Free Web NovelChapter 233: Chapter 202: New Demon Vision Channel (Part 2)
Second, it’s less action-heavy. The characters are mostly static during dialogue, and even the fight scenes have moments where the action pauses on a single frame.
Zog planned to optimize this aspect, but not to the same degree as Tom and Jerry.
After all, Digital Monster’s main purpose is to be an advertisement. If they made it too well, they’d never recoup the costs.
Plus, there’s another advantage to this approach: they can release one episode a week.
Plenty to go around.
However, no one had yet tried to create a long-running animated series. Even adaptations of comics were short, ten episodes at most.
Each episode was under ten minutes long and followed an episodic, self-contained format.
The overwhelming success of Tom and Jerry seemed to have stifled the creativity of local artists. No one dared to attempt an animated show that broke the Tom and Jerry mold.
Once again, it fell to Zog.
The good news was that Twin Tower City now had its first animation voice-acting team, created to voice the few lines of dialogue in the animations of the time.
Zog had heard their work. Honestly, even though voice acting was a brand-new profession here, they were former members of a professional theater troupe, and the results were better than many of the domestic animations he’d seen in his past life.
Their voices weren’t stilted, artificial, or templated. It wasn’t one of those cases where every male protagonist, villain, old man, young girl, child, or cool older woman in every show sounded like they were cast from the exact same mold.
They were good at manipulating their voices, but their acting was severely lacking.
They felt more like voice-acting idols than actual voice actors. Of course, the voice actors themselves weren’t solely to blame; the voice director shared a large part of the responsibility.
"Elsa, have we decided on an animation team?"
"Right now, the teams that are interested, available, and skilled enough are Sapphire Art from the Royal City, and our local Joseph Animation.
"The former is more experienced. They’ve been established for a year and a half and have produced two five-episode animations that aired in the local time slot on Royal City’s Magic Vision. The reception was pretty good, and their second series had a lot of fight scenes and even used voice acting.
"The latter is a new team. They’ve only made one short animated commercial, but their technical skills are excellent. They even have an animator from our Tom and Jerry team serving as a consulting advisor."
Elsa summarized the situation with the two teams.
"One of our animators is acting as a consultant? Where did they find the time?" Zog asked in surprise.
The Tom and Jerry production team was theoretically on a five-day, eight-hour work schedule, but they created their own crunch culture. Zog had never asked them to, but they pushed their own workdays past ten hours and frequently worked weekends.
They managed to shorten the release schedule from one episode a month to one every three weeks.
Honestly, they were acting like total scabs, but where you sit is where you stand, so Zog loved it.
"Actually, quite a few people on our team have ideas about starting their own businesses, but they don’t want to leave their jobs at the Group. So, they often work on their own projects at night," Elsa explained. "Even with those hours, it’s still easier than most factory jobs."
"Wow," Zog couldn’t help but exclaim.
’Capitalism is being too humane here,’ he thought. ’It’s making me, a Dragon, look more like a person by comparison.’
"In that case, let’s have both teams try making one episode. We’ll see who’s a better fit."
"Okay. There’s one more problem."
"What is it?"
"Our Magic Vision Station’s prime-time schedule is booked for more than half a year. When Digital Monster is ready, it’ll either have to air in a late-night slot or wait over six months."
"Huh?" Zog hadn’t paid attention to Magic Vision’s development for a while. He hadn’t expected their programming to already be overflowing.
Bumping an already scheduled show wouldn’t be right. Business is about honoring your agreements, and changing things arbitrarily would make our partners feel insecure.
"Then, is it time to launch our plan for a new Magic Vision Station?"
The plan to add another Magic Vision Station had been in the works for a long time. The existing Magic Vision Devices even had a channel-switching function built-in, it just had never been used.
Dr. Fabric and Doudou had overcome the technical hurdles long ago. By adjusting the positioning Runes, the devices could receive signals from different Magic Crystal Stones.
Without changing the hardware of the current generation of Magic Vision Devices, they could receive up to five stations at the limit.
The planned second Magic Vision Station was a culture and entertainment channel.
More serious content—like news, weather forecasts, dramatic series, and interview or educational programs—would remain on the first station.
More entertainment-focused content, like animation and variety shows, would be moved to the second station. It could also occasionally broadcast live competitions.
The Yo-Yo Championship, the auto chess tournament, and the magic dodgeball competition were all events with a strong popular following.
"We could, but the variety show lineup might be a bit thin. Our recruitment program hasn’t attracted many unique show proposals."
After the Blade Forging Contest aired, the Zog Group had put out a long-standing open call for investors interested in producing shows.
The Group offered technical support and professional guidance.
"What do we have so far?"
"A Magical Device contest, an Alchemy contest, an appraisal contest, an Enchantment contest..."
"That’s enough." Zog’s skin crawled just listening to it.
’Jumping on the bandwagon, huh? It’s understandable. Everyone likes to copy a successful formula; Zog did it himself.’
’But you can’t *all* jump on the bandwagon.’
’It was like that one time a rap competition show came out, and suddenly every channel was flooded with them.’
’It got to the point where there were more rappers than rap fans.’
"There is one show we’re paying close attention to. It’s a music-themed variety show, and the Magic Vision operations team thinks it has a lot of potential."
"It’s not rap music, is it?"
"Huh? Rap? You mean that street performance thing the Dwarves do? Of course not. It’s a singing competition."
"Oh. Well, that’s worth talking about."
’If they could get a new hit variety show, the home game console could be the title sponsor. Combined with the animated series, it would be a two-pronged approach to drive up hype and viewership.’
"Good. I’ll contact Sir Craig right away."
"Who?"
—————————
"Who?"
In a lab at Repin Academy, Xiaomo asked his older brother, looking puzzled.
"Sir Craig. The paralyzed one, not that little brat who’s always flaunting his wealth around the city," Big Mo answered.
"So the two of them are...?"
"The Sir’s name is Gordo Craig. He’s the other young Craig’s paternal uncle."
Big Mo explained while adjusting the experimental equipment.
"To be honest, the Sir is a pitiable man. Huh, I never thought I’d feel sorry for someone with assets in the tens of millions of Gold Coins."
The device on the lab bench shot out a shower of sparks. Big Mo slapped the table in frustration, pulled off his gloves, and decided to take a short break.
"He was supposed to be the current Patriarch of the Craig Clan. But then, at the age of twenty-eight, right in his prime, he was diagnosed with a strange disease. His body is slowly losing its mobility, starting from his limbs."
"They say he’ll eventually become completely paralyzed and just have to wait to die. I guess he’s one of the lucky ones, though, since he has enough money to hire people to take care of him."
"Like he’s slowly freezing over?" Xiaomo asked.
"Exactly, like he’s slowly freezing over. Ha, I like that description." Big Mo gathered up the burnt-out equipment.
"Can I see it?"
"Of course." Big Mo handed it over and continued Sir Craig’s story.
"Doctors, Druids, Priests, even some Shaman who came out of nowhere—none of them could find a cure. They say he even spent a fortune to have a Legendary Mage perform the Nine Ring Prayer Technique for him. But unfortunately, it could only slow the process of his death, not cure him completely. Fate is just that unreasonable, isn’t it?"
Xiaomo nodded, continuing to tinker with the device in his hands.
"Eventually, he came to terms with it and decided he wanted to make some kind of contribution before he died. So he started generously funding all sorts of research, for free. A fifth of all student projects at our academy are funded by him, including mine."
"The ’Networked Music Player Magical Device’ project?"
"What’s wrong with it? I think it’s a pretty good project. Sir Craig is very optimistic about it, too. He said that if it succeeds, it’ll help with some big plan of his. Something about a variety show, I think."
"It’s done."
"What’s done?"
"Your project is done." Xiaomo handed the adjusted device back to his brother.
"What do you mean, ’my project is done’?"
Big Mo’s voice jumped several octaves.
"The error you were getting was simple. I fixed it."
"That fast?"
"It wasn’t hard. You could have fixed it too if you studied it carefully."
Big Mo pressed his hand weakly to his forehead. ’There’s a saying that the lifetime achievement of an ordinary person might just be to save a genius an afternoon of work.’
’Looking at it now, it didn’t even take an afternoon.’
Big Mo ran a simple test. No problems.
"Well, now you have to come with me to see Sir Craig."
