After the Divorce, My Wife and I Were Both Reborn

Chapter 9: Chapter 9: It’s Decided! Drawing Cat and Mouse

After finishing the noodles, Jiang Xia was forcibly shooed back to his room by Xia Shanshan to do his homework. With the college entrance exams just around the corner, the boy didn’t seem to be putting in any extra effort. Did he really think being good at art was enough to get into a good university?

Lying on his bed and staring at the white ceiling, he thought about what path he should take from now on.

In his past life, after his business failed, his parents had sold their house to pay off his debts. His father died in a car crash caused by drowsy driving. His mother had then devoted herself entirely to education, moving to a remote mountainous region to teach. In the end, she had collapsed from exhaustion and was found dead, slumped over her lesson plans.

It was safe to say his entire past life had been a complete and utter failure.

This was a fate he had to rewrite, no matter what!

As he thought this, his mind gradually went blank. The exhaustion from a sleepless night surged from every fiber of his being, and his memories began to drift back to the past.

At his father’s funeral, he had blamed himself, crying like a child. When he received the news of his mother’s death, he locked himself in his room for three whole days and nights without eating. Later, due to all sorts of trivial daily matters, his arguments with Lin Yanwan became more and more frequent, right up until the day before their divorce, when an earthquake suddenly struck...

Jiang Xia suddenly jolted awake. He sat bolt upright, gasping for air. The swaying pendant light slowly came into focus, and he found himself in his familiar bedroom.

’So... it was just a dream?’

’Thank god it was just a dream.’ freewebnovёl.ƈom

Still shaken, he took a deep breath and rubbed his sore eyes. Sunlight, mixed with the chirping of birds, streamed in through the window. It was glaring, and he felt as if he had been asleep for a long time.

He opened his bedroom door and walked out. The living room was empty. A glance at the digital clock on the television set showed that it was already two in the afternoon.

"Mom? Mom?"

He called out twice, but there was no response. On the dining table, he found a note left by Xia Shanshan, written in her usual formal style.

Son:

I had to go to the school for something. Your dad won’t be back for lunch. There are leftovers from yesterday in the fridge, so you can heat them up for yourself. I’ll be back tonight to make something nice.

Mom

7:48

Jiang Xia rubbed his stomach. After sleeping for so long, he was indeed a little hungry. He quickly washed up, took out some shredded pork with green peppers and leftover rice from the fridge, then cracked an egg and mixed it all together to make a bowl of fragrant fried rice.

After eating his fill and cleaning up the kitchen, he returned to his room, sat down at his desk, and began to seriously consider what he should draw next.

Because the world line had shifted, many famous animated works from his previous life didn’t exist here. This meant there were many animations he could choose to recreate.

However, after ruling out those with complex and detailed visuals, long production cycles, and high costs, he temporarily settled on the children’s genre.

After all, children’s animation was relatively simple to produce. Many used fixed backgrounds that could be reused, and the visuals didn’t need to be overly polished.

In an era where the internet wasn’t yet widespread and television was still the primary source of information, kids’ cartoons were a guarantee for high ratings.

More importantly, cartoons were simple and easy to understand, with no barrier to entry. They had a wide audience, suitable for all ages. The main demographic, children, were not picky at all. As long as a show could make them laugh and want to keep watching, it was a success.

With this in mind, Jiang Xia picked up a pen and listed many names in his notebook: SpongeBob, Popeye the Sailor, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, Crayon Shin-Chan, Cat and Mouse, Doraemon, Mickey Mouse, and Donald Duck.

After careful consideration, he picked up his pen and crossed off the names one by one, finally circling the world-classic masterpiece, *Cat and Mouse*.

It wasn’t that the other animations were bad, but right now he had no funding and no connections. Any animation that required voice actors had to be crossed off the list.

Looking at the entire *Cat and Mouse* series, the main characters, Tom and Jerry, had no dialogue at all. Instead, their actions and the musical score were almost perfectly synchronized, creating a case where silence spoke louder than words.

As for the musical score, which was the essence of the show, he could find similar assets online and simply insert them during post-production editing. In short, he could get them for free.

Furthermore, the story of *Cat and Mouse* was universally understood. Even a one-year-old child knew it was in a cat’s nature to chase a mouse. The entire conflict of the story was based on this: the cat chases the mouse, the mouse fights back, and their endless battles (a love-hate relationship of sorts) brought immense joy to people.

Jiang Xia leaned back in his chair, twirling his pen, and thought of the classic images of Tom and Jerry from his memory. Even a hundred years from now, they would remain fresh in his mind.

He first ran through the entire production process in his head. He already had the script, overall art style, character designs, and prop and background designs ready-made. He could start drawing the storyboards and key animation frames right away. As for the coloring and post-production editing, he could rely on existing software to complete them.

An episode of *Cat and Mouse* was about seven minutes long. Factoring in the heavy reuse of fixed backgrounds and animating on threes, an average episode would require about 500 key animation frames for the action. The rest could be created by compositing cutouts, which would significantly save production time.

This production method was a bit crude, but it was the only option he had right now. Once he had enough capital in the future, he could always remake it.

For simple keyframes like those in *Cat and Mouse*, he could probably hand-draw about 50 to 80 a day. That was considering he would only be working in his spare time so as not to affect his studies. If he were to draw at high intensity all day, he could probably go even faster.

In other words, from starting the drawings to editing the final cut, he should be able to finish within twenty days to a month.

One had to remember that the original production of the early *Cat and Mouse* cartoons involved a team of 150 people, took a full 18 months, and required a staggering 18,000 keyframes. His pace was undoubtedly much, much faster.

Besides, he was currently working alone. If he had a small team with a clear division of labor, using an assembly-line production method, they could probably churn out one episode a week.

But for now, that was just a thought.

He let out a long breath. Looking at the white clouds in the sky, they seemed to take the shapes of Tom and Jerry.

He pondered for a moment, then picked up a sharpened pencil and a sheet of drawing paper and began to sketch rapidly. About ten minutes later, the classic images of *Cat and Mouse* came to life on the paper.

Jiang Xia picked up the drawing and examined it carefully, then bent his head down to revise several details, making it look even more consistent with the image in his memory.

Next came the coloring. The blue-gray Tom the Cat and the brown Jerry the mouse, combined with their vivid and rich expressions, were enough to make an audience fall in love with them at first sight.

After finishing all this, he solemnly wrote down a few words: *Episode One: Sweet Home*.

The story was about Tom breaking many things in the house while chasing Jerry. His owner scolds him, warning that if he breaks one more thing, he’ll be thrown out. Jerry witnesses this and laughs heartily. Restricted by the warning, Tom doesn’t dare to go after Jerry, who is now holding fragile objects. With this protection, Jerry becomes even more brazen. The episode ends with Jerry’s complete victory and Tom being kicked out of the house.