The Red Dragon Lord is OP, but Insists on a Pop Culture Invasion!

For the main characters of *Tom and Jerry*, Tom and Jerry themselves, Zog chose the art style from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.

This was also the style most familiar to the vast majority of people who grew up watching the cartoon.

Because the series spanned over 80 years, it went through multiple changes in art style.

In the very beginning, the style was more animal-like, with visible fur effects on their bodies. Only a few years later did it change to a more minimalist style.

The one that became the most well-known.

In the years that followed, Tom’s design started to look a bit like an old man, and he became more sinister. The overall plots also grew darker, and the episodes responsible for many a "childhood trauma" mostly came from this period.

In a later period, the characters suddenly took on a chibi-style appearance, a version that many people have probably never seen.

Furthermore, due to more commercialized production updates, the quality dropped severely.

So after the new millennium, Warner—famous for holding a ton of top-tier IPs but never using them well—adjusted the art style back to the most classic version.

But the production quality could never again reach its former heights.

The decline of 2D animation is a widespread phenomenon. It’s not just American animation; the detail in Neon’s 2D animation is also a far cry from what it was last century.

The fundamental reason is that 2D animation requires the intensive labor of a large number of Painters. As labor costs rise, it becomes increasingly expensive and, from a business perspective, not very profitable.

The good news was, Zog didn’t lack people.

Restoring *Tom and Jerry* to its former glory was Zog’s inescapable duty.

He had already decided to complete this cartoon with an unlimited budget. First, as the de facto monopolist of video media, he was confident he could earn back the costs, no matter how high.

After the animation comes the merchandise, and after the merchandise, the games. He had always felt that a *Tom and Jerry* game similar to "It Takes Two" would be absolutely hilarious.

Second, and more importantly, Zog wanted to see it himself.

Inside the Cowboy Theater, the storyboard for "The Flying Cat" was projected onto the tall screen on the stage, along with the three characters who would appear in this episode.

The character designs for Tom, Jerry, and that little yellow bird.

Drawn by Zog’s own claw.

The design sheets also included character movements and expressions.

The main difficulty with these lively expressions was in the design; if he just drew them from the templates in his memory, Zog’s artistic skill was barely sufficient.

However, what he hadn’t expected was the reaction from the crowd of Painters after he showed them the designs and storyboard. It didn’t seem like they thought it was good, nor did it seem like they thought it was bad.

It was a sense of unfamiliarity.

Like curiosity mixed with confusion.

"What’s wrong? What’s with those expressions? You don’t think the drawings are good?" Zog asked.

"Um, it’s a little strange... Are these supposed to be a Cat and a mouse?" one of the Painters asked tentatively.

"They don’t look like one?"

The Painters all shook their heads.

"Besides, shouldn’t a cat’s front paws have five toes? This one only has four. It’s the back paws that have four," the same Painter continued, pointing out another discrepancy.

The others all nodded in agreement.

Zog covered his face with his right claw in exasperation. ’Right, I forgot.’ Although they were all comic artists, the comics of today were closer to the Hong Kong style.

Not to say the plots were as abstract as in Hong Kong comics.

It was the art style. It had a heavier sense of realism. They had never seen a highly simplified style like *Tom and Jerry*’s.

"You can think of it as a simpler, more child-like way of drawing. Think about it, when children first start doodling for fun, don’t they extract the obvious features while blurring the details, just like this?"

"We need to draw our animation this way. It’ll be much more efficient, and it’s cute, isn’t it? Understand?" Zog said.

’The world needs cute things.’

"We... think we understand."

The Painters’ reply lacked the confidence of students answering a math teacher’s question.

"So you know how to do it?"

"Yes."

And then, come the exam, they’d immediately prove they couldn’t do it, writing down only the word "Solution" out of respect.

’Looks like before production officially begins, I’ll have to create some sample drawings first and have the Painters study the art style for a while.’

"Then why is it that after this Tom Cat gets sliced up by a clothesline, he’s perfectly fine in the next panel?" someone asked, pointing at the storyboard.

’Because comedy characters are invincible.’

Zog really wanted to give that answer, but if he didn’t make them understand this creative philosophy, future work would also be a problem.

"In artistic creation, you can sacrifice a bit of realism for the sake of effect," Zog explained.

"Look at *Firepower Young King*. When they play with a Yo-Yo and Dragons and tigers appear, is that realistic...?"

Before he could finish, the Painters were already nodding in confirmation.

’That’s right, I made the Yo-Yo Illusions real.’

"Then what about *Mechanical Warrior*..."

’That one doesn’t work either. I made Mechanical Armor real, too.’

’Damn it. Turns out Feilin’s comics actually are all works of realism after all.’

"How about this: think of *Tom and Jerry* as a slapstick show. Each scene is a little joke, and even though the main characters are the same, the jokes aren’t perfectly continuous."

The Painters reluctantly accepted this explanation.

As the first animation in this world, not only were there technical problems, but the concepts were also entirely new. Everything had to be figured out from scratch.

Zog then began to introduce the entire production process.

In his plan, the episode "The Flying Cat" would be a collaborative effort involving all the Painters. Its purpose was to be a tutorial level, like in a video game, to teach everyone how to create animation.

Afterwards, the nearly 500 Painters would be divided into four groups to simultaneously produce four different episodes. This way, they could probably guarantee a release schedule of one episode per month.

On the days without a new episode, they would just air endless reruns. This was definitely a cartoon that could withstand being replayed.

The production cycle for one episode was four months, but it would be anything but easy.

Each episode was about seven minutes long. Minus the opening credits, that’s six and a half minutes, or nearly 400 seconds.

To ensure fluidity, they wouldn’t use the common animation practice of "shooting on twos" or "threes"—meaning one drawing holding for two or three frames. They would guarantee one drawing per frame, at 24 frames per second.

This meant one episode would require nearly 10,000 drawings.

If multiple moving characters appeared in the same shot, they had to be drawn on separate sheets to avoid having to scrap the entire drawing if one character was drawn incorrectly. The sheets would then be layered together at the end.

So the actual number of drawings required would be even higher.

But they didn’t have celluloid here—a transparent synthetic plastic often used in animation production to separate character and background layers.

He couldn’t count on materials science—a field Zog was willing to call Scientific Alchemy. Whether you got results was three parts ability and ninety-seven parts luck.

But he had Red Stone Drawing Shadow, which could be used to key out the characters.

Who would have thought that pure hand-drawing and post-production could appear in the same project?

"From here, to here," Zog said, pointing to two panels on the storyboard where Tom carries a ladder to a bird’s nest, then gets scorched black along with the ladder. "Five seconds of animation, 120 frames. Not a single one less."

This segment would serve as a test case to see if the animation production plan was viable.

Forty days later, five seconds of uncolored animation was delivered to Zog.

The first twenty days were for learning the art style, the next twenty for production. This was already the sixth version they had made.

The previous five versions just didn’t feel right. It looked like a simple animation, but in actual production, there were always problems—either the style was inconsistent, or the movements lacked impact.

The newly-converted Animators were already being driven half-mad by the torment.

Zog played the sixth version.

The movement, the expression, the burning ladder, the fall.

Everything seemed fine.

But Zog still felt the effect was lacking. ’What is it missing?’

The lack of color?

’That shouldn’t have such a big impact.’

Sound effects?

The sound effects had all been added. Zog Film Studio was already very experienced in sound effect production, so there were no problems with their execution.

’That’s it, the music!’

How could *Tom and Jerry* ever be complete without its musical score!