Amin Abbas Dubai

American animator Henry Thurlow worked on popular Japanese anime including One Piece, Naruto Shippuden, Tokyo Ghoul series and Overlord.

Speaking to Arab News Japan, Thurlow explained that he had always been interested in art, as he also worked in New York for a few years on projects including “Dora the Explorer” & “Go! Diego, Go!” games and the “Superjail” adult swim series.

“I guess I started really doing animation when I went off to college. After that I worked in New York for a few years, and now I work in Japan,” he said.

Thurlow said the difference in work culture and animation styles between the US and Japan is not vast.

“The animation style is becoming harder to distinguish between I think. If it’s a cartoon network show the stylistic difference might be obvious, but there are a lot of examples now such as Castlevania which are a lot harder to tell,” he explained. “I think the Japanese industry has also been influenced by western art, so the styles are all merging a little. That being said, Japanese anime is often far more detailed than western animation and the subject matter is very different.”

He added that work culture varied from studio to studio, rather than from different countries.

“Generally, I feel like I work longer in Japan. Particularly as an in-between animator my first few years in the industry, the work hours and workdays were quite hard,” Thurlow said.

About distinguishing D’ART Shtajio from other anime studios, Thurlow said: “I think we’re just getting started and will hopefully be able to showcase what makes us special more in the future. For now, I think the fact that we’re an incredibly international studio with a diverse staff is something that makes us unique. We have a lot of different people with different ways of thinking at our studio, and I think all those opinions get mixed together in our projects which result in some really cool original and creative stuff.”

Thurlow explained that he watched anime in the 80s and 90s, series including like Yoma, Genocyber, Guyver, Vampire Hunter D.

About the challenges that he faced during these projects, he said: “Whenever entering a new field or doing something for the first time there are always a lot of challenges. As an animator, things like making sure my line quality is the same as everyone else’s in the room, staying on model when drawing the character, making sure I’m using my time well so I will make the deadline … things like that were the biggest challenges at the beginning.”