The original artist of the game was forced into a corner by AI

**Source:**Internet Vernacular

Author: Tong Wei

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI tool

Two months ago, Mo Tada would never have imagined that he would eventually return to his hometown in Taizhou to work as a men's clothing e-commerce business. At that time, he carefully prepared his resume and past paintings, and enthusiastically planned to find a job as a game original artist.

The reality poured a basin of cold water on this young man born after 2000: he searched more than 100 companies online in two months, but none of them succeeded. Among them, many recruiters directly mentioned the need to be proficient in using AI painting tools.

Due to the development of AIGC (Artificial Intelligence Generated Content) technology, many industries have begun to be affected to varying degrees. Among them, the game is the first and easiest to overcome by AI, and the original painting is currently the most impacted field.

Anxiety and uneasiness are transmitted among some related practitioners. In contrast, Fei Peng, who has more than ten years of experience in CG painting and original painting teaching, seems a little indifferent: Humans hold the baton of AI's new productivity, "We are going through an extremely important technological change, and what we can do is to adjust Mentality, embrace change.”

From the original artist of future games to opening a men's clothing online store

Time goes back to a month ago.

With 103 people, Mo Tada looked at the number of "communicated" numbers displayed on an online recruitment platform, sighed lightly, and took a few pictures and sent them to Xiaohongshu to relieve his depression: "Delivered + read = Unemployment" "The industry is changing too fast, what should we do in the future?" He also created a poll at the bottom "Should I persist in painting?" Among the 277 participating netizens, the "persistence group" slightly outnumbered the "abandonment group".

Mo Tada, who majored in digital media art at a university in Shaoxing, will start studying game original painting in 2021, and has always wanted to find a game company to be an original artist after graduation.

As a relatively advanced development position in the game industry, the original artist’s responsibility is to express the characters or scenes described in words in the form of paintings according to the art style set in the early stage of the game project, so as to provide a blueprint for the later 3D modeling and production. Reference; Mainly divided into role original artist, scene original artist, etc.

At the beginning of May, Mo Tada began to frequently appear on the online recruitment platform, and all the applications were related to original paintings, many of which were internship positions. However, after communicating again and again, he discovered: "Many companies clearly require experience and AI knowledge, and it is difficult to find internship positions."

In the meantime, a small-scale outsourcing company offered him an olive branch. The salary offered was 1,000 yuan/month for the internship period and 3,000 yuan/month after becoming a full-time employee. Such a salary level obviously falls short of psychological expectations.

The experience of Mo Tada has also exploded a group of game original painting practitioners and netizens who are studying on the Internet.

Someone "sick and sympathetic" encouraged him, "I have only been in the industry for a few months, and the original painting of the game is really difficult this year. AI has a big impact, so come on"; The manicure business seems to be doing well, too? After reading his collection of paintings, several seniors pointed out the shortcomings: "Your line draft is good, I suggest you strengthen the 'refinement' to improve the degree of completion."

Some exercises by Mo Tada

Although the young man still couldn't let go of the love in his heart, he turned around very quickly. After thanking all the netizens for their encouragement and suggestions, he decided to temporarily change his career. After studying in Sijiqing and other places in Hangzhou for 4 days, he returned to his hometown in Taizhou and opened a studio and Taobao store with his friends to sell trendy men's clothing.

"Hello guys, today I will share with you three super cost-effective T-shirts." On June 13, the first short video of outfit recommendations was put on the shelves. So far, the best-selling T-shirts in the store have sold 9 pieces. He said: "I will integrate what I have learned in art design into my daily clothing collocation. It can be regarded as applying what I have learned."

Freelance original artist order price

From 20,000 yuan/sheet to 4,000 yuan/sheet

Motata just caught up with a year of drastic changes.

As early as the beginning of March, Huang Yimeng, the founder of Xindong Network, broke the news on overseas social media: "Recently chatting with two game teams, the first team cut off the original painting outsourcing company, and the second team cut down the translation outsourcing company. AI has actually started. Affecting the jobs of many people."

On May 27, Rhea Games was caught in the rumor of "fire the artist after switching to AI creation", which caused heated discussions. Official rumor refutation: No art staff was fired, but more new members with AI expertise were recruited to improve the development process and AI-assisted education and training.

On June 11, Shi Yuzhu, chairman of Giant Network, publicly stated that at present, almost all of its game projects use artificial intelligence for research and development.

……

While the entire game industry is enjoying the dividends of technological change, some practitioners like original painters are suffering from the pain of change: those who have already joined the job are worried about losing their jobs, and those who have not yet joined the job are afraid of not being able to find a job. Anxiety, to a large extent, comes from the uncertainty that "has not really replaced but does pose a threat".

"A well-known game company optimized the art team not long ago, leaving only some people to do post-editing and provide more training materials for AI." Zhao Jiecheng, head of the Unbounded AI Content Ecology Center, travels all over the country on a daily basis, communicating with some games, animation company. "There are 17 or 18 large-scale game companies that I have contacted. It can be said that 100% of AI is used in the workflow. This may also become the mainstream industry trend."

In addition to the number of jobs being affected, there is also the salary level.

"In the past few years, for senior original painters, the salary could reach 30,000 to 40,000 yuan per month." Shen Minyue, general manager and chief consultant of Hangzhou Mingju Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd. revealed, "However, with the maturity of AI technology, Now the salary for this position has dropped considerably. If the applicant’s level is average, he may not even be able to find a job.”

According to another industry insider, in the past few months when AI painting exploded, "a freelance original artist received a manuscript, and the original price could be 20,000 yuan per piece, but now it has dropped to 4,000 yuan per piece."

In fact, even without the emergence of AI painting, the position of game original painter is already in "employment saturation". "From 2000 to 2017, a large number of talents poured in, and the industry threshold became higher." Shen Minyue recalled.

Where is the value of people reflected?

However, everything has two sides, and AI will also bring some new opportunities to some small and sophisticated teams and even individuals: it is possible to make explosive products without a lot of manpower and time, and the distance between large teams and small teams will be reduced. Zoom out further.

As early as the second half of last year when he first tried AI painting tools, Fei Peng seemed to have foreseen the current scene: "AI will definitely replace some human painters in the future. Keep learning endlessly, and the generated graphs will definitely get better and better.”

He admitted that he was also anxious, and his thinking changed from "what can AI do for me" to "what can I do for AI". Later, he figured it out and was relieved: "I don't need to do anything for AI, because it will eventually become a one-click operation and tend to be perfect."

Characters created by Fei Peng with the aid of AI painting tools

"But there are some things that AI can't learn anyway, such as the emotional value of people. Painting is an art, and every stroke reflects the artist's understanding. This is something that belongs to human beings. When we appreciate paintings, In fact, it is also communicating with creators." In Fei Peng's view, "AI just helps us produce a picture that meets our needs. It is a fast food that can fill our stomachs but has no aftertaste. Human paintings are like private dishes, because they are in charge of cooking. Different players have their own flavors.” This is also one of the main reasons why some games that were famous for their painting style, once found traces of using AI painting tools, will attract dissatisfaction from many players.

*Portrait painted by Fei Peng for his teacher. In his view, the emotional value of human painters cannot be replaced by AI. *

For practitioners who are anxious and confused, Fei Peng also gave advice as a person who has experienced it: "Embrace changes and accept them with a willingness to learn."

Shen Minyue suggested to learn as much as possible and settle himself down. "Strive to become a compound talent. Only a single, elementary workplace skill is more likely to be replaced by AI."

One of the things that Zhao Jiecheng's team is doing now is to enter some colleges and universities, so that more students and teachers have the opportunity to learn and understand AI painting. "In addition to introducing how AI can be integrated into the existing workflow (coloring, multi-angle human design reference, etc.), it will also tell you what things cannot be replaced by AI, such as human creativity, self-aesthetic cultivation, etc."

Mo Tada is also learning. Recently, he saw a video of AI opening a Taobao store on station B, that is, AI participated in a series of processes such as store design, naming, decoration, and marketing, and found it very novel. "Try to use AI to generate model pictures and promotional copywriting, but the actual effect is far from the ideal state, and the benefits it can bring are not clear, and we need to continue to learn and research."

This topic has also been on the hot search before

Everyone is trying to find a way to coexist with AI. After all, in the era of the outbreak of generative AI, it is a matter of time before all walks of life are likely to be reshaped, and the game industry is just the beginning. How to maintain the competitiveness of human beings and reflect the value of human beings may be a real challenge that every "worker" must face.