LeSean Thomas

LeSean Thomas
LeSean Thomas
Born	1975 (age 48–49); Children of Ether; Cannon Busters; Yasuke

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, notable projects include the TV series

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

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 landed his first production deal with the late

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 Cannon Busters, a creator-owned graphic novel.

In 2009, Thomas relocated to

TEDx in Incheon, South Korea, where he spoke about his journey and the importance of "Successful Failures". In 2011, Thomas was tapped to work on Black Dynamite

for Adult Swim. He served as creative producer and supervising director for Season 1 and supervising director in Season 2.

In November 2014, Thomas successfully 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. Sadly all the backers of this campaign are still waiting for their promised rewards, with no communication from the team since 2021.

In October, Thomas partnered with Crunchyroll for an exclusive deal to co-produce his original anime creation Children of Ether, released in 300 theaters, July 26 as part of Crunchyroll's Anime Movie Night event. It was released on-platform shortly afterwards.^{[citation needed]}

In August 2017, it was announced that Cannon Busters was acquired by streaming giant 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. In July 2019, it was announced at Anime Expo that Cannon Busters was confirmed for a launch on the streaming service in August 2019.

On November 8, 2018, Netflix announced

MAPPA. Yasuke

was released on April 29, 2021.

On November 17, 2021, Netflix's Yasuke was nominated for Best Main Title in the TV show/ Limited Series Category at the 12th Hollywood Music in Media Awards.

On January 19, 2022, Netflix's Yasuke was nominated for Outstanding Animated Series for the 53rd NAACP Image Awards.^[2] [25]^[3]