>>56923282Genshin Zhang GOD here to tell you exactly how and why this is bullshit.
>Even Ina got over that shit and she had proposal to be main character aristThough guest art is oftentimes used for promotional material when it comes to Genshin (Ina herself has draw promo art for Genshin, and fanart even as recently as February 7th), all character artists with the solitary exception of one are Chinese.
This is because Genshin's character design team primarily consists of two kinds of employees: people who draw the characters and their concept art, and people who clean them up for reference sheets. Artists handle many different characters at a time, and Genshin's development consists of a multitude of teams who speak to each other on a frequent basis (proven by behind the scenes development videos). As a result of this any main artist would have to live in China and speak fluent Chinese, which Ina does not, and never will.
So what's this one character that was designed by a guest artist? Tighnari, who was designed by Pako (picture related, confirmed by himself on his twitter), and released in mid 2022. He was probably hired to work on Tighnari as far back as late 2021, but by that point, the Coco situation with CN had already long passed its apex. Ina continues to draw fanart and official art for Chinese games, such as Azur Lane's Bristol.
In short, the idea that Ina could've ever been a main artist, even a guest artist for one character, is ridiculous. That has only ever happened once, to an artist with far more clout and visibility than she has.
Genshin Impact's development is exceedingly insular compared to other gacha games, focused on promoting Chinese culture and further work for Chinese people. That's why guest artists are rare outside of promotional artwork. It's whatever to hire one person to do one image so you can publish it on a holiday or for a character's birthday, but much more of a process to hire an artist to draw your characters, which have additional considerations due to the game being in 3D. I wouldn't be surprised if Pako was an experiment.
Anyway glory to the People's Republic of China
