Pen and Paper Translations

The first thing I felt after seeing Taylor’s dinosaurs was disappointment.

Of course, compared to what she had done for Jurassic Park, they did feel much more polished, but they still fell far short of the real Jurassic Park I knew.

“A-are they not very good…?”

Seeing that I was not saying anything, Taylor asked cautiously.

“Ah… well. Hm…”

I knew she had worked hard.

I also knew how difficult it was to create something of this level of quality at all, but what I needed was not effort, it was ability.

With this level of ability, it was still a long way from the standard of CG I wanted.

“Please say it clearly. Vague wording is worse.”

Taylor looked like she was trying to speak calmly.

But in the faint trembling of her hands, betraying that calm, I could see all sorts of emotions raging.

“Ha…”

At her words, I hesitated for a moment over what to do.

Vague wording.

From those words, I could tell how much frustration she had felt because of it.

So I steeled myself all the more and spoke to her.

“What I want is quality that is much better than this. From the movements of the dinosaurs to their textures, everything feels awkward. CG that only lets you barely tell that it is a dinosaur like this will only break the audience’s immersion and will not help at all.”

“…”

At my answer, Taylor gave a bitter smile.

“I am rather grateful you said it like that. Haha…”

She set the remote she had been gripping tightly down on the table and, her eyes unfocused, stared at the floor as she spoke.

Wondering if I had been too harsh, I cautiously spoke a word to her, who looked as if she had taken a heavy blow.

“I am sorry.”

“Oh come on, there is nothing for you to be sorry about, Director Gyeong. Honestly, I think so too. Even after making it like this, I kept feeling doubtful about it. Haha. Maybe I was actually waiting for you to say that.”

It looked like she was squeezing out her last bit of strength to smile, and there was a slight twitch at the corner of her mouth.

“Taylor?”

An employee who had been watching Taylor’s presentation from behind spoke up.

“Yeah?”

“Can I talk to you alone for a moment…?”

Scratching the back of his head awkwardly, the employee spoke to me.

“Nick, all of a sudden? What is going to change now…”

“Just come with me. Director Gyeong, is that all right with you?”

As Taylor had said, even if I gave them time now, nothing was likely to change.

But seeing the despair of the once overflowing Taylor, something ached inside me.

Whether it was pity, or disappointment in the expectations I had held.

I could not pin down exactly what emotion it was.

To lighten the weight of this feeling even a little, it was better to grant this small request.

“Yes. Go ahead.”

---

Taylor was dragged away by Nick, without strength.

When they went into another room where Gyeong Chanhyeon and James could not hear, Taylor spoke in a drained voice.

“Why? What good is any of this?”

“Get a hold of yourself.”

At Nick’s words, Taylor let out a deep sigh and spoke.

“It is already over. Did you not hear what Director Gyeong Chanhyeon said. He said he was not satisfied with the quality.”

“We knew it to some extent too. We were just pretending not to know because it felt like a waste of all the effort we put in.”

At his words, Taylor collapsed as if in despair and buried her head between her knees.

“Then what are we supposed to do? What do we even have left to show.?”

Looking pityingly at her as she shouted while sitting on the floor, Nick spoke.

“We have the thing we made before. The project we clung to because you were so insistent on making it that we ended up getting kicked out of Highlight Graphic.”

“The one we made before…?”

When Taylor asked, eyes glistening, Nick pressed his hand to his forehead and said,

“The space you are crazy about.”

At Nick’s words, Taylor shook her head.

“That might actually have more potential. We have to try something. You called him our lifeline, are you going to let go that easily.”

“No one is interested in space. How many times have we shown that to other studios and been sent right back.”

Thinking of what Highlight Graphic president Brian Macphin had said, Taylor snapped irritably at Nick.

“Make something people will like. Space and all that is only liked by nerd brats like you. There is no mass appeal.”

At first, she had ignored those words, telling herself she would pull it off no matter what and pushing the work forward with terrifying drive while disregarding the president, but thanks to that she was kicked out of the company and had to start everything over.

After that, they went to various production companies saying they could create these cool space background CGs, but no one listened to them.

“Even so, Taylor. I know you are out of it right now but get a grip. Come on. In front of our lifeline, we have to show him something.”

Nick knew.

He knew that Taylor was using nihilism as a tool to somehow protect her shattered heart.

“Passion is the solution to nine out of ten problems in the world.”

A person who often said things like this would, when confronted with problems that could not be solved by passion, fall into nihilism like this.

“And you are not going to say it will not work anyway again, right. Let us not regret it later. What you really wanted to do was an SF film. Then is it not right to show what we are good at and what we want to do.”

“…”

Taylor stared at the floor for a while, then looked at the Milky Way drawn on her clothes. Then, without a word, she closed her eyes.

Feeling as if her attitude was one of resignation, Nick added one more word.

“Please, Taylor. If this does not work out, we are all finished anyway. We have to try something more. Come back a little to that person who overflows with passion, even though that passion sometimes makes you unbearable to look at.”

“Just be quiet and wait a second.”

“…?”

After a short moment, Taylor asked Nick in a tone that had become a bit brighter, almost teasing.

“Unbearable to look at?”

At that question, Nick also grinned broadly and answered,

“It is just a manner of speaking. Anyway, we are ready, right.”

“We have been getting ready ever since we were under that trash Brian Macphin. As long as we show it, something will work out somehow. Let us just try once.”

---

Even after quite some time, they did not come back.

James, sitting next to me, seemed full of questions, opening his mouth to speak and then closing it again as he looked at me.

“Do you have something you want to ask?”

“Ah… haha. No.”

“It is fine. If it is something I know, I will answer.”

At my words, James cautiously leaned toward me and spoke.

“Director Gyeong, why do you not like those dinosaurs. I feel like this is the first time I have seen that level of quality…”

“Ah, those.”

As the dinosaurs were still running around on the screen, James nodded.

“Human eyes are far more sensitive than you would think. They are better than anything at catching what is unnatural.”

Human eyes are sensitive.

It was the most valuable lesson I had learned in a film class I took in college.

When it came to the relationships between characters, whether they were lovers or enemies, the best way to convey that to the audience before telling them outright was to set up the camera angles accordingly.

Human eyes work similarly in CG as well.

“Yes…?”

“Would you look at those dinosaurs again right now.”

At a glance, the dinosaurs running across the screen did not seem to have any problems.

“You still do not know what the problem is, do you.”

“…No.”

James’s shoulders slumped as if he were dispirited.

“But now look at them again, focusing on the movements of the tails and the dinosaur legs. The timing of when they cross, the way the tails move.”

At my words, James looked at the dinosaurs on the screen again, then nodded as if he understood what I meant.

“Is the problem that they move too regularly?”

“There is that too, and does it not also feel like a dinosaur with some kind of compulsion where every time the left leg goes forward, the tail always swings to the right.”

At my words, James nodded.

Human eyes love stable, regular patterns.

But if something too regular keeps repeating, in the end you get tired of that regularity and pattern and start to feel bored.

In particular, it was CG that, unmistakably, felt like it had been made by someone who did not really understand how dinosaurs moved.

“You are right…”

“And there are plenty of people who would sense something like this right away. They probably know it too. The problem is that, because they lack manpower, they likely cannot really fix it.”

A reason I should use those two.

Because I did not have any clear reason, I was just about to think I might as well look for other CG designers instead.

They came back.

“Haha, you waited a while, did you not. I am sorry.”

Taylor’s fatigue had vanished completely, and she spoke to James and me with a suddenly lively expression.

“This time I would like to show you something else. Is that all right?”

“Something else…?”

“Yes. Please just watch it once. I am asking you. If this one is no good either, we have nothing else to show.”

Taylor spoke with such a cheerful smile that it made you wonder if she was really the same person who had been in despair just a moment ago, making it hard to refuse.

“All right. Let us see it.”

“Nick. Let us show it right away.”

When another employee worked the computer, the dinosaurs that had been running wildly across the screen disappeared.

And soon the screen was filled with pitch darkness where nothing could be seen.

Into a place where there seemed to be no light at all, light slowly flowed in from somewhere.

As I watched the natural way the light was being used, my curiosity gradually began to grow.

“Oh…”

In a natural looking space, light emitted from the sun and reflected off the stars.

That naturally became a light source and created a rather dramatic space scene.

“This is a CG piece we had checked over in person by an astronomer.”

When Taylor signaled to the employee, the viewpoint on the screen shifted naturally, and a massive space station naturally came into view.

The natural visuals felt completely different from the dinosaur movements I had seen earlier.

It was perfect enough that it could be used right away.

“Is there some issue this time too, like with the dinosaurs. This time it really seems perfect.”

James whispered just loud enough for me to hear.

“No. I cannot see anything wrong this time either.”

Holding my breath, I had no choice but to just take in the pieces that Taylor and her team had made.

The natural movements of the spacecraft and the harmony with space as a background.

The visuals were nothing short of astonishing.

“Just what is it that you are showing us right now…”

When she saw me show interest in the space CG, Taylor blinked at first as if flustered.

“We spent a really long time preparing it, but no one was interested. So it had ended up almost being scrapped…”

“No one was interested?”

At my question, Taylor silently nodded, then carefully asked,

“Is it all right…”

“More than all right. No, this is what you should have shown me first.”

At my reaction, Taylor’s eyes went wide as she asked,

“It is just, I thought there were not many people who liked space…”

“With CG this well made, it is good enough to pioneer a whole new genre.”

Faced with a reaction she had never expected, Taylor stared at me without even blinking, as if her body had frozen.

“What…?”