Chapter 5: Keywords are anime, badass, and women

“jinha_na…”

Right after the VR Chat meeting.

Winter, no, Seo-ah, immediately searched for the ID that Autumn had sent her on the freelance site.

“…Is this really the person?”

Seo-ah doubted her eyes.

And for good reason. The person displayed on the screen was a newbie who had joined the site just over a week ago.

After joining, they had only completed two jobs. One was Autumn’s avatar modification, and the other was a simple model creation. Autumn was even this person’s first client.

“What did Autumn trust in this person to entrust them with the job?”

Seo-ah got a headache, wondering if her precious dongsaeng would get scammed someday.

Moreover, the profile picture was of the main character of a famous magical girl animation, which looked very unprofessional.

The credibility was so low that it went through the floor and into the Earth’s inner core.

Nevertheless, the reason Seo-ah couldn’t leave this novice freelancer’s personal page was that she had seen this person’s work with her own two eyes.

[No, they even did things I didn’t ask for??? They read my mind and did everything, they’re a complete GOD-Changseop!!! (GOD-Changseop emoticon)]

[And they did it… in just a few hours?]

[Yeah, yeah!! Isn’t it amazing?!?! (Worship emoticon)]

Seo-ah leaned back in her chair, recalling the messages she exchanged with Autumn. The details of the facial expressions and the physics engine applied to the hair were certainly top-notch in the industry.

To exaggerate a little, she wondered if it was the same person who made Han Ari’s model.

“Could it be… a former pro who made a new nickname and is working as a hobby?”

You know how in games, the veterans wear weird clothes and run around town or make alternate characters and mess with newbies.

Seo-ah thought for a moment, then clicked on the magical girl profile picture and sent a message.

After all, the results are everything. If it’s suspicious, it’s suspicious, but sending a message will give an answer.

The message content was simple.

She wanted to commission the production of a high-quality avatar like the recently debuted VTuber, Han Ari.

She didn’t care how much the budget was. She would match it as much as possible.

While sending the message, Seo-ah unknowingly let out a small laugh.

Han Ari level.

The moment she used those words, it became a high-level request that couldn’t be covered by a freelance site.

But if she was going to make a request anyway, it was better to state her requirements as accurately as possible.

On the other hand, she also thought that if it wasn’t at this level, it wasn’t even worth her attention.

“Surely they won’t present an outrageous quote, right?”

She said that, but she was planning to match it as much as possible.

The avatar determines the first impression of the broadcast. She had no intention of saving money.

Just then, she received a reply to the message she sent.

[No scammers.]

“…What?”

Seo-ah was caught in a strange and perplexing emotion.

She thought she might be rejected, but she never expected to be called a scammer right off the bat.

“Wh-what did I do…?”

Thinking she should at least hear the reason, Seo-ah clicked on the profile again.

But.

[User not found.]

This person had already blocked Seo-ah.

“So annoying!”

Bang!

Seo-ah, completely enraged, slammed her keyboard.

Her raid leader personality exploded.

At this point, she became curious about what kind of person freelancer Jinha was, not human Jinha.

She felt like she wanted to have a real-life fight.

“Ugh, another wasted day.”

Thinking it was another bust, Jinha let out a small sigh.

It was a day that made him really crave a cigarette. He had quit long ago because he was short on money, but on days like this, he wanted to light one up.

His personal email inbox and the freelance market message box were both empty.

The first and second days were smooth.

When he was handling one job a day, he thought he could make a living like this…

But the beginner’s luck ended there.

After that, he didn’t get a single job for over a week. His income was zero.

To be precise, he did get one more big job.

He just got scammed.

He should have known when they started nitpicking at his work.

He thought they were just a picky client and kept accommodating them, but they got angry saying they didn’t like it for no reason and disappeared.

He was still in a dispute with that person.

Since there was clear evidence of their harassment, he would eventually get the tied-up advance payment, but even this was fatal to Jinha, who was in dire need of money.

After experiencing this, he became more cautious about receiving requests from individuals. He immediately filtered out requests that looked problematic.

Just last night, he rejected a ridiculous request that came via DM.

“They said they’d give me any amount of money to make another Han Ari-level avatar… Are they kidding?”

It was such an absurd request that he didn’t even want to get involved, so he immediately blocked them.

As the creator of Han Ari’s avatar, Hana, he knew better than anyone how ridiculous this request was.

He suddenly wondered. How much did this person think Hana was worth?

“Should I have just called their bluff? Asked them how much they were thinking?”

Jinha muttered regretfully, but then shook his head. There was no need to waste time.

Hana wasn’t a model that could be made so easily.

Even Jinha felt overwhelmed at the thought of making it again.

He couldn’t guarantee how many months it would take, even if he worked on it full-time. Even if he brought over the various functions that were implemented in Hana.

“I’ll starve to death before Hana mk2 is completed.”

Life is never easy.

Jinha started browsing the request board again today.

He had half given up hope. The jobs posted on the request board were usually those that freelancers avoided. He was just really lucky on the first day.

The request board is where people end up after sending requests to individuals and getting rejected. It means, “Please, someone take this job.”

Naturally, there are only extreme requests. Either the price is ridiculously low, or it’s a laborious task that takes a lot of time.

“It would be great if a certified company or a big name gave me a request.”

Of course, it was wishful thinking.

Jinha knew. High-end clients wouldn’t entrust jobs to someone with an ambiguous resume like him.

Actually, the solution to this dead-end situation was simple.

All he had to do was put Hana in his portfolio.

But that was really the last resort. There might come a day when he makes another Hana, but not now.

He needed a ‘bubble-free’ portfolio to get decent requests.

Jinha clicked on his profile instead of browsing the request board.

Now that he looked at it, his portfolio was quite poor. It felt like there was too much text.

“Should I make a few avatars for my portfolio while I’m at it?”

Jinha leaned towards the monitor again.

The highest quality he could produce in a day or two, maximum three days.

He was planning to create so-called basic avatars.

Actually, if his goal was simply to mass-produce various human models, he could churn out one every 10 minutes.

Especially with the AI model and template avatar Jinha had, he could produce elaborate avatars like a factory.

It was the culprit that sent Jinha to graduate school, after all.

“But that won’t work.”

What VTubers want these days is not realistic beauty, but a unique ‘character’.

An avatar that looks like a real person? That’s outdated research that only works in a lab.

The current trend is anime, moe, and subculture.

Jinha decided to rebuild the factory from scratch.

He already had a 3D structure to use as a base, facial expression units for learning, and countless other data piled up on his hard drive.

In terms of capacity, it was more than double Jinha’s collection of adult videos.

He was planning to use this to train a new AI model specialized in anime-style avatars.

“The AI model is important, but I also need to remake the template avatar.”

The template avatar is just as important as the AI model in creating a basic avatar.

It’s like when carving a soccer ball out of stone, if the stone is already shaped like a ball, it saves effort.

Another example is that pre-cooked meat tastes better than raw meat.

The keywords for the template avatar were already set.

Anime-style, hot, female character.

He was willing to compromise on the first two modifiers. Sometimes it might be worth making a realistic avatar, and occasionally, making a cute female character with a lolita body type wouldn’t be bad.

But he had no intention of making male characters. He wouldn’t raise a son.

Moreover, seeing an avatar with the large, imposing thing he had lost… he felt like he would get reality checked.

Jinha ran the 3D graphics tool and loaded the template avatar model he used to use.

But when he tried to sculpt a female body, he was at a loss from the start.

He was a virgin who had never properly seen a woman’s body.

He was an engineer who was far from having an aesthetic sense or manual dexterity.

It was a huge hurdle for Jinha, who had been creating models through coding.

“It’s funny to express ‘hotness’ in code, and I wish I had some reference material…”

Suddenly, he noticed a ‘hot female body’ faintly reflected on the dark monitor screen.

“…Huh?”

Found it. My reference material.