Must watch: Star Wars - TIE Fighter animated fan film

Imagine for a moment that, in the late '80s, a Japanese animation studio had gained the rights to Star Wars, and made a TV series dedicated solely to pitched battles between Rebel X-Wings and Imperial TIE Fighters.

Had it existed, it might have looked a lot like TIE Fighter, a seven-minute animated film by Paul Johnson. Taking his inspiration from the '90s videogame of the same name, TIE Fighter depicts a blazing space war in authentic anime style - its use of shading, movement and colour are look like something Studio Nue would have come out with 20 or 30 years ago.

"What if there was an Empire-focused short Star Wars animation, drawn with the crazy detail and shading of classic 80s anime that's all but vanished from Japan nowadays?" Johnson writes. "Well, I tried my best. Apologies in advance for not living up to Venus Wars standards."

In a separate YouTube video, Johnson gives an insight into the ingenious rotoscoping method he used to create complex 3D movement in his hand-drawn, 2D anime style.

Johnson writes that TIE Fighter took him "four years' worth of weekends" to draw and animate, and the hard work really shows - if a full series of this suddenly appeared somewhere, we'd happily watch it. Take a look for yourself.

There's also an accompanying poster, which Johnson posted on his Deviant Art page: 

Considering the attention TIE Fighter's received already, we wouldn't be too surprised if Johnson got some more work out of this.

Live For Film