NEXT TAKE!
About the production

Anime is a job.

NEXT TAKE! is an original workplace comedy about the professional actors and crews behind familiar anime conventions.

In this world, anime is produced like live-action film and television. Impossible hairstyles, transformation sequences, exaggerated reactions, supernatural effects, speed lines, enormous weapons and all the rest have to be performed, rigged, staged or built by somebody who is trying to finish the day on schedule.

The audience sees the trope. The cast and crew see the work order.

Studio Uraomote

Studio Uraomote is the fictional production company at the centre of the series. The actors work across many fictional productions and genres while developing careers, specialties, rivalries, friendships and a worrying amount of highly specific technical knowledge.

The joke has a job too

The point is not that anime conventions are stupid. The cast are professionals, and the comedy comes from treating ridiculous conventions as perfectly ordinary occupational realities: who performs this, who builds it, how does it work, and what does everyone think about having to do it again for another take?

AI Disclosure

Hi, human behind the project here.

I'm going to get this out of the way: generative AI has been used in the creation of NEXT TAKE!

The characters, stories, jokes and overall direction of the comic are mine. I decide where the story goes, what works, what gets changed, what gets thrown out and what eventually makes it onto the site. Generative AI is also used as a tool during parts of the writing and development process.

The artwork is largely AI-generated. I spend a lot of time iterating on the images to get what I actually want, and I manually edit and correct the finished artwork where needed. Some pages have had considerably more work done to them than others.

I'm not going to hide any of that, and I'm also not going to call myself an “AI artist.” I'm not, at least not in that respect.

So why use it?

Because I have a story I want to tell, and generative AI is helping me bring it to life. That's really what it comes down to.

I know AI-generated work isn't for everyone, and that's okay. There are plenty of artists, writers and other creators out there making great work that deserves your time and support.

If you're sticking around, welcome to Studio Uraomote.

Privacy

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