Interstellar Travel: Becoming a Dress-Up Game Designer

Chapter 264

Xia Chunqi, standing nearby, joked, "Sister, if you increase Qiaoqiao's salary, her salary will soon be enough to buy Qingfengyi."

Lin Shuying said, "Then I'll give her shares in the future, it's okay."

She had indeed considered this issue recently, because Lin Shuying didn't know how much longer she could hold on. While the tech giants could oversee Qingfengyi along with other fellow villagers, they weren't involved in its operations and had no idea of ​​its purpose or core principles. Lin Qiaoqiao was different; she had been involved in Qingfengyi from beginning to end, in fact, in everything except the design content. However, she had recorded all of this in her notebook. Later, with the return of time and space bringing more information about Chinese civilization, having Qingfengyi's design department study it would be much more stable than letting the tech giants control it.

With the management of the Qingfengyi Youth Palace instance and the planetary civilization, more talents nurtured and taught by Qingfengyi will emerge, and Qingfengyi will enter its true golden age.

However, these are all predictions. What Lin Shuying needs to do now is to keep adding to her position and continuously refine her subsequent plans. Considering that Qingfengyi might be handed over to Lin Qiaoqiao later, she scanned a copy of the book she had used to jot down inspirations in her spare time and gave it to Lin Qiaoqiao so that she could read it more often when she had free time.

Lin Qiaoqiao, being the second-in-command at Qingfengyi, must possess considerable analytical skills and has already guessed something. She simply doesn't believe it, but since Lin Shuying has given it to her, she'll carefully observe, manage, and seize the opportunity.

On Qingfengyi's side, players began to think about their future direction in the game. Since each section would be deepened and refined later, they needed to choose a direction.

But I love every single part of Qingfengyi!

Is there any way to master every branch of the game?

"No, boohoo."

"Actually, the differentiation had been gradually emerging before, didn't you guys notice?"

"Yeah, yeah, look at us combat players, we mostly play in the Chinese martial arts world, we don't really get involved in other ways."

Speaking of the combat players in Huaxia Jianghu, it wasn't so obvious before. It was only after the competition was held in Huaxia Jianghu that everyone realized how dedicated they were. However, after the battles, they seemed unsure what to do next, just sitting in the teahouse in a daze. Only they felt that holding the porcelain competition in Huaxia Jianghu was inappropriate, as it was taking over their territory. This feedback was also extracted by Zhang Zhongxia during this large-scale player feedback session.

However, Lin Shuying will not separate the Chinese martial arts world into a separate entity. Instead, she will gradually perfect these relationships to form a complete game world, allowing players to truly experience the vibrancy of the world, the vastness of China, and its long history and profound civilization.

Qingfengyi's move had little to do with Lin Shuying; she remained in her original villa. A medical team, observers from the Academy of Sciences, Lin Qiaoqiao, Liang Ranran, and others—Qingfengyi's key management personnel—were all there, facilitating communication with Lin Shuying. Recently, she planned to create a double-sided embroidered koi fish design, a very exquisite one. It would be small, only about the size of a fan, featuring one red koi and one black koi. A gold gradient with subtle green-blue ripples would surround it, making the koi appear to be truly swimming within. This was authentic Chinese embroidery, Suzhou embroidery!

Lin Shuying's previous embroidery was quite rough and could hardly be considered art. A true work of art takes at least a month or two, and sometimes three to five years. The ones that take a month or two to make are just small pieces, like a fan or a small table screen. They're not big, the embroidery patterns are very simple, the color scheme is simple, and they're small.

Larger works require a lot of time to build up; a decade of hard work to create a masterpiece is not a miracle but the norm.

This time, she embroidered a very small table screen with a very simple pattern. Her hand speed was just right, taking two months to complete.

When Liang Ranran and the others heard that Lin Shuying was going to do embroidery, they were worried that she would tire herself out. But when they heard it was just a small piece and would take two months to complete, their worries vanished. However, once Lin Shuying actually started working on it, their concerns returned. She would sit there all day, her eyes fixed on the embroidery cloth. Several frames of silk thread were laid out beside her, in as many as eighty different colors—it was simply unbelievable. The small goldfish and some warm yellow ripples were simple in color and pattern; did she really need so many?

Some designers can't even distinguish between different colors; to them, it's just red, yellow, white, and blue-white—nothing more. But the color codes on the poles say otherwise; the warm yellow ripples alone require 29 different colors.

Seeing that everyone didn't understand, Lin Shuying said, "Collector-quality works of art can be even more exquisite than realistic paintings, capturing the freshness of flowers, the subtle expressions of people, the fur of animals, and every single detail!"

At this point, some designers will understand. In art, the depiction of light and color is indeed incredibly detailed, with master artists using hundreds of different color combinations in their works. However, masters often mix colors very quickly, adding a little water or adjusting the proportions slightly, which is often imperceptible to the untrained eye or those who are not professionals. These color-mixing details are reflected in embroidery through an astonishing number of colored threads.

Lin Shuying's embroidery process was filmed without any editing, including the parts where Liang Ranran and the others asked her for advice. This video will become a simple tutorial at the level of an art form for Suzhou embroidery, and many people will become inheritors of Suzhou embroidery because of it.

Lin Shuying also had Liang Ranran and the others embroider other pieces while she provided guidance. They were doing single-sided embroidery, double-sided embroidery with different colors, and double-sided embroidery with two different colors. Even with Lin Shuying's guidance, Qingfengyi's employees couldn't complete the double-sided embroidery with different colors and double-sided embroidery alone; it required two people to work together.

The embroidery is very simple: double-sided roses in different colors, yellow on one side and red on the other. There aren't many colors, as Liang Ranran and her team wouldn't be able to handle too many. For beginners, too many colors can easily lead to loose threads, a messy appearance, and uneven stitching when joining or changing threads. The simpler the colors, the easier it is to embroider.

The double-sided, different-colored embroidery depicts a maple leaf. The front side is red, and the back side is green. The red side has richer colors, while the green side needs to convey the freshness of the maple leaf.

After spending some time honing their embroidery skills, Liang Ranran and her team finally understood what it meant to create a portrait on the tip of a needle. They were truly using the needle tip to meticulously depict a painting or an object, down to the smallest detail, sometimes even more so than some paintings!

The silk threads used by Lin Shuying are extremely fine, and they are all top-grade. Each thread is individually tested and only those that meet the standards of silkworms' natural spinning are used. Those that do not meet the standards are all downgraded or discarded, resulting in these top-grade threads, which are all of the same quality in terms of luster and fineness as those naturally spun by silkworms.

Through her hands, these silk threads transformed into beautiful patches of color on the embroidery fabric. Two goldfish came to life, their tails swaying and creating ripples in the surrounding water. The ripples were golden, the color of the sun, but also contained hints of blue, pink, and green—the colors of lotus flowers, leaves, and the sky. Although at first glance they appeared to be only three colors, more than twenty colors were used in the embroidery to depict them, creating such detail that a single glance naturally evokes the image of lotus flowers and leaves above the goldfish, along with a clear, azure sky.

Several employees around were dumbfounded and asked incredulously, "Boss, why didn't we see lotus flowers, lotus leaves, and sunny weather, but I could feel it from the picture?"

Lin Shuying proudly said, "This is the charm of Suzhou embroidery. Suzhou embroidery is one of the most outstanding embroidery styles in China. It is said to be able to embroider everything and the world. The world-famous paintings embroidered are more exquisite than the original paintings. The embroidered world is lifelike and more detailed than a photograph. It just takes time to mature, otherwise, good works cannot be produced."

It took her two months to embroider this lucky koi fish screen.

The embroidery produced by the employees wasn't very good either. Although they crudely demonstrated the techniques of double-sided same color, double-sided different color, and double-sided different color and opposite-sided embroidery, the workmanship was indistinguishable from garbage in the eyes of a skilled embroiderer. Because this was a tutorial video, Lin Shuying didn't hold back in pointing out all the shortcomings.

"Ranran, the stitches you've done aren't fine enough. The thread is too long, resulting in a lot of jagged edges. What are you embroidering? I can only see the thread ends. Anyone who didn't know better would think you were showing me the untrimmed side of the kesi (silk tapestry). You might as well just knit it directly with yarn. With thread this thick, the finished product will look like a pixelated block game..."

The designers at Qingfengyi were utterly ashamed. It wasn't that they hadn't created embroidered pieces and clothing before; some were even their own designs, not the kind provided by the boss. What they thought was impressive embroidery now looked like nothing more than a pile of garbage.

Especially in machine embroidery, a designer named Wang Moyun is exceptionally talented; she can embroider a garment in under an hour. Of course, this is on the premise that all the color blocks, thread change points, and patterns are drawn on beforehand; she simply follows the process. Unlike Lin Shuying, who can start embroidering from scratch with nothing in mind.

What's most impressive is that her machine embroidery is on par with Lin Shu-ying's in terms of detail, making her one of Lin Shu-ying's key successors. As a successor, she definitely receives special attention, with key points explained so that the successor knows how to improve.

"Moyun, for the next while, stop machine embroidery and get a feel for Suzhou embroidery. Especially your stitches; they're too formulaic, lacking any spirit. Artistic embroidery requires adjusting the stitches according to the pattern, color, and intended meaning—fine where it should be fine, thick where it should be thick—to bring out the lifelike expression of the embroidery. Also, the thread must be fine. Like painting, the finer the thread, the better the details can be depicted, and the more content can be conveyed. Whether we place patterns on clothing, create a screen, or something else, we have two purposes: first, to make it beautiful, showcasing the most direct beauty; second, to give the viewer enough to appreciate, to discover, and to tell the story of the artist's inner world and emotions at that moment. The same applies to everyone else; don't become a machine, abandoning the ability to think and learn. We are designers; we need even more thought and inspiration to discover our inner selves and express our ideas. And our works are our means of expression..."