands. Is it really the right time for this?”

“Of course!”

Su Cheng said firmly.

“The two don’t conflict with each other.”

Metal Slug had simple code and straightforward gameplay.

Working overtime on his own, backed by the super engine, one week would be more than enough for Su Cheng.

Not to mention he had Li Lei helping him.

The two of them could build out the code and framework in three days.

The art wouldn’t be done nearly that fast.

“Guess that’s true.”

“Then let’s play a few rounds first to see what needs patching.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

And just like that, the two started gaming in the office.

Knock, knock, knock.

A knock sounded on the office door.

“Come in.”

“Our art is done. Do you want to take a look?”

Su Cheng and Li Lei exchanged glances.

They had just said it couldn’t possibly be that fast.

And in just half a day, the art was already done.

Du Xi and Shen Manman also noticed that Su Cheng and Li Lei had shut the door just to play video games!

Th-this… why did this feel so unreliable?!

“Hold on, pause it. Let me take a look.”

Su Cheng took the tablet from Du Xi’s hand and began browsing through the four pieces of concept art she had produced.

“Which of you drew these?” Su Cheng asked.

Shen Manman spoke up. “Sister Du drew the characters. I handled the accessories, layout, and formatting.”

When Du Xi applied, it was for the art designer position.

However, with only two artists in the company, she naturally became the lead artist.

Her skill spoke for itself.

Shen Manman knew she was outmatched and gladly worked as Du Xi’s assistant, taking the role of secondary artist.

“Mm, pretty much what I envisioned. Very faithful to the original, with lots of extra details added.”

Su Cheng praised Du Xi’s artistic skill relentlessly, throwing in some compliments for Shen Manman along the way.

“If there’s nothing to revise, can we finalize them?” Du Xi asked.

This was Du Xi’s very first work at Qianhe Studio.

After the morning meeting adjourned, she had immediately set to work preparing the characters.

She had produced four designs in one go.

Then she spent another two hours making touch-ups and fine adjustments.

Only then did she bring them to Su Cheng.

Either way.

With Su Cheng offering her such a high salary, she had to prove her worth.

She needed everyone to see that she was worth every penny.

At this level of quality, her work could easily land an offer at Yunyi or anywhere else.

“No.”

Du Xi: ???

Shen Manman: ???

Li Lei: ???

So after praising her for so long, you’re still turning it down?

When Du Xi pressed for a reason, Su Cheng’s answer stunned all three of them even more.

“You drew them too well.”

All three of them were a bit dumbfounded.

Since when had drawing too well become a flaw?

“No, what I mean is, if we proceed at this quality, your workload will be massive. There’s a lot of content in the game, seven chapters in total.”

“If the character assets are that high in quality, the environment and backgrounds will have to match. That will make the file size huge, and the workload for Leizi^[2] and me will probably double too.”

“The key issue is, if we do that and the optimization isn’t up to par, it will lag terribly, and a ton of bugs will pop up.”

“《Metal Slug》 is meant to run on any PC, no matter how crappy the computer is.”

“Not every player has high-spec hardware like the productivity rigs here at the company.”

“These four illustrations are fantastic, but they’re only suitable as promotional art.”

“Go ahead and make another version.”

“Just one-tenth of your skill will do.”