TIE Fighter – An Empire-focussed short Star Wars fan animation with crazy 80s mecha anime style

I’ve always been a sucker for that extreme anime style of the 80s, especially that crazy shading and detail they put into each frame. Well, it took one-man-army animator user Paul Johnson four years to animate this amazing Star Wars short film with the look and feel of those classic mecha anime films.

The story is from the Empire’s perspective, and this is the official poster art (the high-resolution version is on DeviantArt).

I had seen a work-in-progress some time ago, but I didn’t know the finish product was ready. The amount of work put into it is abysmal for one person, and the result is nothing but fantastic.

That’s just beautiful, and the quick camera rotation is just what you would expect from a professional film. It’s too bad Disney hasn’t try to commission an anime company to do a few anime shorts like this one, like what Warner Bros. did with Batman: Gotham Knight back in 2008, which consisted of six anime superhero shorts.

However, as awesome as this short film is, there’s always unhappy people who nitpick everything. Just so you know, as much as I like Star Wars, I’m not 100% into the details of the mechanics behind the story, especially things like ship types and capabilities. With that said, I noticed few people ranting over things that they think he didn’t get right about the ships, like weapons, ship equipment, and the color of the lasers, and even the lack of voice acting, and I think that’s idiotic. It’s a one-man project, so just enjoy it and move on.

Anyway, here’s the music sound track, and here’s the jpeg version of the story and character info, which you can get in pdf form right here.

Japan should bring this style back, it was the bees knees back in the day.