Space Dawg reimagines the spirit of '70s psychedelia

Animation from the 1970s and 80s often featured hand-painted cels, psychedelic colours and trippy visuals. It was also shaped by technical and budget constraints, so to save time and money, much of the animation became quite choppy – characters were often bulgy, bubbly, or groovy. It's this very era that inspires the work of Michael Lim, also known as Space Dawg, a Kuala Lumpur-based artist who designs animations that seem plucked straight from this period. "I'm always fascinated by animation from the 70s and 80s," he says. 

"Because of technological limitations, animators couldn't execute certain effects easily, so they had to find creative solutions, and the results often looked amazing and unique. The beauty they created came from those limitations, and I carry this spirit into my own animation."

Michael's background is in graphic design, but during one of his semesters at university, he took an animation class – drawing each frame and seeing them come to life in real time. It was in this moment that he found a "deep sense of satisfaction", realising he could recreate the worlds in his head. "The enjoyment I experienced was the same joy I felt when drawing as a child," he says, recalling how he would also make animated music videos for his older brother, who studied music and regularly composed pieces, during his semester breaks. After a graphic design internship, he refined his skills, worked as an art director at an ad agency, and then the pandemic hit. He resigned and took the chance to focus fully on his animation, which he still hones and loves today.  

To create one of his animations, Michael will pull inspiration from the world around him. It might be something he touches, a smell that drifts past, the food he eats or the sight he takes in. A lot of the time, inspiration arrives unpredictably. But when he's got an idea in tow, he works up a rough animation, sometimes a clean one. Then he applies colour, animating frame by frame in Adobe Photoshop, before exporting to MP4 or MOV and editing in Adobe Premiere Pro. 

But don't get us wrong – just because his work is inspired by the low-fi aesthetics of 1970s and '80s animation doesn't mean it looks undernourished. It's far from that. In Moonboot, a rocket shoots through space with twinkly, pastel colours illuminating the Earth's surface. The textures are raw but exceptionally detailed, while the compositions mash together sci-fi tropes and video game motifs – so much so that it looks like a frame from an old VHS tape, yet equally like an image from the future. 

In Off The Air, a short, dreamline animation created for Adult Swim, he produced a short but "fun and meaningful" piece that was a dream commission, given that creating work for the network had been an ambition since his student days. He also created an animation for Galeries Lafayette's 130th anniversary, which resulted in a kaleidoscopic collection of visuals nodding to the Parisian department store. Whatever he puts his mind towards, rest assured, it will be full of joy, layered textures, perfectly formed gradients and a whole bunch of colour.