Chapter 54: Chapter 53: Card Original Artwork
Translated by Coldtaco
Edited by Aelryinth
After some thought, Chen Mo decided to stay optimistic on the parallel world players’ understanding and acceptance of I Am MT.
From what he had seen in his previous life, I Am MT started off being popular among the World of Warcraft community, but soon spread to the younger generation, who didn’t play World of Warcraft.
I Am MT’s humorous style, cute artwork, and rich uninterrupted story allowed them to detach themselves from World of Warcraft, becoming a completely independant story.
In his previous life, there were many players who didn’t play World of Warcraft who liked I Am MT; there were even instances where players got into World of Warcraft because of I Am MT.
Of course, Chen Mo wouldn’t release I Am MT unaltered. He planned to make some small changes to it to slowly introduce the players in this world to the world of I Am MT.
—
After finishing a sketch of MT, Chen Mo went on to sketch the other characters, such as Shaman, Hunter, and Rogue.
Chen Mo had a deeper impression of these characters, and was therefore able to draw them pretty decently from memory. However, the other, more unique side-characters were more challenging for him.
“This is kinda slow. Right, maybe it’s time to use the equipment.”
Chen Mo used the Super Accelerator from his bracelet. This drastically increased his work efficiency, making it very suitable for times like this.
Chen Mo followed that up with a Memory Playback Potion in order to remember details on the characters.
As Chen Mo managed to draw more special equipment this time, he could afford to use it more deliberately. He had to finish the sketches as soon as possible in order, to not hinder future progress.
As his memories cleared up, Chen Mo went straight to his memory of the mobile game, disregarding the content of the animations.
—
In his previous life, I Am MT managed to gather over one thousand cards with unique art throughout the years and numerous updates, of which four hundred and twenty-five were playable characters, the others being monster cards.
Of course, there were many repeats. The five star and five star+ character cards only had different borders, with no changes made to the artwork.
The cards for main characters, such as MT, had up to eleven different types of artwork for four star, four star+, five star, five star+, five star+3, six star (three forms), and seven stars (three forms).
Chen Mo didn’t need that many different levels as of right now. He planned to have up to five star +3 (max) in the first version, releasing the others in future versions. That way, each character card only needed three different pieces of artwork: four star (blue rarity), five star (purple rarity), and five star +3 max (purple rarity).
Reducing the number of levels also meant that the number of monsters could also be decreased, meaning the number of cards Chen Mo needed to draw was below one thousand.
Chen Mo needed to draw cla.s.sic artwork for these characters from Horde: MT, Shaman, Rogue, Hunter, Druid, Caster, Warlock, Priest, Beauty, Thief, Barrel Bull, and Blood Elf Mage [1].
From Alliance, he needed Lady, Tyran, Brick, Meddy, The President, Huntress, Elder Sister, Cannon Lady, the Holy Rider’s Pentad, the Fireball G.o.ds Pentad, Sunken Fish, Fallen Goose, Waning Moon, and Shy Flower.
Other than that, there was Nosuke Shinsuke, and Winter, who showed up later.
The first version would have thirty-six playable characters. There would be around two hundred cards for monsters, but these weren’t a priority, and could be done later.
36×3,+200, summing to 308, was the number of cards after Chen Mo’s filtering.
—
Chen Mo’s drawing speed dramatically increased after using the Super Accelerator. With triple the work efficiency, one drawing took ten minutes, so the cla.s.sic artwork for the thirty-six characters was condensed down to six hours.
It was unreasonable for Chen Mo to work for six hours straight without rest. With periodic breaks, Chen Mo finished the sketches by 6 PM.
These were only rough sketches. There was still a bunch of work that needed to be done, such as adding details, color, editing, and post-processing. However, Chen Mo didn’t plan to do those himself, as he would be worn too thin.
—
After stretching, Chen Mo sent the sketches to Su Jinyu and went downstairs.
“Hmm? Why are you guys all here?”
Chen Mo noticed that there were quite a few people downstairs. Wen Lingwei, Jia Peng, and Chang Xiuya were all present.
Su Jinyu stood up and said, “Boss, you finally decided to come down.”
Wen Lingwei added, “I thought you made a bet on impulse, and didn’t want to come down because you were shy, as you realized you couldn’t win.”
Chen Mo snorted, “Do I look like that kind of person?”
Chang Xiuya asked in a worried tone, “Manager… How’s your new game going? If you happen to lose…”
Wen Lingwei said, “If you wanna go on the run, I do know a guy…”
Chen Mo rolled his eyes and said, “Hold up! What are you guys thinking? Don’t worry, I already have plants for the new game. Goldfish [2], go ahead and extract the file I sent you.”
Su Jinyu protested, “I’m Jinyu, not Goldfish! Both syllables have the meaning of gems!”
Wen Lingwei said, “Huh, that name is quite alright. I’ll call you Goldfish from now on, too!”
Su Jinyu was speechless.
Upon extracting the file, everyone was shocked to discover that there were thirty-odd character sketches. Although they weren’t colored, the outlines were good enough to leave a deep impression.
Su Jinyu asked, “Boss, are these the character drawings for the new game? Are we making a cute game?”
Chen Mo replied, “Yep, I should have the overall rules and mechanics of the game within a week, the first step was to finish the sketches for the characters.”
Su Jinyu looked through each of the drawings with the others.
“This is a… cow? It was a nose ring, too. It’s pretty cute. Why is the first drawing a cow? A cow humanoid? A cow head with a human body?”
“MT? What kind of name is this?”
“The second drawing is also a cow. Umm… it’s a female cow too, called Shaman; it does look quite silly [3].”
“This weird green-skinned square headed weirdo, it probably isn’t a human type race right? It’s called Rogue… it does have a blank look. Can someone as dense-looking as this guy be a rogue[4]?”
“All the characters are quite weirdly shaped, although all of them are quite adorable. But is there really no problem with these weirdly-shaped characters?”
“Oh, finally a normal human, Lady. Hmm? She looks like the main character, why is she so far back?”
“Elder Sister? President? Umm… it seems like the ones at the back are all humanoids?”
“What do you mean humanoids, they are just humans!”
“What does Alliance and Horde mean? Why is the Horde at the bottom, and Alliance on top? Are those factions?”
With everyone looking at the sketches, the room was filled with discussion.
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TL Note:
[1] Most of the names of the characters are puns, either based on the English word, or puns related to the cla.s.s.
[2] The Chinese p.r.o.nunciation of goldfish is Jin1 Yu2; her name is actually p.r.o.nounced Jin3 Yu2.
[3] Its name is a play on words, based on English p.r.o.nunciation of shaman and the word “silly” in Chinese.
[4] Direct translation of the Chinese name would be Dense (slow in the brain) Rogue.
Half of the translations I used are from the incomplete (and likely unmaintained) Fandom page; there was an English release of the game, but there doesn’t seem to be much about it, so half the names are possibly official, the other half will be made up by me. – Cold Taco