Kyoto Animation. It's been some time since those two words have been mentioned, now they resurface in order to lay out a more concrete plan–for how might this rusty dream limp to fulfillment?

Here's the line of thought: Kyoto Animation, hereafter 京アニ (Jap. for KyoAni), offers a training school for animators, contingent on a successful application including drawing samples and two rounds of screening. Go to Japan and get into their cram school, and working for 京アニ becomes a real possibility. To this end, I need to draw every day to establish consistency, and draw more than a few faces each day to see consistent improvement. The former, the 'draw every day' attitude, birthed that much-moaned over 'marathon' approach. As for the latter, as months-ago mentioned, I intend to draw the first episode of Hibike! Euphonium, which establishes a tangible workload: 363 shots in a little under a year. That leads to the timeline.

京アニ cram school accepted applications between Nov. 2-Nov. 20th this year. Presuming a similar timeline for the next year, let's give the submission a safety net and say the application needs to be sent Nov. 6th. Time zone adjusted, if I want to get in next year, that gives me 330 days to complete those 363 shots. Daily figure drawing would be good, too. So that's one turtle in this marathon sprint.

Turtle two is, of course, language. In order to reach proficiency in language, particularly in 330 days, one may be well-advised for immersion...that might happen this upcoming spring, visa for a school pending. Moreover, it's impossible to get into the 京アニ cram school without being in Japan with some kind of visa.

In short, in 330 days one needs to become able to draw at a semi-professional level and have copied out a TV episode in the process, and learn a language from a beginner-intermediate level to semi-fluently.

There are more problems with this than the timeline, and it's not as if life doesn't bring responsibilities other than drawing and studying to the table, but for their boorishness those details will languish unsaid. The plan is rusty and stupid–not enough time, one might venture–but the abstract is not today's domain. No, for the coming months the goal is not to fail at the end because the beginning was slow.

Now the status of the race sinks back beneath the waves where it will dwell for months to come, and the daily pittance of graphite tribute is hacked up below.