Chapter 262 - 260: National Day Training

Chapter 262: Chapter 260: National Day Training

On October 1st, while the rest of the country was celebrating the National Day Golden Week, the few souls at Qitian Animation could only spend their day working overtime at the office.

Having drawn keyframes for *Cat and Mouse* for several months, Wang Ming had a pretty thorough understanding of the show. Now, Jiang Xia was explaining the core process of script breakdown from an animation director’s perspective.

The script is the initial text-based screenplay. It details character dialogue, scene transitions, time divisions, and even specifics like expressions, actions, mannerisms, and a character’s mood at any given moment.

Only with a script can the animators understand the animation’s entire storyline and create the initial storyboards without straying off course.

But since everyone’s interpretation differs, a thousand animation directors looking at the same script might create a thousand different storyboards.

What Jiang Xia was doing now was training Wang Ming to create storyboards that best matched the source material, given a fixed script.

For example, in the "Super Milk" episode, the initial text description was—

"On a morning with a rising sun, a delivery person brings two bottles of milk to Tom’s owner’s house. A few seconds later, Tom pushes open a window and stealthily swipes one bottle. He then quickly returns to his room, licking his lips as he gently closes the door. He scampers very carefully behind the sofa and peeks around to make sure no one saw him. Only then does he confidently pour the milk into his bowl. Before he can enjoy it, he first has to sneakily bury the empty bottle in a flowerpot. But just as he’s happily lapping up the milk, he discovers Jerry on the other side, drinking milk in the exact same pose."

Jiang Xia wrote down the text for this segment, which would be about a minute of footage, and handed it to Wang Ming, asking him to produce the storyboards based on his own interpretation.

Once Wang Ming finished the storyboards, Jiang Xia would offer targeted critiques and revisions, explaining line by line how each part of the script should be visually represented in the final scene.

Of course, Jiang Xia wouldn’t do the drawing himself; he would just keep revising Wang Ming’s drafts until he was completely satisfied.

This kind of targeted training was meant to reshape Wang Ming’s way of thinking. Only then could Jiang Xia confidently entrust *Cat and Mouse* to him in the future, while he himself would only need to provide the basic scripts and manage the overall direction and quality from behind the scenes.

The morning slipped by in the blink of an eye. Lin Yanwan walked over to their desks and cleared her throat gently.

"You’ve been drawing all morning. Time for a break. What do you two want for lunch? I’ll go order some takeout."

Jiang Xia rolled his neck, feeling a bit sore. A glance at the time in the bottom-right corner of his screen revealed it was already past 12:00 PM.

"Shredded pork with green peppers over rice for me."

"+1," Wang Ming said without looking up from his work.

"What about you, Auntie?"

"Hmm... I’ll have the same as those two. It’s easier."

Lin Yanwan nodded and headed downstairs toward a nearby Chinese restaurant. ’In this era, you can’t order takeout on your phone yet,’ she thought. ’I should probably memorize the numbers for a few restaurants. That way, I can just call for delivery instead of having to go order in person. It’ll save a lot of trouble.’

"So, how’s the lesson going?" Li Weiya asked with a smile, walking over to the two men.

"It’s going okay," Jiang Xia said with a laugh. "It’s just that his work is still a bit far from what I’m looking for."

Hearing this, Wang Ming’s eye twitched. ’A "bit" far? He rejected my take on the very first second of footage.’

For the line "On a morning with a rising sun," he had drawn the first ray of light appearing over the horizon. But Jiang Xia told him that the sequence, from that moment until the delivery person brings the milk, needed to be a single long take.

So, he went back and drew a small town, with the camera’s perspective slowly moving toward Tom’s house.

But Jiang Xia shot him down with a single sentence.

"Old Wang, do you think what you’ve drawn is in the style of *Cat and Mouse*? In what way does this follow the description in the script?"

Wang Ming’s breath hitched. Looking at the storyboard he had worked so hard on, all he wanted to do was tear it to shreds.

’Before, Jiang Xia would provide the storyboards, and I’d just mindlessly crank out the keyframes,’ he thought. ’I never imagined it would be this hard doing it myself. And I’m supposed to lead the *Cat and Mouse* project team with this level of skill? Yeah, right.’

"Think about all the keyframes you’ve drawn," Jiang Xia said calmly. "A crucial principle is to not draw unnecessary elements. Use the limited screen time to tell the story as effectively as possible. For example, we’ve produced two seasons so far—twenty-four episodes in total—and you’ll notice we’ve never even shown the face of Tom’s owner."

He took the script and underlined the first two sentences with a pencil.

"First, you need to understand why the script specifically emphasizes ’morning’."

Wang Ming answered, "Because of the milk delivery. Generally, people only think about drinking milk in the morning."

"Then why a ’rising sun,’ and not, say, a rainy day?" Jiang Xia asked.

Wang Ming thought for a moment before replying, "If it were a rainy day, it would be gloomy and foggy. The audience wouldn’t be able to tell if it was morning, afternoon, or some other time of day. But with a rising sun, it’s instantly clear that it’s early morning, which provides a smooth lead-in for the milk delivery."

Jiang Xia snapped his fingers and shot him an appreciative look.

"Exactly. So your initial instinct to use the first ray of dawn on the horizon to establish the morning was correct. But think about it—is the town a necessary element here? We’re animating *Cat and Mouse*, not a human drama."