Shūhei Yamazaki

Shūhei Yamazaki (山崎 秀平) was a Japanese animator and animation director, and was the founder of Studio Pterano and the cloud-based animation platform YamaAnime. The father of animator and YamaAnime president and CEO Keiko Yamazaki, his style was marked by with no punchlines, as opposed to redrawing new ones for each frame to save on time and/or cash.

Bio
Yamazaki was born in, on 5 August 1957. When he was 7, he and his parents moved to Tokyo.

In 1981, based on his experiences on watching anime, Yamazaki began his animating career. He at one point worked as a key animator on an OVA called Twinkle Nora Rock Me!, which is notable for its apparent lack of budget for in-between frames. Following the critical and commercial failure of the OVA, Yamazaki would go on to found his own studio called Studio Pterano on 25 November 1985. He invited his close friends, fellow animators Seiichi Ihara, Shōta Yoshioka and Yūta Nishida, to the studio afterwards. From its early days, the studio concentrated on OVA production.

On 29 September 2001, Yamazaki founded the cloud-based animated video creation platform called Yamazaki Anime Maker (now known as YamaAnime), and the first version of Yamazaki Anime Maker went live on 31 October.

On 8 June 2004, during a massive storm, Yamazaki left his office and headed home, but an unexpected hailstorm attacked Tokyo while he was still on the street, killing him in the process.