Space Dandy

Space Dandy - Key Animation.

Space Dandy Key Animation LOVE Pt.2 from LeSeanThomas on Vimeo.
This gets a little freaky in places, nothing really bad, but probably not what children would be interested in. When you see stuff like this, you're likely to have one of two reactions: 1) "Holy crap that's fine animation!" or 2) "What in blazes is this crap?????"

I hope you fall into camp 1. But I know there will be some in camp 2 and to those, I apologize in advance.

"Space Dandy" is anime from Bones, a Japanese anime studio. It follows an intergalactic bounty hunter who is quite "dandy" and his pet alien cat as they go about the galaxy doing their thing.

This is a collection of animatics from the show, set to some thumping Japanese disco tune. This is Japanese 2D animation for weekly television shows there, so it might look a little odd for those vested exclusively in contemporary Disney and DreamWorks feature animation, but it's quite interesting for fans of anime.

The animation for "Space Dandy" is all done on paper because it is the fastest way to crank out the material when you have talented drawers and you're under a tight deadline. The primary artist sketches an opening and closing scene for a storyline and understudies fill in the rest. That is what is called "key animation." What you see here is basically the "rough draft" with rough pencil colors. This is kind of a look behind the scenes at how weekly anime is done overseas. Obviously, it all gets cleaned up and colored in on a computer and produced and so forth before it is finalized. There's a lot of work behind this, what you see here is pretty much the first or second pass.

The animators are: Tadashi Hiramatsu; Yutaka Nakamura; Norifumi Kugai; Gosei Oda; Bahi JD and many others. These guys are real artists, for realz.

This might be of interest only to anime fans, I don't know, but I find it quite interesting regardless of being a fan. It might pique your interest into seeking out the show itself or one like it on a different theme. Oh, and the girl doing the singing sounds kinda hot!

If you like that one, here's another, but no girl singer, sorry:

Space Dandy Key Animation Love from LeSeanThomas on Vimeo.
2020