I am the Entertainment Tycoon

Sunday, November 22th

The sun rose through the cloudy skies.

The soft yellow light reached the houses and buildings of the city to announce the arrival of another day.

The citizens of Elffire City started to wake up to do their tasks for the day.

But inside a mirrored building with a sign saying [Tokyo Animation Studios], groups of people could be seen in a totally different rhythm compared with the rest of the city.

They seemed to be oblivious to the rising sun as they didn't even sleep the previous night.

They were the 35 teams that had the task to produce an animation of a one-minute duration for the third phase of interviews at the Tokyo Studios.

All teams were racing against time to finish their animations before 2 pm.

Inside Team 19 Workspace, the whole team had tired faces as they worked.

The last time that all of them slept was yesterday.

They were awake for more than 24 hours already.

Even though it was normal for them to sleep little with the way they led their lives.

After 5 days of sleeping only 2 hours per day and the addition of not sleeping in the last night, the mental and physical fatigue was starting to hit them.

But even though they were beyond tired, their eyes shined as they worked.

They were so close to the ending line, that they could not afford their tiredness to affect this lifetime opportunity.

The team members were now seated in front of the projection seeing the result that they had so far.

They were looking for mistakes that they might do during the process.

And they found a bunch of them.

"No, no. This is not working. The aspect ratio between the girl and the dragon is way off! The dragon needs to be way bigger than her, so the suspense break to be effective."

"Yeah, I agree. We need to enlarge the dragon's proportions."

"Bruno, your work is fantastic but the lava should not go that way. It's physically impossible for the lava to climb the volcano. I'm sure that the judges will be attentive to that."

"Sorry, guys. I will correct it immediately." Bruno replied with an apologetic face.

"We should talk about the color grading too. We need to sync the background and characters' color scheme."

"I can do that. I already finished my section."

"Guys, after seeing what we have so far. I'm sure you all notice the same thing I did." Urata said as they looked at them.

"The editing of our animation is subpar." He said with a heavy tone.

It didn't matter if they did an amazing job to draw the frames with the characters and background if they did not edit the animation correctly.

The editing section was one of the last steps of the animation process, and it was a crucial step.

"No one here has any experience in editing?" Urata asked with a hopeful voice.

But after a while, no one raised their hands.

All of them became downcast when they saw no one say anything.

It was understandable their feelings because their amazing animation would be worse than imagined.

"Does anyone here knows even a little bit about editing?" Urata asked again.

This time two people raised their hands.

"I never edited anything, but one time I worked helping the editing team of a short animation." the woman said.

"Me too. I only worked helping them. I observed their work, so I know a little bit." the man said.

The rest of the team became spirited again when they heard that.

There was still a chance!

"Can you edit our animation?" Urata asked with avid eyes.

The man and woman looked at each other and nodded.

"I won't say that it will be the best edition. But I will give my best!" the man said with a firm voice.

"Me too!" the woman exclaimed in agreement.

The team became pumped up again when they heard that.

"Great! And don't worry, we will help you too." Urata said.

"We can try to find any mistakes and you try to correct them. Now, let's go back to work guys. Let's deliver the best animation of our lives!" Urata said with a confident voice.

"Yes!" They shouted with determination.

The team resumed their work after that.

Scenes of candidates giving their all could be seen in all teams.

In team 32, unusual scenes could be seen.

This was the team that had the idea to make an animation about the Tokyo Studios.

Because it was simpler to animate a slice-of-life anime, the team strove to deliver all scenes with perfect detail.

The team members could be seen walking all around the building taking notes about anything that they saw.

They even asked permission from other teams if they could observe these teams working.

Team 32 wanted to capture how the work went in the studio.

Some teams refused, but some teams allowed Team 32 to observe.

They noted all things that it was necessary to be in their animation.

The dynamics of the work, the conversation between members, their focused faces, and many other things.

On this last day, they didn't go out anymore.

They had all the data necessary to produce the best animation of their lives.

Team 13 on other hand was the team that chose to animate a fight scene.

But it was not just a simple fight scene.

Their animation was about two animators competing to animate their works, then suddenly the characters of the two animators jump out of their pages and start fighting.

It was an idea suggested by one of the team members after they decided to animate a fight scene.

They did not want to just animate a normal fight scene, they wanted the fight to draw the attention of the viewer.

And what better way than using their jobs to do it?

And these were just a few examples of the amazing works of the 35 teams in this phase.

There were teams animating deep-sea creatures, breakup scenes between lovers, comedy scenes, fantastical scenes, and many other types.

They gathered all their creativity to produce the best animes they could deliver.

But obviously, there were teams with projects worse when compared with others.

But even with their subpar work, there were people in these teams that shone.

Some had an amazing talent to edit, some the talent to do a perfect composition of frames, and some designed amazing characters.

Multiple people were exhibiting how talented they are even if they work in worse teams.

And that was exactly Theo's purpose in this phase.

He wanted to see which one would stand out after working on such a difficult task.

All of them had the opportunity to catch his eyes, but only the people that were skilled or the talented would do that.

When it was 1:55 pm, Umbrella employees entered the workspace of all teams.

They all said the same thing, "Attention! You have until 2 pm to send your projects to the online address that the head director passed."

Some teams got desperate when they heard.

But some teams were calm about it.

But even with the all ups and downs, at 2 pm had sent their projects.

All teams heaved a sigh of relief.

They did everything that they could have done.

"Attention! You must go to the auditorium. There, you will be instructed about the next steps!" the Umbrella employees said to every team.

The teams started walking slowly to the auditorium, their fatigue was starting to hit hard.

But they were anxious about what would it be next.