A.I kind of saved my ass this week

Issue #99 | May 17th, 2026

Hey Reader 👋

We're one issue away from #100. That's wild. I have nothing planned for it yet. I'll probably figure it out by next Friday, which is exactly how I write every issue of this newsletter — I sit down on Friday, I look at my week, and I write what actually happened. No editorial calendar. No content plan three weeks out. Just a snapshot of where I am.

You're getting it on Sunday. It's honest. That's the whole format.

So let me tell you about my week.

AI kind of saved my ass.

You probably know I'm deep in this Unreal Engine client project right now. About an hour of cinematic content to deliver by end of June. Which is, for anyone who's done this kind of thing, completely insane.

When I signed the contract, I wasn't in a position of strength. I said yes. I figured I'd learn Unreal as I went, and once all the assets were in there, moving cameras and characters around would be fast. Way faster than 2D. And honestly? That part is true.

I just couldn't see it.

I was stuck in slow gear. My son had been waking up at night for four weeks straight. Brain in the fog. I was mentally cooked. At one point I genuinely thought, okay, I'm going to crash and burn on this one and tell the client. Done.

Then something small happened.

The client asked for a way to track progress. Just something he could show management to say "yeah, we're on track." My instinct was Google Sheet. Easy. But I thought… no. Don't do the easy thing. Go to Claude and build something proper.

So I did. Claude built me this clean web tracker. A client-facing page with just enough info for him, and a back office for me with everything I needed. Quota per day. Progress curve. Real numbers.

And the moment I saw it… everything shifted.

Suddenly the whole thing became a game.

I gamified my own production. I'd open the page in the morning, see I needed to deliver around a minute and a half that day, and I just couldn't get stuck in the details anymore. No more rabbit-holing for three hours on one shot. Keep moving. Hit the quota.

At some point I did three hours of focused work and pumped out six or seven shots. Over a minute of content. In three hours.

I'm not out of the water yet. But now I can SEE the water. And if I'm late, I know exactly how late.

Here's what I want to leave you with:

Sometimes the problem isn't the actual problem. The problem is how you're looking at it.

If you're stuck right now — on a project, on your business, on anything — pivot around it. Look at it from every angle. The angle you're currently using is probably foggy, and you can't see the exit from there. There's almost always another angle that unlocks the whole thing.

And honestly… train your brain to go to the solution. Not the complaint. Not the spiral. The solution.

I used to dwell on problems for hours before doing anything about them. Now my brain just skips that part. Problem comes in, brain goes straight to "okay, what do we do." You stop wasting energy on the loop. You feel lighter. Happier. You fill your head with solutions instead of problems.

Try it. Honestly. It rewires you.

Alright. Let's get into this week's issue. 🔥

The Spotlight

This week I want to share something different. Something I never really got around to watching, even though it's been sitting in the back of my head for years. It's by a director who's stayed with me since I started this whole journey: Michaël Dudok de Wit.

If you've been around this newsletter for a while, you might remember he was actually one of the first directors I ever wrote about here. Father and Daughter was the film. The guy is not super prolific. A few short films, The Red Turtle with Studio Ghibli, and that's kind of it. But everything he touches stays with you for years.

The film today is called The Aroma of Tea (2006).

It's not a film I would usually share with you. It's experimental. It's almost abstract. There's no story in the traditional sense. Just a small brown sphere traveling through landscapes, navigating around shapes and brush strokes, until at the very end it merges into a larger sphere of white light.

But here's the thing that hooked me.

The animation is timed almost frame for frame with the music — a concerto grosso by the Italian baroque composer Arcangelo Corelli. And as a musician AND an animator, this is something I've always wanted to do and never had the chance to. Building a piece where the animation is literally driven by the rhythm. Where the music and the image become one breathing thing.

You watch this and you immediately get pulled into a flow state. The little sphere bounces, drifts, hesitates, accelerates — always perfectly inside the rhythm of the music. And the more you watch, the more this flat 2D dot starts to feel three dimensional. Just because of the way it moves through space. It's incredible what timing alone can do.

And then there's the technique.

I had this hunch watching it — was he actually painting with tea? Like, dipping the brush in a real cup? Turns out yes. He literally painted the entire film with organic tea. Every brush stroke, every shape, every smudge. Just tea on paper.

That's such a beautiful, simple idea — making a film called The Aroma of Tea, and using tea itself as the medium. The look is unmistakable: warm browns, earthy textures, the kind of stains and watery edges you only get from a real organic liquid. You can't fake that with a Photoshop brush.

Is it for everyone? Probably not. It's strange. It's abstract. Less than 4 minutes long. But it's so different from everything you see every day that I'm pretty sure you'll remember it. And honestly, that's already rare.

If you've never seen any of his work — start with Father and Daughter or The Monk and the Fish. Then come back to this one. You'll see how everything in his vocabulary was already there, just stripped down to its purest form.

🎬 Credits
Director: Michaël Dudok de Wit
Screenplay: Michaël Dudok de Wit
Music: Arcangelo Corelli (Concerti grossi opus 6)
Producer: Willem Thijssen
Production: CinéTé Filmproduktie BV
Country: Netherlands
Year: 2006
Duration: 4 minutes

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The Job Fair

2D Animator (Freelance, Remote) - SOFTGAMES GmbH · Remote (Europe-based)
Berlin-based studio (51-200 staff) looking for a freelance 2D animator with strong Spine skills and After Effects chops to work on puzzle and casual HTML5 games. Solid mid-level freelance gig at an established European studio, fully remote.
Posted: May 12, 2026.
Lead 2D Animator - EnjoyGamingU · Remote
Senior-level role leading a team of animators on live dealer shows and slots. 6+ years animator experience + 1+ year leading required. Pays in EUR, remote, with full benefits package including medical and paid time off. If you're ready to step up into lead territory, this one's interesting.
Posted: May 14, 2026.
Unreal Animator / Cinematic Animation Specialist - Hit Box Games · Remote (Freelance)
Small indie team building a rock-horror story-driven game in Unreal Engine 5. Looking for someone with strong UE5 animation chops, Sequencer, MetaHuman / Live Link Face, mocap cleanup, and retargeting experience. Cinematic horror work, not generic locomotion. Short paid trial first.
Posted: May 10, 2026.

The Random Stuff

🎵 Fred again..

Okay so I've been completely obsessed this week. The artist is Fred again.. — Fred Gibson, British producer turned DJ turned… whatever this guy is now. From a distance I'd written him off as just another EDM DJ. I love electronic music but EDM isn't really my thing. Yet he kept showing up in my YouTube feed, like the algorithm knew something I didn't.

So I finally pushed through. And I landed on his NPR Tiny Desk concert. The guy is playing marimba, piano, vibraphone, singing, tapping beats on the desk, sampling voices live, looping everything in real time. It's bananas.

Turns out I've been missing him for like six years. He started doing his own thing during COVID — before that he was a producer. He has this almost autistic obsession with music in the best possible way. He was literally Brian Eno's neighbor and they made an album together called Secret Life that I now love. If you've been sleeping on Fred again.. like I was, do yourself a favor. Start with the Tiny Desk and just let it pull you in.

🛠️ Raycast (and the new 2.0 just dropped)

If you're on Mac and still using Spotlight as your launcher, you're leaving so much on the table. Raycast is Spotlight on steroids. It's a launcher, a clipboard manager, a window manager, an AI assistant, a snippet expander, a calendar peek, a Notion search bar… and that's still like 0.2% of what it actually does. Which is exactly how much of it I'm probably using.

And they just released Raycast 2.0 in public beta. Full rebuild, redesigned UI for macOS Tahoe, native Windows version (yes, you read that right), AI chats with memory and skills, faster indexing, dictation. I haven't even had time to properly dive in yet, but I know they have crazy projects coming.
If you're a Mac power user and you haven't tried it, go install it today. Free tier is genuinely amazing on its own.

⌚ Fitbit Air

So Google just launched the Fitbit Air and I'm seriously tempted. Quick context: I had a WHOOP for a while because I love tracking my sleep and recovery — but the subscription is too expensive and feels like a hostage situation. If you stop paying, the device just stops working. Brutal.

I switched back to my Apple Watch but here's the thing: I love watches. The design, the object. I don't want a screen on my wrist 24/7, and I really don't want to wear an Apple Watch to sleep. It just kills the point of wearing a watch.

Enter the Fitbit Air. Screenless. Tiny pebble that slots into a band. Tracks heart rate, sleep stages, SpO2, HRV, AFib detection — all the good stuff. $99 one-time, no mandatory subscription. There's a $9.99/month Google Health Premium for the AI coach, but everything essential works without it. Ships in France on May 26. I think I'm gonna grab one. If you're WHOOP-curious but allergic to subscriptions, this is the one to watch.

Like what you're reading? Don't keep it to yourself.
Forward this to one person who'd love it.
That's how we grow this thing. One animator at a time. 🥰