A Nuisance

Gu Xue entered the company and, unexpectedly, didn't feel the slightest bit out of place. Instead, she found it incredibly familiar and welcoming—whether it was the messy, familiar workstations or the dead-fat... artists hunched over with earbuds in, their right hands twitching rapidly.

This was what a normal animation company was supposed to be like. There were no artists like Ema, no production assistants like Aoi or Erika, and no chief animation director dressed in Gothic Lolita fashion. Everyone here was either a scruffy middle-aged man scratching his feet or a scruffy middle-aged man with an exhausted face scratching his feet. To hell with Shirobako. It wasn't going to trick me into making animation.

As Gu Xue made her way toward her workstation from memory, she looked around and couldn't help mentally mocking the Shirobako anime from Earth.

And subconsciously forgot herself, until several young key animators who had stood up for a break seemed to casually glance her way—then stared at her without blinking. Only then did she remember who she was. She quickened her pace slightly, hurried to her workstation, pulled out her chair, and sat down.

It looked like she was being shy, and in truth, she was...

After sitting down, Gu Xue calmed herself slightly. She suddenly felt that what she had just done was stupid, and she was also rather speechless. With this body, she really shouldn't have joined an animation company. She should've gone to university...

But those messy thoughts quickly vanished when Gu Xue noticed two cut bags on her desk. They contained cuts 221 and 222 from episode six of <Ore-sama's Right Leg Is Missing a Big Toe, but That Isn't a Toe—It's the Holy Sword>.

Animation production was usually done by cut. A cut could be understood as a short segment in an anime, with varying lengths. The cuts were divided up during storyboarding, and a seasonal anime generally had around 300 to 350 cuts.

Like films, animation also had to consider composition and camera placement. Generally, once the storyboards for an episode were completed and approved by the director, the episode director would distribute the several hundred storyboard cuts to the key animators, explain the relevant requirements, and then the key animators would begin working.

For example, if a cut showed a high school girl waving, the first thing to determine was what kind of shot it would be—such as the camera angle, whether it was a long shot or a close-up, the perspective, and what characters and scenery would appear in it.

Simply put, it was composition. Since storyboards were very rough and the settings had not been detailed, this step was where the image content was fully determined, down to every detail needed for the finished frame. The result had a professional term: Layout, roughly meaning a design sheet, abbreviated as L/O.

The key animation stage was where the characters were made to move, by drawing keyframes. Using that high school girl waving again, once the L/O had established the angle, the characters and scenery in the shot, whether it was a long shot or close-up, and so on, the actual key animation work could begin.

The first keyframe would show the high school girl.

The second keyframe would show her arm moving as she raised it, perhaps with her arm lifted to her chest.

The third keyframe would show her after raising her hand, perhaps with it held above her head.

The next frame would show the palm of her raised hand moving from one side to the other, creating the waving motion.

Of course, that was only a simplified, rough explanation.

In any case, the keyframes that determined a character's movements—before raising the hand, during the motion, after raising it, from start to finish—selecting the right keyframe positions and drawing them was the key animator's job.

This stage demanded a great deal of control over timing, character movement, and changes.

Once the key animator had completed all the keyframes for a shot, it moved on to the animation stage. Animation artists traced the key animation into lines suitable for coloring and drew the in-betweens. Since the lines in key animation were often not closed, they could not be colored directly and had to be traced again. As for in-betweens, they were the frames added between keyframes.

For example, when an arm waved, there might be two keyframes—one with the hand on the left, and one with the hand on the right. Viewed together, the hand had moved, but without in-betweens, it would look strange, as if it had teleported. Necessary intermediate drawings had to be added between the two keyframes to make the motion appear smoother and more continuous.

In short, L/O (composition)—key animation (drawing keyframes)—animation (tracing and in-betweening) made up the drawing stage of animation production, the foundation for making animation "move."

And Gu Xue was a second key animator. So-called second key animation was cleanup work, refining the first key animation into key animation that could be used for in-betweening.

It sounded complicated, but it was really just grunt work. Simply put, first key animators only drew the character outlines and movements. The specific details—clothes, faces, hair, and so on—were not drawn at all. At that point, the second key animator had to refine them according to the character designs and similar materials. It did not require much technical skill; it was just painstaking detail work.

In short, Kiyo-Nigen.

It was a pain in the ass.

The original purpose of the second key animation system was to let "people who could draw well" use "the least effort" to "make characters move." But now...

Normally, one key animator would handle the L/O, first key animation, and second key animation all by themselves, but such animators were becoming fewer and fewer.

The two cuts Gu Xue had received already had their first key animation completed. The outlines and movements were done, and they seemed to be action cuts—the small climax of episode six. Since nobody in the company could draw them, an outside key animator had specifically been hired.

Gu Xue had been looking forward to them at first, but after roughly flipping through the key animation for the two cuts, she was stunned.

What the hell was this?

It was truly an assault on the eyes.

The rough drawings would have been one thing, but the action design was a complete mess. Some of the body outlines were even distorted, and the motion of swinging the Holy Sword was all twisted up...

How had key animation like this gotten approval from the episode director and chief animation director...?

So it really was a sacrificial production...

Gu Xue looked at the pile of key animation on her desk with a disgusted expression.

She had no interest in cleaning up and picking out details from such shitty, rough first key animation.

But her hands were itching, because these two cuts were stupid as hell and looked fun. They showed the protagonist in close-up, his toe flying away and glowing in midair, then the protagonist running and jumping up to grab the toe as it transformed into the Holy Sword, before the protagonist plunged down fiercely with the Holy Sword and smashed it into the ground.

Stupid, right? But it had the feeling of a Cult film.

Gu Xue liked Cult films—or rather, she had liked them on Earth.

She looked at the existing first key animation. After considering it for only two seconds, she happily decided to toss it aside and redraw everything herself.

Whether they used it or not was up to them. She was drawing it anyway. At worst, she would just quit.

She pulled out the Dope Sheet—the timing chart used to determine the timing of each drawing—took out some key animation paper, placed it on the peg bar, put on her headphones, and picked up her pencil. Gu Xue smiled happily, suddenly feeling that many things were not actually so bad. At least girls had hands too, okay...

But after drawing for a while, she could no longer smile.

Sitting was so tiring...

Her breasts were such a nuisance, damn it...