Chapter 385 - 271: Recreating the Animation Effect

Chapter 385: Chapter 271: Recreating the Animation Effect

If you don’t want to tinker with it, you can just buy a complete set, no modifications needed, like buying a ready-to-use Yo-Yo.

It makes it easy to get newcomers hooked.

And it also has a high skill ceiling.

Every part can be adjusted, giving experts room to show off their skills and demonstrate their deep understanding of the mechanics.

This is an almost essential quality for any mass-market entertainment product.

If an entertainment product is famous for its high barrier to entry, then its prospects are usually not very bright.

After settling on the new project, the group left together.

Zog, who had stayed behind, curled up on his cushion, feeling like there was some important point he’d forgotten to mention.

’What else could be wrong?’

He glanced at the rough sketch of the "Victory Rush" on the table, and a painful memory flooded his mind.

’Now I remember.’

"Elsa! Tell Karaman to put a speed limit on these four-wheel drive cars. They can’t be too fast!"

Zog recalled a time back when he was a human—already part of the workforce—when he had a sudden whim to buy a four-wheel drive car to make up for his lost childhood.

So he went online to see how far the technology for these cars had come.

He ended up finding videos of contemporary four-wheel drive races.

They weren’t just too fast to keep up with on foot—you couldn’t even follow them with your eyes.

Throughout the videos, the only time you could actually see the cars was when they were in the racers’ hands. The moment they were launched, all you could see on the track were blurs zipping past.

At that speed, any kind of Rune design would be pointless. You’d never be able to react in time to activate them.

The four-wheel drive toy project moved forward steadily, and the accompanying manga quickly began its serialization.

However, it wasn’t very popular. It only had a handful of loyal readers thanks to the famous names of Robben and Ribery.

People didn’t know what four-wheel drive cars were, and the concept of a car was still very alien to most of them.

However, Young Master Craig, a loyal fan of Zog’s toys who was so rich he didn’t know the meaning of the word "poor," took notice of the manga.

Believing he had grown up and was too mature to be obsessed with toys like Yo-Yos and spinning tops, Young Master Craig was won over by the slightly more mature design and concept of the four-wheel drive cars.

Drawing on his familiarity with the Zog Group, he sent Zog an email with two questions.

"When will you start selling the four-wheel drive cars?"

And, "How much would it cost for you to design a custom car for me?"

Those two sentences gave Zog an idea that would make him a lot more money: he remembered he should add a custom body shell service and a service for designing accessory combinations to meet specific requests.

The first prototype was designed and built quickly, perfectly meeting Zog’s requirements.

A whole bunch of small Runes with all sorts of bizarre functions were designed for it.

The Ackley Brothers even managed to create weird features like a "blade overtake" and a "standing jump."

But in contrast to the highly optimistic toy project, the production of the actual cars ran into a small problem.

「Deepwater City Science and Technology Research Institute」

Yuno was also present in Benz’s laboratory.

Zog was carefully reading a report. He didn’t actually need to be there in person, but the Shenke Affiliated Primary School would soon be holding a Christmas event.

It was the Christmas celebrating the birth of the Magic Goddess.

As the honorary principal, he was expected to attend—not to give a speech, but to hand out gifts.

So he decided to use the trip to check on the problems with the automobile project as well.

Benz had ultimately chosen the safest naming convention.

The car brand was called Zog-Benz.

In the common tongue, the name "Benz" had no relation to the word "Mercedes," nor did they sound alike, so he couldn’t call the brand Mercedes.

Using his own name as a brand was uncreative, but it was also a safe bet.

At least it was better than just making up a random name and forcing the marketing department to rack their brains inventing a deeper meaning for it after the company grew successful.

The first model was named the Victor.

A four-seater, it was positioned as a family vehicle.

It had a top speed of 50 kilometers per hour and a range of 200 kilometers on a full tank.

Given the current technology, these were considered very good specs.

The estimated price was around 20 Gold Coins, which was affordable for a working-class family if they saved up.

Zog studied the report for a good while before speaking. "Isn’t this pretty good? You’ve basically met all my requirements. What was the problem you mentioned in the email that couldn’t be solved?"

"It’s the body shell," Benz explained. "We don’t have the technology to mass-produce the shell from the design drafts you provided."

Zog had drawn quite a few car designs in his spare time in preparation for making Transformers, because Benz’s current car design was simply impossible to turn into a transforming toy—there was nowhere to hide the parts.

"Oh, please. Not being able to make the body shell I designed is hardly a big deal. What does the mass-producible version look like?"

Zog had been thinking it was some intractable technical problem.

"Like this."

Benz handed him a design draft. It showed a boxy car, very similar to a carriage. The main difference was that where a carriage had shafts for a horse, the Victor had a space for the engine.

It was certainly a bit ugly compared to Zog’s modern designs, but it was acceptable.

"Then it’s no problem. Just build it like this. We’ll see about my designs when we can actually make them. Trust me, I can wait until the day our technology is good enough," Zog said with a wave of his claw.

Just then, Yuno chimed in, "Actually, Boss, it’s not that your designs are completely impossible to make."

"What do you mean?"

"High Level Dwarf and Elf artisans can hand-hammer these kinds of body shells. It’s just that the production time would be very long, and there aren’t many High Level artisans to begin with, so we couldn’t mass-produce them."

"Wait!" Hearing that they could be hand-hammered, Zog was suddenly interested. "You’re saying the body shells can be produced by hand?"

"That’s what I mean."

"Can the other parts be handcrafted as well?" Zog pressed.

"They can be, but... why?" Yuno couldn’t see the point of building a car by hand.

"That’s perfect," Zog said. "The Victor will be our primary, factory-produced model. Then, we’ll find some High Level artisans and have them create limited-edition, fully handcrafted models based on my designs."