Blog 05 : Another Reason I Started my Patreon (Patreon)

Long time no see guys. The last time I wrote a blog was almost a month ago. It's not like nothing happened. In fact, I have tons of stuffs stocked up to write about but I was just in the mood of getting the drawings done so I went with the flow.

Just gonna drop in some food for thoughts about yet another very big reason I decided to launch my Patreon back then.

The image was captured from the game "Circle of Mana" made by... that company. You will know which company it is by googling the game. Yeah as you might have already figured, this artwork was made by me. It's Riesz from Seiken Densetsu 3 in a Valentine Day's event gacha. I was one of the outsourced art team doing artworks for the game. This was like... 4 years ago or something. Not exactly sure.

The game was closed due to unpopularity. It was a blast when it released, but after a while people just figured out it's just another Rage of Bahamut mobile clone and the game died down so quick. I myself thought the gameplay was extremely dumb and full of copied cliche anyway so meh.

The left one was my original work that I sent them and they already had it approved. It's Riesz holding a Valentine chocolate readying herself to give it to the player and she's uneasy and shy about it. That's why she's making the tsundere face here and I thought it was pretty cute and portrayed her character well as if you played the game, she was a really tough girl who had rough life. Of course she has her cute and soft side but she's no way a moe bot.

But then after all approval, they just put her in the game having some random dude editing my work into the right one, turning her into a completely moe bot that yielded typical cute face with unexplained facial expression. Like, dude, it's like you didn't even understand a character from your own fucking game... Riesz would never make a face like that. You are fucking drunk!

And even that, they could at least told me that they wanted it this way no matter what reasons and had me be the one fixing her face because you know, I made this one... I had the layers and everything, but nope. They just had some random guy fixed it from the .JPG image I sent them super unprofessionally. As an artist, I feel insulted when someone does this. You'd understand without even having to be a creator of any sort.

And this wasn't the only case happened during the work period I had with them. There were other several issues similar to this and it happened to our whole team, not just me.

To be fair, it's not just this company, but others did stuffs like this normally it seems in Japanese gaming industry. I have been making artworks for the game "Osawari Island" on DMM.com and I think it went over Nutaku at some point? Anyway the game was closed by now I think, but the story is that I was having my good days working for them until one day they decided to change the art director and the new guy was OBSESSED with perfectly round boobs physics to the point that it's ridiculous, and no matter what kind of boobs I drew for them they would ask for a fix since they're not completely round and that did it for me. I was like... dude you can mess with faces, other body parts, clothes, or whatever I drew, but forcing your poor sense of boobs upon my creation, I'm outta here.

The game died down and was closed a year after I quitted working with them. Not to say I was any important part of their artist because I wasn't but that new director guy was one of the reason the game's popularity went downhill I bet.

Yeah that kinda explained the reasons why I started my Patreon campaign. I could still at that time and even now, find good paying works from places. I still get emails weekly from different companies asking if I am available for at least one set of images for their games but I declined every time. It's not just that I have Patreon rewards to make, but I don't want to end up drawing something I am sure with my sense that it'd be good but get fixed into someone with zero artistic taste's preference ever again. It was corrupting my soul (And most of the time I don't get credited as well)

I did not mean to say an artist should never obey or follow the customer's needs. You SHOULD follow their needs for at least a good while. I also don't like the idea of high ego artists who'd never follow instructions as I think if you want to indulge to yourself's taste, you should learn to indulge the others first. You can't just appear out of nowhere and become decently successful with your ego. The world does not work that way unless your parents are Bill Gates rich, but at one point, you should know that you are wasting your own potential and by following someone who had no skill's rules, you would not go anywhere beyond your current state.

Thank you for the read if you made it this far. btw anyone here being in a danger zone for them hurricanes? I don't live in the US but I know it's terrible. You guys be safe out there.