Are animators getting replaced by AI yet?

Issue #98 | May 10th, 2026

Hey Reader 👋

This week I've been trying really hard to discipline myself to work on my clients.

And I'm going to be honest with you… it's not really fun anymore.

Because the truth is... I'm so deep into Claude Code right now, building things, building apps, building tools, that jumping back into a huge amount of minutes of animation for clients feels like coming back to a job I used to love. Not the work itself. Just the contrast. When you've spent a week building something from nothing with AI, animation feels slow.

Here's the thing though…

I'm building a plugin for After Effects.

It's a tool I've wanted forever. Something that's been missing from After Effects for years and I used Claude Code to research the market, look for what already existed, and I couldn't find anything that did exactly what I had in mind. So I just… built it. The beauty of having Claude Code is that I don't have to wait for someone else to make the thing. I can make it now.

And it works. Like magic. Insane.

I have the website up. The UI needs some tweaks. But the tool itself is running and I literally have it inside After Effects right now.

The big question, and I'll be honest with you, is whether this thing is going to make any money. I've been pushing back on Claude, playing the contrarian, and Claude keeps coming back saying no, you're wrong, we checked the market, the price is right, this is going to work. So I'm in this huge doubt phase. First product launch as a plugin. We'll see.

But I've got to say… I remember the very early days of the iPhone, when building apps became a thing, and I always wanted to do it. I've always been obsessed with UI and UX. The kind of brain that notices when a button is three pixels too far to the left. My OCD-ish brain loves this stuff. Building a digital product is such a cool thing.

If you're a 3D animator who also works in After Effects, there are probably a few things from Maya that you wish AE had… and maybe this plugin is one of them. 👀

I'll show you soon. Maybe next week. Maybe the week after.

In the meantime — I have to constrain myself. Because I have an actual paying client and there's no real talk about that. The work has to ship. The plugin can wait. But the idea that this thing could become its own little stream of income, almost like another client but one that doesn't email me back at midnight, is hard to stop thinking about.

So that's where my head is this week. Torn between two worlds. Trying to honor both.

One last thing

The community has been on fire. The discussions are expanding way past "freelancing" now. We're talking real entrepreneurship. Some members are showing up with serious business ideas and we're starting to map out what they could build in the next few weeks.

If that's a conversation you want to be part of — you know the drill. 7-day free trial. No commitment. Come hang out.👇

🔥 7 Day Free Trial - Freelancing for Animators🔥

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

The Spotlight

It's been a few weeks since we had a stop motion film here, and this one earns the slot.

A Girl Nobody Sees is a beautiful, powerful little film about mental health. Five minutes long. Set almost entirely in a hospital waiting room. And in that small space, it manages to say something a lot of longer films completely miss.

The whole premise is simple: not all wounds are physical. Not all trauma you carry shows up as something a doctor can stitch up. And the film puts that idea front and center, just by picturing it. People sit calmly in a hospital waiting room with an arm cut clean off, an eye missing, visible injuries that would normally make you scream. They wait. Quietly. Like it's nothing.

It's almost funny, that contrast. There's a real comedic deadpan to it. People with these absurd, gory wounds just sitting there reading a magazine. And yet underneath, the film is using that exact deadpan to make a serious point — society sees the visible damage and treats it as obvious. Mental health damage? Invisible. So it gets ignored. Dismissed. Not even shown.

I went in thinking it was going to be about scarification — and it's not, exactly, but it touches on that idea too. The thing some people do to themselves so the pain finally has somewhere to live on the outside, where it can be seen.

The animation itself is just enough. Super simple, super well done, never overcooked. Stop motion always carries this tactile honesty that other techniques can't quite reach, and here it serves the story perfectly. You feel the weight of every figure. The silence reads heavier in puppet form than it would in 2D or 3D.

What I really respect — the film doesn't waste a second. Five minutes. One waiting room. A few characters. And it goes straight to the core of the thing. No padding, no hand-holding, no big speech. It trusts you to get it.

Could honestly be a real news story. "Girl does this to herself just so people will finally notice." That's the punch.

🎬 Credits

Director: Elise Eetesonne
Scenario: Lotte Lola Vermeer
Production: Nadasdy Film, Folimage, RTS Radio Télévision Suisse
Producer: Elise Eetesonne
Animation: Elise Eetesonne
Editing: Elise Eetesonne
Soundtrack: Pepijn Geeraerts
Cast: Nikki Deras, Jeroen Blom, Andy Fontyn

Know an animator who love short films?
Forward this email to them - It takes 2 seconds 😊

The Job Fair

Fix Animation Artist - Dwarf Animation Studio · Montpellier, France (On-site)
Mid-level role on a stylized feature film, polishing and correcting animated shots after main animation. Maya required, AnimBot and fur workflow experience a plus. Fixed-term contract running May/June through early September 2026.
Posted: May 8, 2026.
2D Animator (Blender / Grease Pencil) - Good Envelope Media · Remote (Freelance)
Senior-level freelance gig for a 2D animator fluent in Blender's Grease Pencil, turning existing assets and storyboards into finished sequences. 3-4 years experience required, Krita a bonus. Flexible scope tailored to your availability.
Posted: May 6, 2026.
Motion Graphics Artist - Fablette Motion Pictures · Versova, Mumbai, India (In-house)
Permanent full-time role for a motion designer with 3-5 years experience working on brand films and corporate AVs. After Effects mastery and strong typography chops required, 2D animation skills preferred. Immediate joining. Posted: May 6, 2026.

The Random Stuff

🎯 Why You Keep Pivoting (And How to Stop) — Alex Hormozi

Yeah, I know. Another Hormozi video. If you've been reading this newsletter for a while, you know I've been on this guy hard lately. The way he talks, the way he frames things — it just resonates with me right now. I'm not even apologizing for it anymore.

This one is about something that hits very close to home for me, and I think for most of you reading this too. You know the cycle: you get excited about an idea, you go all in for a few weeks, then the excitement fades, you lose interest, you spot the next shiny thing, and the loop starts again. Months go by. You've started ten things and finished none. This is called the shiny object syndrome and he breaks down exactly why it happens and how to actually stop the cycle.

I needed this video this week, honestly. Because I literally just told you in the intro that I'm building an After Effects plugin while I'm supposed to be heads-down on a client delivery. It's not really the shiny object syndrome as this plugin is part of Animator NOW's product line. Now, the truth is — every entrepreneur and every freelancer has this disease. The question is what you do with it. Watch this one if you've ever caught yourself starting a new project before finishing the last one. Especially if you're nodding right now because you know it's you.

🤖 AI Agents Do All My Work — Andrew Wilkinson with Greg Isenberg

Alright, so for the second one I'm bringing back two guys I love. Andrew Wilkinson — Canadian billionaire, but not the kind of billionaire you're used to seeing online. The guy is just… normal. He drives a Tesla, not a fucking Ferrari. He openly says he feels sad for people showing off their money. There's something deeply human about him that I just connect with.

If you've never read his book Never Enough — From Barista to Billionaire, do it. It's an incredible journey, and he goes places billionaires never go. He talks openly about his ADHD, his divorce, his two sons, the mental and physical struggles he's been through. It's everything you'd never expect a guy at his level to share publicly. And right now he's also super deep into Claude and AI in general, which is partly why I keep coming back to him.

In this one he's talking with Greg Isenberg (also one of my favorites), and the conversation is gold if you actually want to learn about AI tools that are useful for building a real business. Not AI slop. Not toy demos. Real workflows, real agents, real things that help you ship. If you've been meaning to get more serious about how AI fits into your work, this is one of the better resources out there right now. Worth the watch. 🔥

😤 An "AI Animated Film" That Proves Why We're Not Replaceable Yet

I stumbled on this video this week and it brought back a question we haven't really talked about for a while: are animators going to get replaced by AI? It was on every tongue a year ago, then everyone got tired of asking. But here we are again.

And honestly? Watching this thing reassured me. Take any single shot in isolation and yeah, you can find something nice in it. The production design moves, sometimes it kind of works. But the truth is — this is not a film. There's no story. There's no rhythm. It's a bunch of production design boards stitched together and animated, and people are calling it a film. To me, that's just insane.

If you've ever made an actual film in animation, you know the amount of work it takes. The thinking, the staging, the rhythm, the rewrites, the thousands of micro-decisions that go into making a story land. The people screaming that we're all going to get replaced are the ones who've never made an actual film. So fuck them, honestly. We're safe. People can probably get replaced for some tasks, sure, but the craft of telling a story through animation? Not even close yet.

That said — and I keep saying this — you still need to adapt. You need to use the tools, not refuse them. Saying no to AI entirely just pushes you into a corner where you eventually get stuck. Even if you don't like it, you're going to have to engage with it. So engage on your own terms, before you get forced to. 🔨

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. 🥰