LeSean Thomas

LeSean Thomas
Nationality American
Area(s) Producer, Director, Writer, Artist, Animator, Character Designer, Penciller
Notable works
 Black Dynamite, Legend of Korra, The Boondocks, Cannon Busters & the upcoming Children of Ether

LeSean Thomas (/lʌʃɔːn/; Born 1975 in The South Bronx, New York City[1]) is an American television animation producer, director, animator, comic book artist, writer, character designer, and storyboard artist, based in Los Angeles.

His recent, notable projects include the TV series, Black Dynamite, Legend of Korra, for Nickelodeon Animation, Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks for Sony Pictures Television, Cannon Busters, and the upcoming Children of Ether for Crunchyroll.

Career

Thomas' contributions as supervising character designer and co-director on seasons 1 and 2 of Adult Swim's The Boondocks animated series, helped propel 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 The Disney Channel, Ben 10: Alien Force for Cartoon Network, The Batman, Batman: The Brave and the Bold and DTV Green Lantern: First Flight, as well as supervising character designer for Superman/Batman: Public Enemies for Warner Bros. Animation.

LeSean landed his first production deal with the late 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.

Thomas is also 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 also released the artbook Midnight Marauder: The Art of LeSean Thomas Vol. 2 and currently working on Cannon Busters, a creator-owned graphic novel.

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 animation studios. 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 exploits in the Korean animation industry have been recently recorded and featured in a web-documentary he produced & directed, "Seoul Sessions," presented by Creative Control TV, an online TV network that features coverage of talents in music, fashion and the arts. Thomas was also recently invited to speak at the 5th annual TEDx in SInchon, Seoul South Korea, where he spoke about his journey and the importance of "Successful Failures". In 2011, Thomas was tapped to work on Black Dynamite : the Animated Series on Adult Swim. He served as creative producer & supervising director for Season 1 and supervising director on Season 2.

In November 2014, Thomas successfully crowd-funded an animated TV series pilot "Cannon Busters: The Animated Series" based on his creator owned comic book of the same name. The project included the talents of Thomas Romain (Mecha Designer for Space Dandy, co-creator of Basquash!, co-director on Ōban Star-Racers), Joe Madureira (Uncanny X-Men), Tim Yoon (Batman: Under the Red Hood, The Legend of Korra) featuring production by top Anime studio Satelight. The project was successfully funded in December 2014, raising over $156,000.00 and was released to limited audiences July 8, 2016. In October, Thomas partnered with Crunchyroll, a global leader in SVOD platforming focused on East Asian media for an exclusive deal to co-produce his original anime creation "Children of Ether." released date TBD.

References

  1. ↑ Tim McCourt, Sam Taylor (8 November 2016). "The Pegbar and Grill". Soundcloud (Podcast). Soundcloud. Event occurs at 18:50. Retrieved 8 November 2016.

Interviews

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