Animator and illustrator Loundraw will direct a short anime film, Summer Ghost. On Friday, Loundraw announced on Twitter that the film will be released later this year, although he didn’t reveal very many details about it. This will be Loundraw’s debut as an anime film director.
He also posted a teaser visual to the film’s website. On the website, Loundraw describes the film as ‘a story of a boy and a girl who spent a mysterious day in summer.’ The visual features the characters Tomoya, Aoi, and Ryo. Tomoya is the one holding the flaming sparkler.
On Thursday, Loundraw and Z-kai Group posted to YouTube an anime video which is related to Summer Ghost. The video, titled Ichiban Chikakute Toi Hoshi (or The Closest and Farthest Star), is a collaboration between Z-kai and Loundraw.
Summer Ghost and The Closest and Farthest Star are both apparently part of Project Common, a multimedia project which Loundraw announced last year.
According to the Project Common website, The Closest and Farthest Star takes place in the same world as Summer Ghost. However, this video features Kaori, ‘a high school student from the Astronomical Department.’ Tomoya, Aoi, and Ryo can also be seen in the video.
Prior to all of this, Loundraw did the cover art for the light novel I Want to Eat Your Pancreas (2015), and also did character designs for the anime movie adaptation (2018). In 2019, he started an anime studio, Flat Studio. In addition to Project Common, the studio also created a concept video for the All Nippon Esthetic Association.
Great studios are sometimes created by university students creating anime for conventions, or by housewives painting animation cels, so we’ll see how far this goes.