Interstellar Travel: Becoming a Dress-Up Game Designer

Chapter 254

He handed the player a drawing, a black and white ink painting—it was really difficult to do without some skill. Turning a design into a finished product is no simple matter; it requires considering the color scheme and the three-dimensional appearance after molding. After those considerations, one must also think about how to glaze it, which is a highly technical skill, even a reflection of the difference between masters.

Porcelain achieves the effect of seamlessly integrating painting with clay and depicting scenes within the earth, resulting in vibrant, lifelike pieces, all thanks to its exquisite glaze. The glaze of art pieces differs from the applied paint on modern bowls and chopsticks; glaze is fired into the porcelain, ensuring it remains unchanged and lustrous for centuries. Therefore, a poorly applied glaze results in a sparse, abstract work of art, with water droplets or flowing colors haphazardly accumulating, rendering the original design and painting worthless.

However, there is a type of porcelain that is different: wood-fired porcelain. This type of porcelain rarely features carved patterns. Instead, it uses the carbon dioxide and soot produced by burning firewood as glaze, which flows onto the porcelain at high temperatures, creating a variety of unique styles. There are ethereal blues reminiscent of a beautiful woman, gradients like withered trees coming back to life, the look of dried-up animal bones, and deformed porcelain surfaces, all depending on the work of nature.

There are also highly skilled craftsmen who can control the firing process to achieve their desired shape; these craftsmen are true masters. It's important to understand that the smoke and airflow within the kiln are uncontrollable, not to mention the direction and color changes of the smoke and ash as it melts on the porcelain. Therefore, the production of wood-fired porcelain is extremely difficult, a field in which most porcelain masters dare not easily claim to be experts.

There were over ten pieces of wood-fired porcelain in this competition, but the most beautiful was a bluish-gray Bodhisattva. The lotus pedestal of the Bodhisattva was distinct in color from the Bodhisattva statue itself, with a slight purple hue tinged with lotus pink. The Bodhisattva's robes were mostly bluish-gray, with some white. The face was white with a hint of rouge, and the Bodhisattva held a jade vase containing willow branches. The willow leaves were slightly green, and the most exquisite detail was the wood ash that had fallen onto the leaves, deepening the green color, making it appear as if a drop of dew had fallen onto the transparent glaze.

Players arrived before the Bodhisattva statue and were awestruck by its solemn appearance, feeling a deep sense of reverence and a desire to offer prayers. Just then, one player noticed the description of the statue, learning that it was a compassionate deity in ancient Chinese Buddhism, capable of guiding and saving sentient beings, and that one could pray to it for peace, health, and other blessings.

The deities of Chinese civilization share a common characteristic: people can pray to any god for all sorts of wishes, such as fortune, prosperity, longevity, and wealth, without needing to categorize them and find the corresponding deity.

After seeing the description, players actually started imitating the ancients, making wishes to Buddha and praying that they could buy one of the artworks. They no longer aspired to buy many pieces; buying just one would be a great achievement. It's simply that with 1,900 artworks, distributed among billions of people, it's a drop in the ocean.

At this point, a player spoke in the world chat: "Why not make a wish to the God of Wealth? Isn't the God of Wealth the one who controls everything?"

"What nonsense are you spouting? I already said that the gods of China are in charge of everything, so don't make any wishes to the God of Wealth. He only needs to take care of me."

"I was the first to make a wish to the God of Wealth, so he won't care about you. God of Wealth, I've never challenged you or made you angry, so please bless me first."

........

"Huh?! Family, what are you talking about? Shouldn't we go and watch the videos made by the apprentices of those masters? There are explanations from the masters in them. This Guanyin statue has a high chance of winning first prize."

"Huh? Huh? Why?"

"Because of this, the video. As you can see, although we need to have our own aesthetic sense, the comments of the masters are still worth learning from."

The video is quite long; it was probably uploaded to the StarCraft website by a player who recorded the entire process.

The video includes commentary from the masters on all the other pieces, offering their perspectives on the porcelain, though not entirely clearly. This Guanyin statue has many merits. Firstly, while wood-fired glaze is indeed difficult, the color mixing on this piece is excellent; the colors are perfectly balanced in the appropriate shades, and the details of Guanyin are sculpted flawlessly. The flowing ribbons, the fluttering robes, and the lifelike lotus flowers are all exquisite. Most remarkably, the dewdrops on the willow leaves are the perfect finishing touch!

In the video, a master was amazed and repeatedly exclaimed, "Master Wang, how did you do that? Could you reveal some of your secrets?"

The old man, referred to as the King's Army, stroked his beard and chuckled, "It's just that the clay varies from place to place."

"What? Inconsistent clay types will lead to...?"

Porcelain made from uniform clay will not crack during firing; otherwise, it is very easy for it to crack during the firing process, potentially ruining the piece.

Wang Shi said with a mysterious expression, "My secret weapon, my secret weapon, hahaha."

This was a secret that couldn't be revealed, so the masters silently shut their mouths and stopped asking.

But the master's miraculous apprentice smugly added in the voiceover: "Actually, Master did many experiments, adding a ton of soil. I don't know why there's such a difference even though it's all soil. I don't know if the civilization on our home planet really has this kind of magical operation or if the designers are just making it up."

At this point, the player knows that the video was filmed by Wang Shi's good apprentice.

However, according to the masters, this work is indeed worthy of a vote in terms of various techniques, details, and expression. The Guanyin is also sculpted very beautifully. Players, who have been bombarded with images of Chang'e, fairies, and other goddesses for so long, can still find this Bodhisattva statue beautiful, which shows that it is truly beautiful.

Humans are, at their core, animals that prioritize appearance, hahaha.

In the end, the players actually ranked this wood-fired Bodhisattva porcelain piece as number one, the multi-treasure gourd as number two, and the extremely complex fairy cave as number three. Many more porcelain pieces followed, each ranked in turn. In the end, over a hundred porcelain pieces shared the same ranking, which astonished the staff at Qingfengyi Data Monitoring.

"The players are truly passionate. With the same number of slots in the middle, the ranking of 1,900 porcelain pieces actually generated more than 200 slots through the lottery."

"This shows that the boss's design is very brilliant and the players appreciate it."

"Hehe, should we tell the boss and cheer her up?"

Recently, for some reason, Lin Shuying has visibly lost weight, and her employees can only watch helplessly. The company has also brought in a dedicated doctor to take care of her and monitor her health at all times.

Everyone was silently anxious, yet didn't want their anxiety to affect Lin Shuying. She wanted to share happy things with her boss immediately, believing that her happiness would improve her health.

The porcelain competition results are announced in three days, after which the porcelain pieces are displayed in the square for players to view at any time. However, many unexpected events will occur on the world map, and the prize for these events is the porcelain pieces themselves. Once a player wins one of these events, the porcelain piece will disappear.

It gives players a sense of sadness and reluctance, as if every glance is one less to see, and makes them wish they could find something to hide it from these porcelain pieces.

A blogger took three pictures of each piece of porcelain submitted for the competition and compiled the descriptions and names into a long article, which was then posted on the StarNet. The article quickly went viral, reaching many StarNet users who were awestruck by the shimmering porcelain and exclaimed how beautiful it was!

Many wealthy people are aware of Qingfengyi's latest porcelain event, and even more so, they know that Qingfengyi has privately authorized others to produce porcelain. These nouveau riche seem to have seen something extraordinary; once it can be put into production, the profits are unimaginable.

If Lin Shuying knew what they were thinking, she would only say they guessed correctly. You see, in her era, the ceramics industry in China alone was worth over a trillion yuan; if you included the whole world, it was truly terrifying. Chinese ceramics are divided into industrial ceramics, such as porcelain used for circuits and industrial machinery. Next are household ceramics, such as pots and pans. Then there are art pieces and handicrafts, which are incredibly diverse; if you include antiques, the list is truly endless.

Arriving in interstellar space, with so many planets and so many people, is terrifying to even think about.

The population continues to grow, and as long as the Zerg don't abandon their population control plan, humanity must reproduce. Unless one side breaks the numerical stalemate, that will be the start of war...

It's terrifying to think about; war is the most terrifying thing in the world. A few start wars, but all of humanity is harmed, and only a few benefit from them. Worst of all are the children who have no choice. To be forced to participate without a choice—how terrifying!

Those wealthy individuals who saw the potential in porcelain quickly dispatched their subordinates to find the players who had miraculously become apprentices, intending to sponsor their offline porcelain-making. However, most players were just there to play the game, with only a few genuinely interested in learning. Unfortunately, the remaining players had already been snapped up by the big spenders; they were too late.

When Deng Xiaoping heard that most of the nouveau riche of similar status had failed to recruit any talent, he was so happy that he held banquets every day to have fun. Those nouveau riche angrily said, "What are you so happy about? Have you found any talent?"

Grandpa Deng said with a smug look, "No, but my grandson has sponsored a master who is practicing porcelain making offline, hahaha. I heard the results are quite good."

"And you're talking like you're going to give your grandson's things to you, that's hilarious."

Who doesn't have a grandson? Who doesn't know what a grandson is like? What are you showing off here?

"You, humph! My grandson is different from your grandsons. He is the future head of the Deng family. Do you think what he has belongs to the Deng family?"

The bigwigs were enlightened: Could this really be done?

nice!

In this way, wouldn't everything in the grandson's hands belong to the family, and what belongs to the family is theirs?

Everyone smiled knowingly, "Not bad, not bad."

Grandpa Deng chuckled and said, "I don't know what you're so happy about. Do you think your grandson is as outstanding as mine?"

Xunmei's grandfather said, "My granddaughter is quite good, both academically and physically. She's a perfect match for Deng Xiaoping, since they've been together since childhood. What do you think?"

Grandpa Deng thought about it and thought it was a good idea. His family were all businessmen; perhaps the Su family girl could get into the military...

“I think it’s a good idea too. Why don’t we let the two kids try it out?”

When Xunmei and Deng Yijun found out about this, they were furious.

Are they a perfect match?

No one would think that way if they weren't blind.