Amin Abbas

DUBAI: French 2D/3D Animator Alexandre Gomes, also know as Sanda, has worked on different anime projects and highlighted the differences between the Japanese and French animation styles.

In an exclusive interview with Arab News Japan, Gomes shared his inspiration for anime & manga, saying: “I grew up watching Dragon ball, Dragon Quest Dai No Daibouken and a lot of ‘Shonen Jump’ shows.”

Gomes started his career at 20 years old, and started working in Japanese animation a year later.

“In Japan we start as a ‘douga-man’ or an inbetweener. We must learn to clean the drawings of the key animators, draw the in-betweens, learn how to read and write a timesheet,” he explained.

Gomes told Arab News Japan that he had difficulties with his pace of work when he first started.

“On average a Japanese inbetweener makes 30/40 drawings a day and around 30/40 cuts or sometimes more by month. I quickly understood that if I didn’t want to spend my whole life in the studio, I had to make sure to increase my speed a lot,” he said.

The animator also noticed some differences in animation styles between France and Japan, commenting that character designs in Europe were generally easier and faster, while Japanese designs were more realistic.

Gomes first went to Japan for his first internship with OLM Studios, known for their Pokémon anime series.

He now works at Toei Animation and hopes to “continue to improve as a key animator and one day become an animation director.”