(Translator's note: article was translated from Chinese to English by Junxue Li)



Preface Junsyue Lee:



Recently, on Zcool (the largest portfolio site in China, similar to deviantArt) I found an article from a blog. In her game artist talks about how she took the visual resources from the Korean game to make the screen maps for her game. (Here is the link to the article.)

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However, many artists left comments, mainly in the spirit of “Excellent work”, “I do the same”.



I thought that this article might be interesting to you, so I translated it. The author calls himself wscjyiyi and asks to indicate her name in the repost.

I drew the screen of the game card, but my method may seem disgusting to you

Once upon a time I found a beautiful illustration on Zcool, but I felt it plagiarized and left a comment about it. To my surprise, I received a lot of criticizing answers, everyone was laughing at me. Today, I myself also find it funny, I was too arrogant, because now I create illustrations in the same vulgar way, "let's just copy."



In fact, copying is an art. You may consider me a bad designer, but I have to make a living this way. Everyone has their own criterion for evaluating illustrations, and in my heart I believe that if I copy and at the same time contribute something of my own, and my work helps me to survive, then this is a good job.



Here is my map screen, this is a finished job:







I did it for 3 days, and my boss approved it. He was pleased, and I was pleased even more. Now I will tell you how to create it.



First of all, I thought that the Korean MMORPG Aion: Tower of Eternity map screen is close in style to what we need.







I made some screenshots from Aion: Tower of Eternity :







At stages 1-6, I combined the screenshots to get the whole map:







Then I took up artistic retouching.







At these stages:



7. By painstaking work I removed the texts and buildings;



8. Added vegetation;



9. Applied effects to make the picture sharper;



10. Slightly increased the brightness of the picture.



And it's done!



Making such a living is quite easy, so I bow to true artists!



Friends, if you want to increase your design level, I can recommend the following:



1. Cultivate your taste, the quality level you choose significantly influences the result;



2. You will need a lot of patience;



3. Do not forget about the two previous points, and invest maximum effort in the work.



End of article in Chinese



Comments Junsyue Lee:



In the production of the graphic component of video games there are two parts of the work, design and refinement. In China, there are many beautiful games, artists create long-term work to create high-quality images. But the schedule of the development of graphics set by the developer makes it clear that he does not want to pay for the design. I have a friend, an UI artist, he says that the boss gives him 5 days for the amount of work, which usually takes 15 days to complete.



Here plagiarism prevails, both in large and small groups. But, knowing many developers, both in the East and in the West, I still have to correct a couple of false conclusions about Chinese artists and developers:



1. The Chinese are unscrupulous, they favor the theft of intellectual property (IP).



In fact, developers all over the world are prone to copying someone else's design and gameplay. In the West, there are thousands of "updated" versions of games, even from leading developers. Look at this Disney game, which is an absolute copy of the popular Crossy Road.







The difference is that in the West there is IP control and punishment for theft. If not for them, theft would be just as common as in China - people here and there are the same.



2. Chinese artists can only copy.



In most cases, they simply do not have enough time for research and design, the authorities thus reduce the budget of games. Artists can create good design with time and budget, for example, in my previous posts there are excellent works created by our studio.