I am the Entertainment Tycoon

Chapter 140 The Dragon And The Girl

Tokyo Animation Studios, Elffire City.

While Theo was driving back to his house, the teams arrived in their working areas.

Team 19 Workspace.

Bruno was a little nervous as he entered the room.

He wasn't lucky enough to be in a team with his four friends, so he had to adapt to the situation.

He had to perform well in this task so that he could go to the fourth phase.

Team members entered the room and looked at each other until a middle-aged man said, "How about we introduce each other?"

Everyone nodded and agreed with him.

"My name is Urata Nobuo. I'm 37 years old and I prefer working with character development." the middle-aged man said.

The others started introducing themselves too after Urata said that.

When it was Bruno's turn, he said, "My name is Bruno Takahiro. I'm 28 years old. And I prefer working with the background design." he said with a nervous voice.

When everyone introduced themselves Urata Nobuo said, "How about we vote for a team leader? This way we can proceed with the project with more efficiency." 

Everyone agreed with that, they knew that their project would be bound to fail if they didn't have a clear organization of the team.

They proceeded to vote, and Urata won the most votes and was elected the team leader.

The team members could see that Urata had some experience in leading teams, so most of them wanted someone with experience.

Being the team leader wasn't the best position.

The leader would be judged even more strictly than the rest of the team.

"Thank you for your support! Let's strive to do something amazing!" Urata said with a firm voice.

"I think we should first decide what our story will be. Do you all agree?" Urata asked.

"Yeah, leader. This should be the most important thing we should do now" a blonde man replied.

Everyone else agreed.

It was indeed a key step for them.

Before making the character development and storyboard, they had to know the base story.

This step was crucial because it would measure the creativity of each group.

"Let's narrow down our choices. Which genre we should do? Comedy? Shounen? Slice-of-life?" Urata asked.

"I think we should do something simple. We won't have time to animate something too complicated."

"Yeah, I agree. No fight scenes because that would take most of our time to animate."

"How about fantasy? We can use our creativity to create something new, but it is simpler to animate compared to shounen."

"It is a good idea! Even though it is more complicated compared with slice-of-life, a fantasy has more room for us to use our creativity."

The team spent half of the first creating the story.

Even though the animation would only have one minute of duration, they wanted the story to be perfect.

If they couldn't even create a short story perfectly they would be ashamed of themselves.

When they finished writing the story, they heaved a sigh of relief.

The first huddle was gone, now they could start with the animation process.

"Let's divide into two groups." Urata said after they finished writing the story.

"The first team will be responsible for the character development. And the second team will be responsible for making the storyboard of the animation."

"And I will supervise the work of the two teams. Do you all agree?" Urata said as he looked at them.

They nodded when they heard that.

They knew that they had to finish these two processes as soon as possible so that they could start drawing the frames.

Like that team 19 was divided into two groups.

Bruno was in the storyboard group, he cooperated with his teammates to produce it.

His team chose to animate a story that mixed fantasy with comedy.

Bruno thought it was a genius idea, he had to applaud the idea of the girl that propose it.

The animation would start with a suspense scene of a dragon in a volcano, smoke would come out of the dragon's nostrils as the animation showed scenes of the violent fire. When the suspense reached the maximum, the scene would change to a girl playing with the dragon as if the dragon was a dog. The girl would say some lines and the animation would end.

It was simple, but at the same time, the animation would show their capabilities as animators and story makers.

The character design team was responsible of design the visual of the dragon and the girl.

And the storyboard team was responsible to situate the whole structure of lines and scenes.

At the end of the day, the two teams finished their work.

Urata was very satisfied with his team's work.

He could see that everyone was making effort to produce a good project.

Now they had to start drawing.

This would be the most lengthy process because they would have to draw at least 720 drawings to fill the 60 seconds of the animation.

Because they would use one drawing to fill two frames, each second had to have 12 drawings.

"Now we have to divide ourselves again. Keyframes and in-between animators." Urata said.

Everyone looked at him with avid eyes.

They all wanted one thing.

To be the keyframe animators!

These animators would have the opportunity to shine in the task, so it was obvious that everyone wanted the position. 

"To be fair to everyone, how about we draw the name for the positions?" Urata asked as he looked at their eagerness.

He knew he had to do this or some people would get mad.

And that would disrupt the flow of the team, and consequently affect their project.

Everyone thought about it and agreed with his decision.

A while later, the positions were drawn.

4 people were chosen to be keyframe animators.

20 people were chosen to be in-between animators.

And Urata was chosen to be the animator supervisor.

His job was to check all the drawings to see if there was any mistake.

And like that team 19 started working on the animation.

The rest of the teams had similar scenes.

Some teams chose to not chose any leader, and some teams were like team 19 that chose a leader.

Ryoko observed the teams as she worked on her assignments.

Theo asked her to do three things.

Inquire for broadcast spots for the spring anime season, try to buy the rights of animes for the streaming service, and search for buildings in Sakura City to open a branch of the studio.

She started by doing the most urgent task.

She called several TV stations about the broadcast spots.

She knew that if she delayed this task, all the spots would be reserved and they wouldn't be able to launch their anime in the spring season.

"Hello, is this Chrome Channel's broadcast reservation department?" Ryoko said over the phone.

"Yes, this is it!" a female voice replied over the phone.

"I am calling from the Tokyo Studios and wanted to know if there's any spot for the next spring anime season?" Ryoko asked.

The woman was confused when she heard that, she never heard of a studio called Tokyo Studios.

But she brushed off her doubts and replied, "Give me a minute that I will check." 

"Okay, thank you!" Ryoko replied.

A while later, the woman said, "We only have a spot for Wednesdays at 11 pm." 

"How much each weekly spot?" Ryoko asked.

"150k dollars per spot." the woman replied.

Ryoko asked for some other things and hang up the phone.

She frowned, this was the fourth channel she called and all spots were in downtimes of the day when the audience was low.

Who would be watching TV at 11 pm on a Wednesday when there was work or school the other day? 

This type of spot would only work for famous animes that would draw an audience no matter the time that was broadcasted.

Ryoko continued with her day as she also watched the teams working on their tasks.

She was starting to get used to her position.