The Versatile Master Artist

Chapter 73: Chapter 65: Flooded Orders

”Detective Cat... madam?”

Seeing this title, the corners of Gu Weijing’s mouth twitched slightly.

Of course,

you can’t really blame his customer for that.

Nutshell’s requirements for registrants’ personal information aren’t very strict, and they don’t require the store owner to provide detailed personal information.

As long as there are no buyer complaints, you can fill in your country, age, and gender at will, and nobody will care if you define your gender as an attack helicopter.

It’s not completely free though, Nutshell’s registration policy basically divides users into the United States or abroad.

If your registration place is listed as the United States, you also need to submit a W2/1099 tax form to the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) on time.

No matter where you’re from, if your registration place is the United States, you have to pay tax.

It’s not mandatory though, if you’re American and confident enough to dodge the IRS, you can also list as abroad.

From the self-introduction in the Detective Cat store’s profile as viewed by outsiders.

They’re doing business with a 34-year-old lady born in Algeria with a university degree, never imagining that the store owner is a not yet adult Yangon person.

Gu Weijing didn’t register as a ”female” painter as a curiosity-driven idea like creating a bikini-clad cute girl account during role-playing games.

He also had his own bit of cleverness in it.

At school, Gu Weijing had seen a data analysis on painter gender.

Nowadays, in the high-end art market and exhibitions, gender discrimination still exists.

Male oil painters are more popular and recognized than female ones. Male painters also find it easier to get higher-priced signing contracts.

But in online freelance commissions, the ratio almost reverses.

Currently, the customer ratio is almost half male and half female, but female painters are more likely to receive orders than male ones.

This may partly be because female illustrators might have more delicate strokes than male illustrators and are more likely to create soft, cute cartoon-style illustrations.

However, Gu Weijing personally thought another major reason was—

The figure and anime commission market could occupy half of the online illustrators’ industry.

Think about it.

If you are an otaku who loves collecting figures.

Every day you spend a large amount of time dressing your figures of Makise Kurisu, Shiyesita, Nakano Sanju, Asuna (all popular anime female characters) in various armors, dresses, and matching anime figurines.

When you finally finished dressing up your two-dimensional wives and want to have a custom illustration drawn as a personal phone wallpaper.

Would you prefer this illustration created by a fellow otaku eating cola chicken with greasy fingers and drawing on a tablet?

Or would you like a lady artist to create it for you?

Although online gender is unreliable.

You would definitely prefer the latter, at least you can have some fantasies.

Otherwise, you’d really feel weird when you’re holding your phone while sleeping.

This industry is like online game companions, where even if the voice changer is used, the gender field is always filled as female for the same reason.

As for why marking his age as over thirty, that’s easier to understand.

It’s because customers would think an older artist has more experience.

If they knew it was drawn by a teenager, even if they were satisfied, they would worry you didn’t do it well, and would keep asking you for revisions endlessly.

Looking at the massive flow of messages,

he knew,

his Detective Cat store would be thoroughly famous this time.

...

By the time Gu Weijing had roughly gone through the thousands of unread emails in his inbox, it was already early morning hours.

Various messages were there, and even simply skimming those in languages he could understand, reading titles at a glance and opening only occasionally interesting emails, cost him a lot of time.

Actually, most emails were not substantive.

They could basically be categorized as ”Wow! Madam, you’re awesome.”, ”Lady Detective Cat, your painting was selected by Mr. Hibernian!!!”, or ”Is there really no script? I don’t believe it.” Such spam emails.

Gu Weijing generally batch-deleted such emails and even blocked hundreds of people like the previous so-called jeweler who tried to harass him.

The rest were all order-related.

”User Hyperion1077 gave you a good review!”

”Number of positive reviews +1”

Shortly after browsing the message from Mr. Hibernian, Gu Weijing received a notification of a good review from him.

He opened the virtual panel for a glance.

After completing this positive review order, his panel at this moment became—

[Linked Task: First Look - Career Path (2/3)]

[Current Task: Complete twenty orders with positive reviews on Nutshell, with a positive review rate over 95%]

[Current Task Progress: Positive Reviews (9), Neutral Reviews (0), Negative Reviews (0), Cancelled Transactions (1).]

[Current Task Reward: Painting Identification Skill (Fine Level Skill)]

Not counting the review just given by Mr. Hibernian, in this period, Gu Weijing only accomplished two deals.

The lack of traffic on the Nutshell store was the primary reason he couldn’t speed up his task progress.

Originally, Gu Weijing thought that at this rate, he wouldn’t even think about completing the second step of this career task before the holiday ended and school started.

Unexpectedly, a surprising boon fell from the sky.

He knew, starting today, as long as he didn’t screw up, his store probably would never lack orders again.

However, with the flood of orders incoming, he became very selective with which orders to take on.

Not every order is worth taking.

Firstly, those with particularly low transaction prices could be excluded.

Currently, among the hundreds and thousands of transaction requests on his Nutshell store, the vast majority were from people who saw Mr. Hibernian’s video and hoped to commission him for ten dollars, thinking it would be too good a deal to miss.

These orders accounted for over 95% of the total orders.

Aside from the meaningless cheap orders.

There were also some orders with unusually high prices.

[Mr. Hibernian] commissioned Jean Arnou for one million dollars, because he is a leading figure in the illustration world and it was to achieve video effect.

In truth, the price ceiling of illustrations themselves isn’t high.

Yet those numbers on the orders really surprised Gu Weijing.

The world is so big, with always some rich people, or those looking to ride on Mr. Hibernian’s fame.

There were a few orders in the tens of thousands of US Dollars, and even a Canadian studio wanted Gu Weijing to design a promotional poster for their animated film scheduled for release at Easter, offering a price of one hundred thousand dollars.

This price is already a top tier illustration studio’s rate.

The other party clearly wants to catch a bit of fanfare before the movie’s official release using a celebrity illustrator’s promotional power.

Certain major animated films can spend up to fifty percent of their total production cost on promotional advertising during the pre-release period, with costs reaching eighty or ninety million or even hundreds of millions of US dollars.

This Canadian film studio certainly isn’t that powerful, and can only be considered a tier-3 small cost animation, so they wanted to spend one hundred thousand dollars to jump onto the influencer illustrator’s promo wave.

However, the other party clearly stated that if he wanted to take the order, he would have to fully cooperate with all the promotional arrangements.

Regarding the quality of the drawing wasn’t the main focus.

Even without the promotional collaboration requirement,

such an order was also promptly disregarded by Gu Weijing.

He knew it was by relying on Menzel’s Painting Basics and combining Burman’s anatomy techniques, in a very specific environment, that he created works truly comparable to those of a master.

Luck was a bigger factor than skill.

In terms of real painting experience, those three genuine illustrators each outmatched him.

Menzel’s insights, after all, were merely Menzel’s own realizations, not Gu Weijing’s own things.

Menzel’s skills included the word ”Basics”.

Not basic painting techniques, but the whole person enters a unique tranquil state while using the skills.

Drawing simple pre-plotted designs, replicating models, or anatomical muscle lines — those basic skills aren’t hard.

However, it’s very hard to incorporate personal emotions and creativity.

Just like what the lady reviewer said, it lacks all emotions except seriousness.

Emotion ratings stabilized at [Simple Works], no matter drawn once or a hundred times, there wouldn’t be other evaluations.

If it’s not yours, it’s not yours.

Otherwise, with these sketches and adding a touch of creativity, entering an exhibition wouldn’t be a difficult affair for Gu Weijing.

The quick money from online hype can only earn once, when the traffic leaves you, the higher you’re raised, the harsher the fall.

Only accepting colored pencil drawings he’s skilled at, or drawing within his capability range, whether characters or simple designs.

This is the truly sustainable strategy.