At the age of thirty-five, Silence Yan said away the painter he had worked with for seven years.
The other person said: I am getting older and can no longer draw.
He didn't hold back. In this industry, age is an insurmountable obstacle - some people get off at the station, others are pushed off. He's seen too much.
The newcomer is Lin Chi, who is twenty-seven years old. He is a fan artist and has zero commercial serialization experience.
When we met for the first time, she brought with her forty pages of storyboards and a look of dissatisfaction.
He gave her a twelve-page "Instructions for Newcomers", which was filled with all the pitfalls he had encountered in his eight years of editing.
After reading it, she asked him a question: "Teacher Shen, you have worked with Lao Zhou for seven years. What is the best part about him?"
He didn't answer.
In the days that followed, he taught her the logic of storyboarding, the psychology of readers, and the boundaries between business and art.
What she taught him came slower and lighter, as silently as spring rain——
He found himself looking forward to the Monday morning meetings.
He found that when he received drawings from her late at night, he would read them first and then review them.
He found that in the sentence "Pay attention to safety, draw early", the proportion of "pay attention to safety" is getting heavier and heavier.
This is a story about how two people changed from "editor and painter" to "us".
No bullshit, no procrastination, no vicious female supporting role, no tyrannical boss descended from heaven.
Some are just a man whose edges have been smoothed in the industry, and a woman whose edges have not been smoothed, and they happen to meet when they need each other the most.
