Chapter 71 - Digging Your Own Grave (1/2)

It’s true, Xing Ta Ge was lazy, particularly when it came to academics. Compared to the pre-reincarnated Meng Fan, he was about three points lazier. At least, the pre-rebirthed Meng Fan had begun to delve into relevant knowledge pertaining to several fields, while Xing Ta Ge was still staring at the philosophical teachings between men and women.

Of course, it appears that his focus for research has come in handy for the current task. In addition to Xing Ta Ge becoming a script writer in order to save energy, he was indeed highly talented. As long as he put in a little effort, he could rival those who had stayed up for nights churning out a project.

Everything else aside, based solely on the storyboard. Xing Ta Ge’s manga was very fascinating.

Everyone says shoujo mangas were sweet, and Xing Ta Ge’s manga was even sweeter. But it was spicily sweet and quite exciting.

Meng Fan thought about it and suddenly remembered.

Before he was reincarnated; around this time before the October 1st holiday, Xing Ta Ge had mentioned he wanted to create a manga. Only at that time, Meng Fan was not much more diligent than him so he did not ask him for help to become the main artist. As for later, at least the following two months before Meng Fan reincarnated. He never mentioned again, probably because the laziness hit, or because he couldn’t find a suitable artist.

“Fatty, do you think you can do it?” Xing Ta Ge looked at Meng Fan with pleading eyes.

Meng Fan thought about it and asked, “Are you in a hurry?”

“Why would I be in a hurry.” Xing Ta Ge shook his head and said, “As long as you can draw it before we graduate. If we can successfully engage in the animation industry in the future, then this manga will be a brick to knock on their door, for entering the profession. If we don’t go into this industry, then we can count it as a commemoration to ourselves. So I wanted to find someone who was good at drawing young ladies a bit more delicately if I might add.”

“You don’t have to wait that long.” Meng Fan responded. “I just took a job today to prepare a copious amount of sample manuscripts for someone. Send me the storyboard in a bit, I’ll take a look when I have time. It’ll probably have to wait a few days before I can start drawing. Otherwise, I recently also wanted to create a manga, but I’m still wavering between a theme and it’s content. The storyboard you’ve provided is perfect so I won’t have to think about that. I’ll take yours as practice. Of course, there are some parts of your script that I will not be following…”

Initially, he was already hovering between what to draw. Now that Xing Ta Ge had delivered a script to his doorstep, Meng Fan’s thoughts were completely disrupted.

It was indisputable that Xing Ta Ge was better than him when it came to script writing. The content had been about romance too, which made Meng Fan even more useless. But it just happened that Meng Fan excelled at drawing female characters.

Xing Ta Ge’s delivered script was very suitable for practicing. Aside from being the manga artist, Meng Fan could also partake in writing the script.

One, it was because they both lived in the same room so it was easy to discuss anything or negotiate. Two, some of Xing Ta Ge’s contents were not merely just slight connotations, but obvious scenarios that hit you in the face. If he really drew them, their chances of publishing on a public platform would be ERROR 404.

Meng Fan thought about it for a moment. It was indeed very fitting.

As for this kind of collaboration and whether the system would count it as experience, Meng Fan would deal with that later.

Meng Fan couldn’t let his life be dictated by this system. If he could take the job of an unknown senior Qin Jiao had introduced, there was no reason for him to reject Xing Ta Ge.

Besides, from Xing Ta Ge’s original intentions, it certainly won’t be a long story. As long as it’s a short story, with Meng Fan’s current speed, it would be very easy to finish the novel in a short time.

After the decision, Meng Fan forgot about memos in his mind temporarily, locking them up for later. Once he finished the [Manga Artist] task and collected the rewards, he would go back to pondering down that rabbit hole. Otherwise, it didn’t matter how well his drawings were if he couldn’t place the story into his art.

The next morning, he ran his ten kilometers. He used 1 hour, 09 minutes and 42 seconds. He was still improving.

After breakfast, he left early for the studio and took out the key he had asked the administrator for. After entering, he opened the windows to ventilate the room and found his old spot before sitting down.

His morning class was at 9:30, and Meng Fan had arrived early. He had about two hours. Meng Fan did not let himself be idle, sorting through the reference stock photos of costumes he had accumulated over the last few years. He picked out a few to give to his senior classmate, and sorted through them again, also sorting out the missing photos.

With this kind of organizing, Meng Fan had created a big grave for himself. Cataloging everything from the jewelry category into accessories then into dynasties, there were hundreds of other classifications he’d have to go through!

Some of the classifications, Meng Fan was able to categorize and fill it in directly, but to correctly fill out the rest would take a lot of time. Besides, Meng Fan knew that the more he filled out, the more graves he’d dig for himself.

It was good nonetheless. He could fill it out slowly and build himself a historical costume gallery.

Meng Fan did not pay much attention during the morning class, nor did he draw much. He was still sorting out the categories for his image gallery and adding the general descriptions for the styles that still needed to be filled in.

After the class when everyone had left, Meng Fan remained in the classroom and continued to sort his material until he was too hungry to stay.

“Does Meng Fan seem like a different person to you?”

Wang Ya Nan said to Zhang Zhou Wei as they were eating lunch. She couldn’t help but ask, “It seems like he’s become a completely different person after those confession messages. He spends so much time in the studio everyday drawing away, so hardworking! And he runs, ten kilometers at that. He must be running frequently. And it seems, he’s gotten more handsome.”

“Handsome? Really?”