Bahi JD - animating Space Dandy

Bahi JD is a freelance animator/illustrator/character designer that has recently worked on an anime series 'Space Dandy', a huge hit in both Japan and the Western culture, to the extent that both the Japanese and English dub was released at the same time; it was directed by Shinichiro Watanabe., who directed 'Cowboy Bebop', 'Samurai Champloo' and 'Kids on the Slope'.

Whilst working on Space Dandy he worked via internet, sending work through email and communicating with the directors and other animators, as he finds working from his home environment more comfortable to work in.

Interestingly Bahi JD creates his pencil tests using the program Flash and his Bamboo tablet, and uses the program just to simply draw with out any effects or other special option. He only uses flash as if it was a computerised version of a light box.

"- but in the anime industry, digital animators mostly use Flash. For some examples, Gosei Oda, Norifumi Kugai, Shingo Yamashita and many other animators work in Flash. Sometimes when I want to add a special brush stroke for some frames of my animation, I'll use Photoshop. But usually my animation line is totally completed in Flash, from rough to final lines." - Bahi JD interview with Anime News Network.

He only uses flash for line drawing taking the finalised animation to be completed in the programs, Photoshop and After Effects.

He drew 1,893 drawings for episode one of Space Dandy alone.

Space Dandy episode 1 - Live with the flow, baby

"My lines in Space Dandy episode 1 were traced over again throughout the process, and I compared it with my original lines and it was exactly the same—the rest of the team did a fantastic job of preserving my original lines. It must've been very difficult work for the person who traced them, because I drew lot of dynamic lines." - Bahi JD interview with Anime News Network.

Space Dandy episode 1 - Live with the flow, baby

I could only find a pencil test by animator Yutaka Nakamura, however the visual is amazing, just seeing the movement planned out is awe inspiring and how they plan, with the addition of colour coding and registration marks.


Bahi JD has also worked on other anime titles such as 'A Better Tomorrow' and ' Kids on the Slope', among creating animations for music videos, he is currently a freelance animator at Studio 4°C, Studio Bones and Production IG, all popular animation studios in Japan.

Pencil test - music video short

Finished scene - music video short

Interestingly Bahi JD started his animation career by animating this short on Youtube, which he had animated using Easy Toon and created whilst still in high school. (EasyToon is a program that allows the user to create small gifs, created by Keijiro Takahashi). Even though the visuals look rough and messy, the flow of the animation runs quite well and works with the sequential frame.

 Interview with Animenewsnetwork - Tumblr - Twitter