New Century Anime Warrior

Male dormitory at Beijing University of Economics and Business.

Ever since he was passively rebuffed on Weibo by a netizen who appeared to be a middle-aged woman, Kuang Qiang hasn't even enjoyed eating noodles with soybean paste these past few days.

It's like you throw a punch and hit nothing but air. Not only do you fail to hurt anyone, but you also strain your own arm... What's worse, Kuang Qiang feels like he's lost face for no reason.

I was being sarcastic, and you actually thanked me?

Shouldn't we have a good, intense battle first?

So I was just talking to myself like a clown?

"I shouldn't have used this crappy Weibo; Bilibili and Tieba are much more interesting!"

I couldn't help but chatter away in the empty dorm room.

Seeing that his roommates had either gone home for the holidays or gone to work part-time, Kuang Qiang slowly made himself a box of instant noodles. After eating fried noodles with soybean paste for two weeks, he finally felt a bit tired of it.

It's definitely not because I was internally injured by that netizen named "something fish".

"Come on, let me see if there are any short instant noodle videos that I can use as a side dish."

"My Two Hands Are a Ruler: A Three-View Drawing of a Transition Engine Created Barehand"... A transition engine?

"So arrogant? Then I'll have to try my luck."

When you open the video, the screen shows a blank sheet of paper and a pen, followed by a somewhat melancholic piano melody that sounds like it's been digitally synthesized.

A pair of hands perfectly suited for a professional hand model appeared gently in the shot; judging from the knuckles, they belonged to a young man.

Then you see these hands, one holding the white paper, the other picking up a pen, and without hesitation, making a stroke, an exceptionally decisive stroke.

An unusually straight line then appears in the picture.

Just like it was measured with a ruler.

This one move alone was enough to impress Kuang Qiang; it's always a way to attract attention.

The pen tip made stroke after stroke, leaving lines that looked like they were printed by a machine.

As the rough yet exceptionally melodious piano piece played, the video's pace gradually accelerated, and the drawing motion eventually became a rapid blur.

Each time a blurry image flashes across the screen, a new line appears on the white paper, sometimes straight, sometimes curved, and there is never a single wrong stroke.

At the same time, every stroke is closely in sync with the rhythm of the background music, making you feel as if your cerebral cortex is being massaged to the extreme.

As the music flowed, a long, conical device with extremely futuristic and complex mechanical lines gradually took shape.

And that's how it was drawn.

It appears to be some kind of mechanical construct more advanced than rocket or airplane engines.

Is this the jump engine mentioned in the title?

Kuang Qiang felt wave after wave of warmth washing over him from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, and goosebumps rose and fell with the warmth...

That was so much fun!

Ah, I can't take it anymore!

do it again!

He didn't know how many times he had played it, but Kuang Qiang had the same feeling every time. Moreover, he noticed that the number of comments on the screen increased with each playback.

Finally, the screen was overwhelmed by various "high-energy content ahead" warnings.

"Wow, watching others draw is so satisfying!!"

At that moment, Kuang Qiang thought he had unlocked some strange fetish.

Having some kind of special skill was once a scene in Kuang Qiang's childhood fantasies. He would show off his skills and become the center of attention, surrounded by the girls in his class.

For example, he could display amazing piano skills, sing a song that lingers in the memory, etc. Now, someone has shown him how to use his superb painting skills to make a big show of himself.

Well, now we have one more superpower to fantasize about.

This is even more satisfying than a wish-fulfillment novel.

"Like, comment, and share!" Kuang Qiang readily offered his knees and a coin he never dared to use.

After thinking for a while, I opened Weibo again, spent ages figuring out how to share the video, and then posted it!

Not long after, a guy named Aqiang who loves fried noodles dropped a bombshell into his otherwise mundane Weibo social circle.

That night, countless netizens dropped this bombshell on their WeChat Moments, Baidu Tieba, and forums.

Just a few seconds after Kuang Qiang clicked "post," a notification popped up on his Weibo page to request a repost. Excited, Kuang Qiang immediately clicked on the notification and saw a familiar ID reposting his post.

The profile picture is of a girl holding a huge book, with the caption "How can one know the joy of fish?"

The post read: "A work whose skill borders on the art, truly amazing!"

It was followed by a rose and a thumbs-up emoji.

"?"

Kuang Qiang slowly typed out a question mark. He was starting to lose his composure. Was he being pestered by the old lady?

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"Xiao Mei, quick! Look at this video I sent you, the one about drawing an engine, it's really amazing!"

"I saw it too, that content creator called Cheng Ge, his hands are so beautiful!"

"Don't just look at your hands, tell me, is it good or not?"

"Awesome! One note from the piano and I draw a single stroke; one song and I've drawn an entire machine. It's so satisfying!"

How can I describe this feeling?

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"Honey! I saw a video on my WeChat Moments that's so exaggerated. The hand-drawing skills are inhuman."

"What video? Let me see it?"

"This one has a warp drive design, it's incredibly cool!"

Wow, those hands are so beautiful!

"Um?"

"I mean, the video looks so intense, it feels like someone is giving my head a massage."

How can I describe this feeling?

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"It's that kind of unique kind of exhilaration!"

After watching the final draft of the first episode of "My Hands Are the Ruler" for the fourth time, Chen Yu thought for a long time and finally came up with a strange comment.

According to Si Hua's plan, this is the first shot in the Bilibili video submission, which is of utmost importance. It is necessary to maximize the pleasure generated by the combination of visual and auditory elements and keep everyone who dares to click in and try it out.

Most of the video footage was recorded in July when the art book was being prepared; basically, one art piece or concept art could correspond to one complete video.

Later, when producing the animation, we will need to record some 3D modeling, hand-drawn keyframes, in-between frame generation, editing and compositing, and so on.

With the basic video in hand, all that's left is to edit it to match the rhythm of the video with the background music, which is much simpler than creating a "High School Observation Diary".

The observation diary also requires writing scripts for short plays, and after filming, it needs to be re-edited and the shots reassembled.

Although the finished film is short, the output is still not high, as it was produced by only Si Hua and his two colleagues.

Before "Voices of a Distant Star" entered post-production, efforts were made to prevent viewers from noticing any connection between this observation diary and his personal animation production; maintaining a certain level of buzz was sufficient.

"My Hands Are the Ruler" is a video documenting the entire creation process of "Voices of a Distant Star". It is not only evidence of the creative process, but also a way to establish his persona as a master anime artist.

For this purpose, he specially selected a section of the theme song melody and asked Lin Lin to help rearrange it.

Adjust the speed of the opening piano music from extremely slow to normal speed to match the frame rate of each frame in the video.

According to Lin Lin, this is a transition from Adagio to Andante... Anyway, Si Hua, an introductory contestant, said, Andante? Okay, I don't quite understand, but let's leave it at that, as long as the effect is good.

When the design drawings in the video were quickly produced, Si Hua's character was established, after all, in the world of martial arts, speed is the only way to win.

In any case, two of the three promotional campaigns for "Voices of a Distant Star" have already been launched.

Weibo's approach is from an outsider's perspective. It uses short videos with nonsensical, sensational, pseudo-documentary, or other styles to attract the attention of the widest audience by leveraging netizens' curiosity and discussion, thus forming the broadest pool of traffic.

The Bilibili route is a subjective perspective, using a novel time-lapse photography style to cleverly showcase the artist's artwork, settings, music, and other content, creating the persona of a "lonely genius in seclusion, dreaming."

The final industry segment, which was originally the most controllable but also the most difficult to achieve, has now been completed thanks to Lin Lin's actions, which directly led to the completion of the music-related half of the project.

As for the other half of the design sector, that's not a problem either. Pan Lei said she would contact some friends in the design and arts industries to express her unintentional industry concerns and create some public opinion in the professional field.

This three-pronged content matrix directly anchors public sentiment, creator narratives, and industry recognition. When the time is right, Si Hua will proactively converge these elements, directly igniting a nationwide online buzz.

When the time comes, you can ask Si Hua how she feels.

He said it would be really great, a very special kind of great!