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

Source: Internet Vernacular

Author: Tong Wei

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 post-00 guy: ** found more than 100 companies on the Internet 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 bit indifferent: Humans hold the baton of AI's new productivity, "** is going through an extremely important technological change, ** can What you do is to adjust your mentality and embrace change.”

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

Time goes back to a month ago.

**103 people,**Modada looked at the number of "communicated" numbers displayed on an online recruitment platform, sighed softly, took a few pictures and sent them to Xiaohongshu, to relieve his depression: "Delivered +Read=Unemployed" "The industry is changing too fast, what should we do in the future?" He also created a poll at the bottom "Should I stick to painting?" Among the 277 participating netizens, there are slightly more "Persist" than " Give up pie". **

Mo Tada, who is studying at a university in Shaoxing ** majoring in digital media art **, 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 character or scene described in the text in the form of painting according to the art style set in the early stage of the game project, so as to provide 3D modeling for the later stage Production, etc. provide blueprint 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 skills, 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 first internship period, and 3,000 yuan/month after becoming a full-time employee. ** Such a salary level obviously fails to meet 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 game painting 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, opened a studio and a Taobao store with his friends, and started selling 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 **incorporate 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 has indeed caused 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, those with a higher salary could reach 30,000 to 40,000 yuan/month.**" Shen Minyue, general manager and chief consultant of Hangzhou Mingju Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd., revealed, "However, with AI With the maturity of technology, the salary of this position has dropped sharply. If the applicant's own 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 the most "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, **AI will also bring some new opportunities for some small and sophisticated teams and even individuals: **It is possible to make explosive products without a lot of manpower and time, and the gap between large teams and small teams The distance will be further reduced.

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. It will learn 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 no matter what, such as the emotional value of human beings. Painting is an art, and every stroke reflects the artist's understanding. This is something that belongs to human beings. *And when we appreciate paintings, we are actually communicating with the creators.*” In Fei Peng’s view, “AI just helps us produce a picture that meets our needs, which belongs to fast food and can fill our stomachs but has no aftertaste. Human’s Painting is like a private kitchen, because it has different flavors depending on the person in charge.” This is also one of the main reasons why many players are dissatisfied once traces of using AI painting tools are found in some games that were famous for their painting style before. .

A 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, "Try to become a compound talent, ** only have a single, elementary workplace skills, ** are 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 been searched 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 realistic challenge that every "worker" must face.