LeSean Thomas

LeSean Thomas (born 1975) is an American television animation producer, director, animator, comic book artist, writer, character designer, and storyboard artist, based in Meguro, Tokyo.

His recent projects include the TV series Black Dynamite for Adult Swim, The Legend of Korra for Nickelodeon, Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks for Sony Pictures Television, Children of Ether on Crunchyroll, and the Netflix anime original series Cannon Busters and Yasuke.

Career

Thomas' contributions as supervising character designer and co-director on seasons 1 and 2 of Adult Swim's animated series The Boondocks, helped the show to be nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Comedy Series and win the honorary Peabody Award.

His early production credits include character designer, layout and key animator on Showtime's web series WhirlGirl, assistant animator for Lizzie McGuire and storyboard artist for various shows such as Kim Possible on Disney Channel, Ben 10: Alien Force for Cartoon Network, The Batman, Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Green Lantern: First Flight, as well as supervising character designer for Superman/Batman: Public Enemies for Warner Bros. Animation.

Thomas's first production deal was with George Jackson's UBO Network, where he created an animated online series called BattleSeed. Thomas wrote, produced and directed the series, which was presented at the New York Anime Film Festival in 2000. He produced a BattleSeed original animated trailer which aired in theaters as a promotional trailer for the Sci-Fi Channel. Thomas also provided production development for the action adventure movie UltraViolet.

In 2009, Thomas relocated to Seoul, South Korea, at the request of Korean animation studio JM Animation to be hired in-house as part of the animation production staff. He was later hired as in-house storyboard/animation production artist at Studio Mir for work on The Legend of Korra for Nickelodeon. Soon after, Moi Animation studio looked to hire him as a producer and director on several other independent projects, marking him as the first American animator to be hired to work in-house as permanent, independent production staff for animation studios in South Korea. His time in the Korean animation industry was chronicled in a web-documentary he produced and directed called Seoul Sessions, presented by filmmakers Coodie & Chike's Creative Control TV. Thomas later spoke at the 5th annual TEDx in Incheon, South Korea, about his journey and the importance of "Successful Failures". In 2011, Thomas worked on Black Dynamite for Adult Swim. He was creative producer and supervising director for Season 1 and supervising director in Season 2.

In November 2014, Thomas crowd-funded an animated TV series pilot called Cannon Busters: The Animated Series, based on his creator-owned comic book of the same name, featuring production by Japanese anime studio Satelight. The project was successfully funded in December 2014 and was released to limited audiences July 8, 2016.[2] There was a controversy due to backers of the campaign saying they had not received promised rewards they had qualified for.

In October, Thomas partnered with Crunchyroll for a deal to co-produce an animated short film, Children of Ether. It was released in 300 theaters on July 26, 2017 as part of Crunchyroll's Anime Movie Night event, and on-platform shortly afterwards.[4]

In August 2017, it was announced that Cannon Busters was acquired by the video streaming company Netflix to be co-produced by Satelight and Japanese anime studio Yumeta Company as a 12-episode mini-series and was originally set for a March 2019 release. Cannon Busters launched for streaming in August 2019.[5]

On November 8, 2018, Netflix announced Yasuke, an anime original fantasy series created, directed and executive-produced by Thomas. It is inspired by the historical African samurai Yasuke who served Oda Nobunaga in the late 1500s. It features actor Lakeith Stanfield as the voice of Yasuke. The artist Flying Lotus worked on the music and served as co-executive producer. Animation production was handled by Japanese animation house, MAPPA. Yasuke was released on April 29, 2021.

Thomas has worked with the Japan Society in New York City, along with co-producing partner, The Japan Foundation, for the interview series "Foreign Exchange", which Thomas hosts. In combination with the interviews, Japan Society's film side has shown retrospective screenings of influential anime films, generally of the same industry professionals being interviewed.[6][7]

Thomas is an executive producer of Bass X Machina, a sci-fi steampunk western adult animated series funded by Netflix. It is scheduled for release on October 6, 2026.[8]

Art

Thomas is a comic book artist, with work on such titles as Arkanium, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His books include sketch bible Nervous Breakdowns: The Art of LeSean Thomas Vol. 1. He has released the artbook Midnight Marauder: The Art of LeSean Thomas Vol. 2 and Cannon Busters, a creator-owned graphic novel.

External links

• Failing your way to success, a TedX talk by LeSean Thomas