CHAPTER 35: CHAPTER 33 SIDE INCOME

Li Qing didn’t immediately decide whether to release the third episode. He checked his private messages and saw that many popular creators were still asking for permission to use his work as video material for secondary creations, offering to pay.

With a wave of interactions, he pocketed over ten thousand yuan.

As he sifted through a jumble of private messages, one specific message slightly surprised him.

[Hello, we are willing to collaborate with you to create a movie featuring R’lyeh City and offer you 60% of the revenue, along with a copyright fee of three million no matter how it performs.]

Li Qing was slightly shocked.

He did some online research and found out that this wasn’t actually a large sum of money.

The production cost for "Your Name" was about 120 million yuan, with a significant portion allocated to visual production. Each frame could be used as a beautiful animated wallpaper, so naturally, the costs were high.

If he continued to produce visuals at such a quality, the other party clearly saw the potential for it to become a hit.

This small company was betting heavily, offering him the majority of the profits while he was responsible for dubbing and other minor tasks during post-production.

Li Qing pondered for a moment, wondering if this meant entering the film industry.

He contacted the other party: "Collaboration is possible, but I can’t follow your storyline for the visuals; there’s no craftsmanship in that! I’ll only provide fixed visuals, and you can create the movie’s storyline based on those visuals, hiring someone for the voice acting."

On the other end of the computer was a man in his thirties named Xu Qiang, who ran a small video production company in Shanghai. But who doesn’t dream of being a big director and making blockbuster films?

But now, he was utterly shocked.

Wouldn’t this just make us one of those visual narrative marketing accounts?

Making up stories based on images with only talk, can the world really have movie plots that simple?

He was somewhat tempted to back out immediately.

Could this collaboration work? This seemed like a huge pitfall.

[Undersea Little Tomato]: "Have you already completed all the visuals?"

Li Qing responded: "Our team has made most of the visuals. I don’t want the 60% share, just buy me out for ten million cabbage, and you can handle the rest, whether you make billions, I don’t care."

The voice acting, distribution, possibly even flying back home to meet, all these chaotic matters were too troublesome, so he proposed a take-it-or-leave-it offer.

Perhaps more money could be made through careful collaboration, but right now he just needed some startup funds to transition, moving into film was draining, wasn’t this putting the cart before the horse?

Ten million is enough for now!

Yet Xu Qiang on the other end of the computer started thinking. "If it’s this kind of crazy cost-cutting, I might as well try my luck with the fixed visuals, after all, the visuals are extremely impressive."

They were a small company with limited funds; otherwise, they wouldn’t have reached out tentatively to this video creator.

Moreover, visual-based narration is their expertise!

To be honest, he managed a marketing team where most of his office people specialized in this kind of voice acting, recently using this big creator’s work for dubbing.

Now they wanted to clean up their image and land a major project, thus reaching out directly to the original creator.

Creating a film from this marketing-style voiceover was indeed a test of their company’s capabilities.

At the same time.

He saw through it.

The other party was a large team, likely using AI graphics as an assist, plus, the fixed camera visual was a strong piece of evidence.

This might very well be a prototype software project of theirs, casually thrown out there; otherwise, what other explanation could there be?

After all, AI technology is advancing by leaps and bounds nowadays.

While AI novels are still nonsensical, AI drawing has already squeezed many entry-level artists’ living space, could AI-drawn films be starting now?

[Undersea Little Tomato]: "Could you give a brief overview of the upcoming plot?"

Li Qing withheld most of the content:

"We’ve released half of the visuals, the upcoming plot is roughly R’lyeh attacked by rebels seizing the Royal City, the Church assaulting the Emperor, the ancient tower turning into a spine, and then the Evil God rises, the earth wailing, with the populace singing praise to the Evil God... And that’s where it ends."

[Undersea Little Tomato]: "The scenes sound grand. It’s clear your team aims for magnificence in visuals, but nothing follows after that?"

This abrupt ending, the film stops halfway, where’s the climax, what happens after the Evil God’s rise?

And Li Qing understood his implication.

How could I possibly let you see the next plot?

The Evil God, with such high prestige, the earth calls his divine name, stands up, only to open a can with his hand?

Sorry, the visuals I can’t release.

Li Qing said: [There’s no following plot yet, it’s still in production. How you voice it, craft the storyline, is up to your capabilities, anyway, the visuals are an hour-long. You could splice each scene from various city streets, intercut with war scenes, pick a walk-on character appearing frequently as the protagonist, build a hero’s love-hate tale, battle against the revival of the Evil God, it’s not difficult, right?]

Xu Qiang suddenly felt a toothache.

He felt even more duped, this was a half-finished product.

However, the other party understood the market strategy.

He thought about it, it didn’t matter if the plot was clipped; they could even produce a sequel, right?

He quickly made up his mind.

The visuals overlooking the whole picture, with the story stopping halfway, undoubtedly has multiple pitfalls; however, this visual... what more could you want? It’s a bargain!

"Alright!"

Xu Qiang gritted his teeth, saying, "If the reception is good, we hope to collaborate on a second installment."

Li Qing and the other party casually chatted, agreeing on an hour of stunning visuals for ten million, the rest was just about signing the contract.

After settling this, Li Qing rubbed his nose.

He was a well-behaved psychiatrist, normally unable to earn ten million even by retirement.

Unfortunately, he can’t always earn like this.

He used his account to send out a message:

"Dear fans, the third episode won’t be shown here. I have already sold the rights to a company, soon you will be able to watch the complete film, please look forward to it!"

Soon.

The internet was abuzz again.

[Whoa, it’s definitely to attract a sponsor!]

[Can’t wait, hope they don’t mess it up.]

[Someone said they’re using AI graphics, only such high special effects, after all, without changing angles, the same angle with people coming and going, feels too much like AI.]

[Why be sour? Even if it’s AI, it’s industry-leading AI technology, once we can change angles freely, the film industry will be revolutionized.]

He glanced through a few and stopped paying attention.

After all, AI was the only plausible explanation for them, couldn’t possibly believe it’s from another world, right?

...

In the evening.

Li Qing turned and arrived outside the Crystal Wall.

He gazed at this prosperous world within, ground being oceans, lakes, rivers, and continents forged from soil, with cities standing atop.

On the wall, there were cities protruding like bird nests.

Since his environmental improvement, the soil held various minerals, stones, metals, condoms, chewing gum, tree leaves, plastic bags; a variety of resources enriched the whole world.

And in the soil, there were little strong ones, dung beetles, snail eggs, these rare Outer Heaven lifeforms.

In the room, some mosquito and fly larvae, from who-knows-where, had even hatched, preying on city dwellers on the ground.

The new world, they were no longer at the top of the food chain.

"However, they probably won’t take long to reclaim the top again."

Li Qing, outside the Crystal Wall, revealed a satisfied smile, "And they have acquired ant, mosquito, snail gene structures, leading to a major evolutionary explosion."

Although.

It’s impossible to evolve into small animals like mice, cats, dogs, with complex structures in one go, but they should reach the snail, spider level.

"Cell-mite-ant-spider, although matching Earth’s biological evolution over billions of years, life evolving from single-cell to multi-cell, with increasing size, evolving this way, this room couldn’t contain them."

"Compared to Earth’s entire biological evolution setting, this world is ultimately too small."

Li Qing showed a trace of reflection on his face.