Tokyo Animation Studios, Elffire City.
After dropping off Aurora at her school, Theo drove his car to the studio for another day of ani production.
Usually at the start of the month, Theo would have a eting with Sam and the other company managers to go over the last month's reports from the companies he owned. But this ti he wanted to wait a few days before he had this eting.
That's because he wanted to have the eting only after he received the royalty money from Moonlight's stream and view numbers on Track and Ruby. And it would take a couple of days for the platforms to round up the numbers and send the money over to his account.
Theo planned to put his projects in motion as soon as he had the eting, so he told Sam and the others to reschedule the eting for a few days later.
That's why he wasn't at the Umbrella Corporation Office on that Monday morning.
Theo parked his car in the studio's parking lot before entering the building soon after.
Although he wouldn't have his usual start of the month eting, he still had a super important job to do that day.
After a lot of work, the first episode of the Sword Art Online Ani was completed. At least, the first version of the episode.
Ryoko scheduled the first display of the episode for the important people from the production team.
When Theo arrived at the conference room, the room was already filled with animators and employees who worked in ani production.
Representants from all departnts were present. Even the newly established music studio had mbers present.
Theo took a seat beside Ryoko as he greeted her and everyone else.
It was only 5 minutes later that everyone arrived at the conference room.
"Good morning, everyone!" Ryoko greeted everyone as she stood up from her seat.
"Good morning, boss!" Everyone replied loudly.
"I'm sure everyone here knows what we will be doing now. So, I would like to emphasize to each one of you to pay extra attention to each detail you may think is odd about the animation. We'll watch the episode one ti without pausing, and afterward, each departnt will have its turn to express what they think about the episode. Soon after, we will watch the episode one more ti, but this ti we'll be pausing at any ti anyone thinks it is pertinent. Any questions?" Ryoko asked as she looked at the crowd.
When she saw that no one had any doubts, she signaled to the staff to press play on the episode.
Everyone looked at the huge screen in front of them with rapt attention, each one of them was holding a notepad and a pen to write down their considerations about the episode.
Theo's silver eyes didn't even blink as the episode suddenly started.
It was obvious that there was no ani intro yet as Theo hadn't produced the song yet, so the episode started directly with the story.
Just like that, for the next 20 minutes, the ani production team watched the first episode of [SAO] Ani. Every ti any one of them found sothing off in the animation, they wrote it down on their notepads.
As it was the first version of the episode, they were able to find a lot of odd things.
It was good to rember that it was only after Theo hired the music studio mber that they were able to finish the first episode. That's because the editing team needed the background music to finish the final edition. That's why it took them 2 months to finish the first episode. Actually, the animation departnt was already drawing and animating fras for the tenth episode already. This ant that during January, they were able to animate 6 episodes, which was 2 more episodes than they did in December. In other words, they were getting faster and faster as they gained experience.
If they maintained this speed, Theo was hopeful that they would be able to finish the ani production before the end of March.
Back to the present, as soon as the episode ended, everyone assud a thoughtful expression as they went over what they just watched over their head.
"Okay, this was the episode." Ryoko announced when the screen went black, "Let's start with the In-Between and Keyfra Animators. What did you guys notice during the display?" Ryoko asked as she looked at the animators.
"I notice the mismatch of dinsions of a few objects and characters at certain monts of the episode. If you guys may rember that ti that Kirito..."
Just like that, they spent the next 2 hours discussing what each person was able to find. It took so long because there were a lot of departnts involved in the production.
For example, just the editing departnt spent almost 20 minutes exposing what they found odd in the episode.
The sound and music studio also spent a lot of ti discussing what they thought was wrong with the episode. This was understandable because they were responsible for a lot of things like voice actors, background noises, special effect noises, background music, and many others.
And during these 2 hours, they were able to find a lot of wrong things in the episode.
It was only after all departnts finished speaking that Theo expressed his opinion, as the ani director, his word was the law. So, as soon as he started speaking everyone paid extra attention.
"First of all, let's talk about the art, I notice so incongruences in the characters' designs in a few fras..." Just like that Theo started his long explanation of everything that he noticed
was wrong.
With his enhanced mind and eidetic mory, he was able to catch details that 99% of the people would let it pass. That's why he spent a long ti unraveling everything he noticed he
was wrong.
He pointed at so many mistakes, that the more he spoke, the more astounded the production
team beca.
They didn't imagine that they had made that many mistakes.
Theo knew that they wouldn't have noticed these mistakes, so he asked the staff to play the episode again.
And just like that, they watched the episode again with Theo pausing every ti he found sothing wrong, which was a lot of tis.
And when Theo showed them and proved the things they did wrong, they beca even more ashad. It didn't feel good to have worked so much to discover that they didn't do a good
job.
Theo knew how they were feeling, but he had to do this if he wanted to release a high-quality ani that he wanted.
Theo spent almost 2 hours unraveling all the mistakes of the episode as he paused ti after ti the animation.
When the episode ended for the second ti, Theo looked at his employees and said, "I know you guys are feeling bad to have let pass so many mistakes, but the good news is that after a few days of work, we can correct these mistakes without any problems. But I would like to advise each departnt here to pay more attention to the final product. Each supervisor here shouldn't have made so many mistakes, so this is a wake-up call for each supervisor."
When the production team heard that, they beca even more fueled and focused to erase their mistakes and beco better at their job.
"This is the first ti this team is making an ani. So, I'll let it pass these mistakes this ti. But from today onward, I hope everyone here takes this job more seriously." Theo said
with a serious voice.
Everyone nodded when they heard his lesson.
"Okay, we'll make a pause of 1 hour for lunch. After lunch, we'll all co back here and as a group, we'll discuss what we can do to improve the episode we have." Theo said with a smile. Theo smiled as he looked at their departing figures loudly discussing what they could do to beco better and produce a better result.
Theo wasn't mad actually, he already expected these many mistakes. It was a fact that everyone there was together for the first ti producing an animation, and it was normal for mistakes to happen. He even expected much more mistakes than they did if he was being
sincere.
The lower number of mistakes than he was expecting proved that the animators he hired were
extrely talented.
Theo was sure that after a few weeks, they would be able to achieve the level he wanted.
He already could see a fully operational animation studio filled with talented animators
working on several projects.
He couldn't wait for it!
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