The Versatile Master Artist

Chapter 83 - 75: The Peeing Female Cat

"What a pity to be associated with such a studio; it’s like having a lump of dog shit stuck in your throat, whether you swallow it or spit it out, it’s doubly disgusting.

In her London apartment, Rei Louise was holding her little daughter, who had just started learning to draw, browsing the homepage of Nutshell’s shop.

Ever since Rei was crushed under the same theme by this mysterious online illustrator, she had remembered their shop.

She would occasionally take a glance at Detective Cat’s homepage.

Today, she was drawn in by the latest negative review on Detective Cat’s homepage and clicked over to the shop called "Cheap but not bad" for a look.

Rei only looked at the shop for a few seconds before shaking her head disdainfully.

This shop is already one of the leading studios on Nutshell, with a huge volume of orders.

As Rei glanced at its store poster, she understood immediately.

This is a factory-style, assembly-line cheap illustration studio.

Such studios are also referred to as sweatshop models, where most tasks are subcontracted to cheap art students, with low fees but considerable profit margins.

A lot of the business is built on an information gap.

For example, a simple drawing might cost ten dollars, but outsourcing it to an Argentine art student might only cost five dollars, and if it’s a poor student from Venezuela, it might cost only one dollar.

The middleman doesn’t have to do anything, just earn a clean profit of nine dollars.

Most of the cheap painting studios on Nutshell follow this model.

Of course, don’t expect the artworks to be any good, but some works don’t need much technical content, and many people are just buying simple images.

Even the contractors of these studios have lived better lives in recent years than many mid-level painters.

Though they charge low fees, their business volume is huge, and in years with more global orders, they can count in units of ten thousand.

Converting that becomes many tens of thousands of dollars a year.

These past few years have not been as good, mainly because AI drawing has impacted them, diverting many low-end drawing tasks for free.

However, at least for today, AI still can’t completely replace low-end artists.

The simplest example is that AI might understand what "Detective Conan" is, but when faced with complex instructions and tasks like "Detective Conan holding a dorayaki in one hand while kicking a soccer ball," today’s image training is insufficient for an independent AI illustrator to complete such work.

This industry naturally has its reasons for survival, and there’s nothing inherently ridiculous about it.

But this studio is clearly a typical example of self-destruction.

It seems to have targeted the recently viral Detective Cat, trying to ride the wave of popularity.

The store’s homepage poster was artificially changed to a female cat urinating into a wine glass.

Beside it was a caption with a famous quote from the Austrian critic Karl Kraus — some things are wine jugs, some things are chamber pots, and no matter how beautifully carved, a chamber pot can’t be put on the table to drink from.

This quote was originally used by Karl Kraus to criticize the pointless extravagance of "fin de siècle aesthetics," and is sometimes used to evaluate all meaningless beautiful things.

This "Cheap but not bad" studio, paired with a highly offensive poster, makes its sarcastic and pointed meaning quite obvious.

The art world at most described illustrators as taxi drivers once hired by employers.

The concept of this studio directly treats illustration art as a readily available chamber pot.

It’s mocking that no matter how good Detective Cat’s sketches are, they’re meaningless because online illustrations themselves aren’t recognized by the art market.

The other party thinks that even if you carve a chamber pot with flowers, it can’t become a wine jug.

Since everyone is a chamber pot, instead of finding a professional illustrator for exquisite illustrations, they might as well do it themselves.

Never mind Gu Weijing, even Rei, as an illustrator, felt a bit disgusted looking at the poster on that store.

"Don’t you dislike that Detective Cat?"

The little daughter heard the indignation in Rei’s tone.

"But that doesn’t stop me from admitting their realistic character drawings are better than mine. Being beaten by someone like this is just upsetting, not embarrassing."

Rei’s tone carried admiration mixed with a bit of defiance. "Only online illustrators would spend so much time on comic characters. If it were a different subject, I believe I still have a chance to defeat Detective Cat fair and square."

"But this kind of stuff is different... it has no reverence for art, and all I feel is disgust."

"Does that Lady Detective Cat just let them say that?" The daughter stuck out her tongue at the poster.

"What else can she do? The art market indeed doesn’t recognize online illustrations much."

Rei helplessly looked into her daughter’s eyes and shrugged:

"Show off her painting skills? They’ve already mocked you as a fool who treats a chamber pot like a wine cup and wouldn’t care if your painting is better than theirs."

"These guys are simply trying to ride your wave of popularity; the more you fight back, the happier they get."

Rei handed the phone to her daughter and instructed.

"So, sometimes choices are more important than efforts. If this Detective Cat were a legitimate painter with a gallery contract, this wouldn’t happen. The background of an online illustrator, if you paint well, attracts such doubts. And the more someone is at the bottom, the more people dare to step on them."

...

Rei wasn’t wrong; dealing with such things is like facing a pile of dog shit that fell on your shoe.

If you don’t deal with it, it sticks to your foot.

If you handle it, it becomes more disgusting.

Gu Weijing indeed had no good way to handle it.

Since the negative review came out, several buyers on Nutshell even continuously requested to terminate transactions in the past few days.

Detective Cat’s pricing on Nutshell isn’t considered low, and quite a few customers impulsively patronized after watching videos.

Now, being told their work is not worth that price and wanting refunds is understandable.

Gu Weijing agreed to all of them readily.

What he truly worried about is those completed transactions without reviews yet.

However, things suddenly took a completely unexpected turn for him today.

Gu Weijing was just chatting on his phone.

It’s already February, and school will start soon, so the school chat group was buzzing with more frequent notifications.

While having lunch, he saw that the chat group of his schoolmates was discussing his Detective Cat account again.

He was already used to this matter.

[Mr. Hibernian], a super influencer already famous among the youth, had made another short video on an art topic with an intriguing ending.

Nothing arouses art students’ curiosity more than this kind of sensational gossip topic.

Now Gu Weijing even feels indifferent to seeing people discuss him online.

He scrolled up the chat history.

The first thing he saw was a colored pencil drawing resembling his own work.

"How do you like this painting of mine? Does it have a bit of Detective Cat’s style? It’s a shame Mr. Hibernian didn’t pick me."

The first to speak was Miss Koukou (Ko Ko).

Just by hearing the name, you know it’s a local from Myanmar.

Koukou is her full name.

In Myanmar’s traditional culture, there’s no concept of a last name, which makes personal and official processes such as registration and declaration involve providing both your name and your father’s name.

This isn’t the government monitoring you; it’s simply because too many people have the same name, making it difficult to differentiate.

Miss Koukou’s family is quite well-off in the international class, with her father being a local military-political leader, and she is both charming and open-minded, having once imitated European and American pop stars, singing "Love Story" in a gold short dress at a school dance.

Her jade legs swayed, adding a touch of spring at the risk of exposure, which stirred many people’s emotions.

Although she changes boyfriends frequently, it doesn’t affect her captivating charm, making her still popular among the boys.

No one usually opposes her, and the boys naturally responded eagerly.

Gu Weijing also responded with an agreeable meme.

"The painting’s nice, quite realistic."

Though in his professional view, there were quite a few distortions in the work, let alone compared to himself or Yakai Shengzi, even compared to Yakai Gangchang, it was far inferior.

It’s just at a Lv.2 beginner level, maybe barely scratching Lv.3 at best.

But hey, it’s a spoof!

Someone actually created a spoof of his work!

The kind of treatment usually reserved for masters made Gu Weijing a little excited.

"@Gu Weijing, are you sure? I disagree with your viewpoint."

Long silent, Mona surprisingly popped up at this moment to express opposition.

"Is this your sketch appreciation ability?" the childhood friend’s tone was unfriendly, directly targeting Gu Weijing.