Issue #120 | October 11th, 2026 Fishy fishy fishy Hey Reader 👋 This is probably going to be the most vulnerable, most honest intro I’ve ever written here. I just lost my biggest client. They decided to go in another direction. And the strange part… some part of me was happy about it. Because that client is the reason I almost burned out a couple of months ago. It was a tough, tough, tough challenge. A tough bet. I don’t regret it. I produced a crazy amount of content. I learned Unreal. I’m...
7 days ago • 8 min read
Issue #119 | October 4th, 2026 Princess Mononoke Hey Reader 👋 There's a dilemma I've been living with for 25 years. Employee… or freelance. It even lives inside my own house. My wife is a full-on employee. She works in banking, and she wants everything that comes with it - the salary, the benefits, the security. Me? In a 25-year career, I've spent only 8 on a full-time contract. And I liked it. I enjoyed being part of a team, and the jobs I signed up for were really interesting. One of them...
14 days ago • 9 min read
Issue #118 | September 27th, 2026 Jason and the Argonauts Hey Reader 👋 Confession: I've been thinking about YouTube way more than I've been doing YouTube. I'm buried in productions right now. A third Unreal film for a client, a new explainer video for another. Home renovation. Citron updates. No time for anything. But every day on my commute, my brain drifts back to the same idea. Start a real channel. Post every week. Actually have a strategy. I have about a dozen videos online already....
21 days ago • 8 min read
Issue #117 | September 20th, 2026 Pinocchio from Del Toro Hey Reader 👋 I'm writing this one sick, which almost never happens to me. Genuinely. If I count the days I'm ill in a year, it's not even a handful. But it's been a stressful few weeks, and stress quietly takes your immune system apart while you're busy not noticing. Then my son went back to kindergarten and brought home whatever was going around. So here I am. Exhausted, foggy, and dumping everything in my head onto the page before it...
30 days ago • 9 min read
Issue #116 | September 13th, 2026 The Boxtrolls by Laika Hey Reader 👋 I've been a freelancer for 20 years. And this week, I finally put my finger on something slightly embarrassing. In 25 years of career, I was an employee for exactly 5. The other 20? Full-time freelance. Clients, deadlines, disasters, happy endings… I've pretty much seen it all. I know how to price a job. How to send a quote. How to take a client from the first Zoom call to delivery, to the invoice, to the money actually...
about 1 month ago • 8 min read
Issue #115 | September 6th, 2026 Ice Age Hey Reader 👋 I've got two modes. That's it. My whole life splits into two. Production mode. I make stuff.Learning mode. I read, I watch, I absorb. Completely passive. Just witnessing things and letting them turn over in my head for months. And they balance each other out. When I'm on vacation I go full learning mode. Off mode. And that's where every single idea comes from. Every one. Here's what I see a lot of people doing… trying to find ideas while...
about 1 month ago • 8 min read
Issue #114 | August 30th, 2026 Paranorman by Laika Studio Hey Reader 👋 I'm writing this one from my couch. No co-working space today. We've got renovations happening all weekend, and this is the big one: the upstairs floor gets finished, which means we finally move the bedrooms up there… which means I finally get my studio back. All to myself. 🔨 It feels like I've been waiting centuries for this. I have a ton of content piling up and nowhere proper to make it. That's about to change. About...
about 2 months ago • 10 min read
Issue #113 | August 23th, 2026 Kirikou Hey Reader 👋 This one's for you if you're trying to build something. A product, a small business, a way out. Especially if you're doing it because your animation career isn't going anywhere and you've decided to actually do something about it. One of my best friends is stuck. He's not finding professional success and hasn't for years. No recognition. And here's the thing that kills me about it: this is a guy with incredible talent and incredible taste....
about 2 months ago • 7 min read
Issue #112 | August 16th, 2026 101 Dalmatians Hey Reader 👋 This week was a finishing week. Everything landed at once. I finished the floor in the living room. Actual, real, done floor.I shipped a nine-minute film to my client. Full and final. I finished two storyboards. And I'm about to send Citron over to aescripts. That last one has been a whole thing. The onboarding is way more involved than I expected… so much marketing material to prepare, so many little assets. But it's nearly there....
2 months ago • 9 min read