Chapter 17
[Echo of Pixels]
-Rank: B+
-Passive Effect: The user fragments emotions and meticulously stores them inside digital pixels. Anyone who encounters them can grasp the emotions and subtle nuances embedded in the image with perfect clarity, eliminating any chance of misunderstanding and maximizing communicative power.
“No matter how I look at it, this has to be an emoticon.”
Since I’d already developed an interest in side hustles, I’d come across this sort of thing a few times.
There were endless articles online about people who made ten million won a month just by creating emoticon characters for apps like KakaoTalk and LINE.
But there was another, very important problem.
I’ve never done design before, not even once.
No, I didn’t even need to go as far as calling it design.
I’d never seriously studied art in my life.
When I drew things in school, I wasn’t exactly terrible...
But that was a completely different world from commercial design.
Still, if I had talent, maybe this was something I could try?
A B+ rank sounded pretty high, after all.
An emoticon, huh...
I’d need to do some proper research.
***
There were three group chats in Planning Team 3, the team I belonged to.
First, there was the official work chat, the one everyone was expected to keep notifications on for.
It was a stiff, no-nonsense place where people only said what needed saying.
The second chat went beyond work and allowed casual conversation too.
Everyone in the team was in that one.
The conversation leaned heavily on text, and it wasn’t a place where people felt comfortable using emoticons.
But the real one was the chat after that.
The one for the younger employees, the one below the assistant manager level, the one Kim Bu-jang didn’t even know existed.
They use a lot more emoticons than I expected.
Honestly, aside from the work chat, I was only in those chats in name; because the conversations usually veered away from anything I cared about, I didn’t even lurk that often.
But once I actually decided to read through them properly, not only was the conversation lively, but paid emoticons were everywhere.
And after analyzing things on my own, I reached a conclusion.
The popular ones are basically set in stone.
I myself didn’t use emoticons all that much in daily life.
Mostly I only used the default ones when I needed to answer awkwardly or wrap up a conversation, so I didn’t really know much about this world.
But the emoticons people used differed by gender, and even age groups had their own tastes.
Women mostly leaned toward cute animals like rabbits, ducks, and penguins.
Or toward soft, fluffy characters, the kind that seemed made for emotional projection.
Men in their thirties and older preferred things with clear phrases written on them, like “I’m still going,” “Loyalty,” or “Hang in there!”
By contrast, younger men...
They just like funny stuff.
They tended to use comic images without caring much about the art style or the character design.
Some of them overlapped a lot too.
Looking at the top sellers, the same ones were being used by men and women alike, young and old.
Still, after my own analysis, I came away with this much.
The barrier to entry doesn’t seem as high as I thought.
There were even emoticons that looked like they’d been doodled by a child, or half-finished sketches, and they were still pretty popular.
Of course, sales-wise they weren’t all that high, but the fact that they could launch at all meant there was potential.
Either way, even if I can’t draw beautifully, that doesn’t mean I can’t do it, right?
That gave me a little hope.
Let’s prepare slowly and carefully.
***
The next morning.
I got to work earlier than usual to avoid the hellish commuter train.
I was going to post on my blog anyway, so there was no reason to lounge around at home.
After finishing my work prep early, I logged into the blog.
There are a lot of emoticons on blogs too.
As I lurked around, I noticed that other blogs used characters to express emotions quite a lot.
Maybe I should try it too?
I started writing a review of the hotel I’d stayed at in Jeju.
This time, besides inserting photos and writing the post, I also added a few emoticons.
...This is weird.
How should I put it? The writing and the emoticons were awkwardly disconnected, like they were living separate lives.
Hmm...
I thought about it for a long time.
No, this won’t work.
Tap-tap-tap- I hammered the backspace key.
It feels like I’m forcing emoticons in there against their will.
I’d spent longer than usual on the post, and I was focusing harder than usual, but...
Fine. This one’s a bust.
No matter how many times I revised it, it didn’t improve, so in the end I deleted the entire draft and started over.
I scrapped every emoticon and went back to the calm, familiar tone I always used.
Yeah, this is much better.
The messy, cluttered post now felt neatly arranged.
Let’s not follow other people.
Doing things the way I always did was best.
As expected, the best thing is to go at my own pace.
By the time I finished the blog post, there were still more than fifteen minutes left before work started.
After glancing around to make sure no one was watching, I quietly pulled out my notebook.
An emoticon...
I started sketching the image I’d been imagining in my head.
Whip-
Slash-
Swoosh-!
The pen flew across the page without hesitation.
But before even three minutes had passed, I stopped.
The talent was real.
The character’s pose was unusual, so it was easy to tell what emotion I was trying to capture at a glance.
“But this is just a stick figure.”
The round part was the head, and the long lines were the arms and legs.
Damn it.
What good was it if I could put emotion into an emoticon?
The drawing itself was terrible.
It has to be cute and make people want to reach for it if I want it to sell.
What should I do?
This time, the answer wasn’t coming easily.
***
My worries about emoticons lasted until evening.
“I’ll head out first.”
“See you tomorrow.”
One by one, the team started heading home.
But instead of leaving the office, I stayed put, staring at my notebook while idly spinning my pen between my fingers.
Tap tap.
“Kang Dae-ri. Aren’t you going home?”
Park Dae-ri, who had been about to leave with his bag on his shoulder, knocked on my partition.
“Ah, I’m just going a bit later.”
“Fair enough. Taking the subway at this hour is seriously scary.”
He chuckled and peered down at my desk.
“You drawing something?”
“Just for fun. I was thinking of trying to make an emoticon.”
“Oh, I heard a lot of people make money on side hustles with emoticons. I thought I remembered you being able to draw pretty well, Assistant Manager Kang.”
“...No. Look at this.”
When I showed him the stick figure I’d doodled, he burst out laughing.
“Hey, you really don’t have talent for drawing people or animals.”
“Do I have any other talent?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t it when that craft beer ad came in last time? I remember you being ridiculously good at setting up the drinking scene and the composition.”
“Ah, that ad did turn out well.”
It had been a project I’d led myself.
That ad had boosted sales by 300 percent.
Thanks to that, I’d even gotten a bonus.
“Come to think of it, I think I can manage the direction and composition somehow, but the character itself is the problem.”
“Do you really need to be good at drawing the character?”
“...Huh?”
“Think about it. There are tons of people in the world who draw better than you. There are art-school graduates everywhere. So why bother fighting them head-on?”
“...That’s true.”
He was right.
The important thing in an emoticon was character.
There was no reason to compete on drawing skill alone.
“Play to your strengths and prepare something. If it’s differentiated, there’ll be demand.”
For once, Park Dae-ri was making a useful suggestion.
“...You’ve gotten smarter now that you’re not being hounded by coins.”
“Of course.”
As though he’d been waiting for the opening, he held out a chart that had turned red.
“I’m up a whopping 5 percent. That kind of thing gives a person some breathing room.”
He snickered and stepped back.
“Anyway, I’m off. Good luck. If it works out, dinner’s on you.”
“Yeah, get home safe.”
The fog in my head had lifted, even if only a little.
Don’t obsess over the character. Focus on the composition and direction...
Thinking about it more simply, I could actually see a path forward.
***
7:50 p.m.
It was the time when I’d finally left work and was riding the subway home.
Ding-!
A message arrived from Team Leader Han.
“Pfft.”
The moment I saw the cute character, I laughed before I even realized it.
It felt completely opposite to her usual image as a sharp, career-driven woman.
I don’t have any plans for a while.
Besides, if it was Team Leader Han Su-a, conversation would flow easily, which was good for me too.
She replied immediately.
“...Saturday?”
She didn’t mean after work, but to grab a drink on the weekend?
Could this be...?