Genshin Impact and Honkai fan art commissions: the brief checklist

Bran emailed me on a Wednesday in March with a brief I now get roughly twice a month: "I want my OC painted in the Genshin Impact style — same vibe as Furina's splash art, but it's my character, not Furina." The brief was specific in all the right ways, and it set off the same checklist conversation I have with every HoYoverse-leaning client. Because there's a Genshin style, there's a Honkai Star Rail style, there's an Honkai Impact 3rd style, and inside each of those there's character splash art, in-game model art, and event banner art — and clients often want the splash-art register without naming it that way.

I'm Hector, and I run Design Vortex. HoYoverse fan-art commissions are one of the highest-volume request types we see, and the first email exchange is always about narrowing four or five overlapping registers down to the one the client actually wants. This piece is the brief checklist I keep on a sticky note next to the easel — what to ask, what to confirm, what to head off before sketch.

If you haven't picked your wider style yet, the anime portrait commission guide is the upstream read. Come back here when you've decided your reference set is HoYoverse-leaning specifically.

Table of contents

• The HoYoverse visual signature in plain terms
• The canonical reference set: pick the right one
• OC versus canon character: two very different briefs
• The IP conversation, in one paragraph
• The brief checklist I send back to every client
• Common mistakes I head off before sketch
• Where to take it next

The HoYoverse visual signature in plain terms

When clients say "Genshin style" or "Honkai style," they almost always mean the splash-art register — the full-body painted illustration the games push out when a new character is announced. That's a specific look, and it's not the same as the in-game 3D model or the loading-screen art or the event-banner illustration. Naming it correctly is the first job.

The signature, broken into the parts a painter actually decides:

• Painterly anime, not cell-shaded. No visible black line in the final. The form is built with value and gradient. Skin has a soft fall-off from light to shadow, not a flat shape.
• Anime face geometry, realistic skin texture. Big eyes, small mouth, simplified anime nose convention. But the skin around those features is painted with subsurface warmth and a real value gradient.
• Material rendering that does the heavy lifting. Gold trim reads as gold. Silk reads as silk. Leather has a slight sheen on the wear ridges. This is where the painting hours go.
• A wide colour vocabulary anchored to one or two key tones. Furina is anchored to a soft cyan-and-cream. Hu Tao is anchored to that red-and-black-and-gold. Acheron is anchored to deep purple with a slash of red. Pick the character's anchor before the brief starts.
• Hair as a structural element. HoYoverse hair is rendered tightly — strand groups with clear highlight pools, a wind-caught direction, often a colour gradient from root to tip. Hair is half the read of the character.
• Decorative ornament everywhere. Trim, brooches, asymmetric jewellery, layered fabric. Modern HoYoverse splash art tolerates more ornament than almost any other anime register.

Get those six things right and the portrait reads as HoYoverse. Get any one of them wrong — flat skin, cell-shaded shadow, lazy hair — and the portrait reads as "anime but not quite that anime."

The canonical reference set: pick the right one

The single biggest source of confusion in HoYoverse commissions is that clients send a reference set that mixes three or four different in-game art types. Splash art, character intro art, key visual, in-game model render, event illustration, official artbook page, and fan art from a HoYoverse-adjacent artist all live in slightly different registers.

What to send me, in order of usefulness:

1. Official splash art of the closest existing character. If your OC has a similar archetype to Ganyu, send Ganyu's splash. If similar to Aventurine, send Aventurine's. This tells me which sub-register of HoYoverse painting you actually want — the games are not visually identical across their range.
2. One or two key-visual illustrations from the same game. These confirm the lighting and palette conventions for that title.
3. Optional: an artbook page if you have access. These are the highest-resolution references for material rendering.

What not to send: the in-game 3D model. The 3D model is a different art pipeline and reads as cell-shaded with cooler colour. If you send me the 3D model and ask for a painted portrait, we'll get an awkward hybrid. Pick the splash register or pick the in-game register — not both.

Selene sent me a reference set in April with three Genshin splash arts and one fan-art piece from an artist she liked. The fan-art piece was lovely, but it sat in a softer, more pastel register than the official Genshin look. We had to have a fifteen-minute conversation about which of the two she actually wanted — the official register or the fan-artist's softer take. She picked the official register. The portrait shipped two weeks later and reads as HoYoverse. The other version would have been a different painting.

The fastest brief disaster in HoYoverse commissions is a mixed reference set. Three official splash arts and one outlier fan piece is four different paintings on my screen.

OC versus canon character: two very different briefs

The single biggest fork in the email exchange is whether the client wants their original character painted in the HoYoverse style, or whether they want a tribute portrait of an actual HoYoverse character — Hu Tao, Raiden Shogun, Acheron, Aventurine, Furina. These are different briefs and they have different IP implications.

Original character in the HoYoverse style is the more common request. The client has built an OC — sometimes a tabletop character, sometimes a fic character, sometimes an OC built specifically because they like the HoYoverse register — and wants it painted as if it were a splash art for a character the game hasn't released. The brief here is about translating the OC's existing traits into HoYoverse design conventions: how does the outfit follow HoYoverse silhouette logic, what's the colour anchor, what's the Vision or Path equivalent symbol on the character, what kind of weapon. We're inventing within the visual language.

Canon character tribute portrait is the request to paint, say, Furina in her own canonical outfit, on our easel, in our hand. The technical challenge here is staying close enough to canon that the character reads correctly, while delivering something that's painted rather than copied. We work from references, build our own composition, paint our own version. The portrait reads as Furina painted by us, not as a screenshot of the splash art.

The OC brief is bigger creative work; the canon brief is more reference-disciplined work. The pricing is similar but the hours go to different places. The fan art versus original character piece walks through the decision in more detail — if you're on the fence, that's the right next read.

Diego asked in February for Hu Tao in her existing outfit, in our painterly anime register, with a specific composition he had in mind. That's a canon tribute. Nadia, the same month, asked for her D&D bard "painted as if she were a Liyue archon" — wholly her character, costume invented inside HoYoverse design conventions. Same painting register, two completely different briefs.

The IP conversation, in one paragraph

HoYoverse characters are copyrighted. HoYoverse, in practice, has been broadly permissive about non-commercial fan art — there's a vast fan-art ecosystem for these games and that ecosystem isn't, generally, getting cease-and-desist letters for personal-use portraits. That said, the conversation I have with every client is the same: a commissioned portrait of a HoYoverse character is for your wall, your phone wallpaper, your private use. We do not licence the resulting painting for commercial resale, print runs, merch, or NFT-style distribution. If you want a portrait of your OC and you fully own that OC, the commercial side opens up. If you want a portrait of Acheron, the painting is personal-use only on our end. The fan-art IP piece is the longer version of this conversation, and the commercial licensing piece covers what changes when the character is yours. Please skim both before the commission starts. The conversation is easier up front than late.

The brief checklist I send back to every client

When a HoYoverse brief lands in my inbox, this is the checklist I copy-paste into my reply. Fill it in and the painting goes smoothly.

1. Which game. Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Honkai Impact 3rd, or Wuthering Waves (which sits adjacent to the same register). Each has slightly different palette and ornament conventions.
2. Which sub-register inside that game. Splash art, key visual, or artbook page. Not the in-game model.
3. OC or canon character. If canon, name the character. If OC, send one closest-cousin canon reference.
4. Colour anchor. One or two key colours that the painting hangs on. Furina = cyan-and-cream. Your OC = pick yours before the brief.
5. Outfit description. Specific. The HoYoverse register rewards detailed ornament — list the asymmetric pieces, the trim, the layered fabric. If you say "vaguely fantasy outfit," I'll have to design the whole thing.
6. Vision / Path / Element equivalent symbol or motif. If you want one of these on the character, name it. The placement is usually the chest, the hair, or a held object.
7. Pose and crop. Three-quarter view standing? Bust shot? Action splash with motion in the cloth? Splash-art convention is usually full-body with dynamic cloth; if you want bust-only, say so.
8. Background. Soft painted backdrop in the colour anchor, or a thin atmospheric environment, or a graphic flat? Splash art usually uses a soft painterly backdrop that doesn't pull focus.
9. Personal-use confirmation. A single line in the brief saying "I understand this commission is for personal use only" closes the IP loop. We can both move forward.

This list isn't a form to fill in formally. It's the seven or eight things I'll ask about in email if you haven't told me. Front-loading them saves a week.

Common mistakes I head off before sketch

Six failure modes that have tripped past HoYoverse commissions, and now sit on my brief checklist:

• Cell-shaded references for a HoYoverse character. The canon style is painterly. A cell-shaded Raiden Shogun reads as off-model. If the client wants cell-shaded, we either pick a different character or accept the portrait is a stylistic remix rather than a tribute.
• 3D model render as the only reference. The model is in a different register. I'll ask for splash art instead, or we adjust the brief to a more graphic register that suits the model look.
• Mixed-game reference set. Genshin splash + Honkai key visual + Wuthering Waves promotional art is three different palette conventions. Pick the game first.
• Realistic body proportions on an anime face. HoYoverse characters are stylised top to bottom — proportions, posture, hand size, all of it. A realistically proportioned body with an anime face reads as uncanny.
• "Just make her look like Furina but not Furina." This is a hard ask — you're requesting a tribute that isn't a tribute. We need to either commit to canon Furina or invent a wholly different OC who happens to share an aesthetic.
• Asking for commercial licensing on a canon character. I'll have to say no. The painting is yours; the character isn't. The commercial licensing piece covers the line.

When I catch these in the first email exchange, the painting ships on schedule. When I catch them at sketch review, we lose four days. When I catch them at colour-block, we lose more.

Where to take it next

If you've got a HoYoverse-leaning brief sitting on the back burner, the order form is the most efficient way to get it in front of me. Please use the checklist above as your brief skeleton — the seven or eight items above answer most of what I'd ask in email. The portfolio has the anime section grouped together; the painterly anime examples are the closest reference points for a HoYoverse commission.

If your character is fully your own and you want the HoYoverse register applied, the fan art versus original character piece is the right sibling read. If you're not sure how the IP side affects your commission, the fan-art IP piece is the longer version of that conversation, and the commercial licensing piece covers what changes when the character is yours versus when it's HoYoverse's. For an OC build that needs the underlying brief skeleton first, the Tarnished OC piece is a useful cross-genre sibling — same logic, different game. And for fully original work where licensing matters, the custom projects service page is where to head next.

Write the colour anchor before you write anything else. That single sentence sets the painting's whole register.