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Issue #116 | September 13th, 2026

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 landing in my fucking bank account. With a happy client at the end. 💪

What I've never had to think about is a way to find them.

Every client I've ever worked with came from luck. Word of mouth. Networking. The phone ringing. Again and again.

For 20 years.
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I guess that tells you how much my clients are happy to work with me (98% of them I'm sure 🤣) and they leave satisfied with the work done.

BUT... (and that's a big but..)

Luck is not a system

Some of you saw me talk about this on LinkedIn.

Here's the situation. Right now, while I'm building Animator NOW (everything you read about every week, the courses, the products, the community), my clients are funding the whole thing. They pay for my life while I build this.

I have ongoing contracts. Good ones.

But take one step back and it gets scary. If those contracts stopped tomorrow for any reason, I'd have nowhere to go. I'd just be waiting for the phone to ring.

Fingers crossed. 🤞

Well...That's not a business. That's a lottery ticket that happened to pay out for two decades.

And it gets worse. The question I get more than any other is "How do I get clients?" People can learn the craft. They can learn how to run a freelance business. But when they ask me how to find clients, what am I supposed to say?

"Well… cross your fingers"?

Not good enough.

The weird part is I know exactly how to build this. I always have. I even created a module in my course to do it. I just never did it. Too lazy, too busy, not exciting enough… I honestly don't have a good answer.

So here's the question I'm asking myself now.
Maybe you should too:

If your biggest client disappeared tomorrow, where would the next one come from?

If the answer is "no idea"… welcome to the club. 😅

So I'm building the thing. In public.

I've launched a new newsletter.
It's simply called Freelancing for Animators (yes I know you've heard this one before 🤣).

Every Wednesday, you get the story of me building a studio from scratch. Brand identity. Positioning. Pricing. And the client acquisition system I should have built 20 years ago. The struggle, the mistakes, the wins. Full transparency.
A 5-minute read. Free.

It's also my very first LinkedIn newsletter, and somehow almost 1,500 people have already subscribed there. Almost 500 on email.

If you subscribe, pick the email version. The two aren't identical… the email gets more. Files, the odd PDF, the stuff that doesn't fit on LinkedIn. (And yes, selfishly, I get your email.) If you'd rather follow on LinkedIn, it's right here.

It's for you if you're launching your freelance business and don't know where to start. Or if you're already freelancing and finding clients feels like pulling teeth.

Honest confession: I've tried this before. A couple of times. I always drifted off and stopped.

Same decision as before. But this time feels different. I'm tired of relying on luck. I want some control.

And now almost 2,000 of you are watching. So I kind of have to.🤣

Meanwhile, in the studio… 🔨

​The paint is bought. Painting starts this week.

Our bed moves upstairs early next week, which means the room is finally mine to build.

​I've ordered the desk frame, a Maidesite from Germany. It has to carry my 49-inch curved Samsung with a Yamaha HS5 on each side, so we're talking 2 meters wide, 80 cm deep, sit/stand. It was the only one I found strong enough. Got about €30 off too. 😊

Can't wait to show you pictures.🥳
It's getting real.

Alright. Let's get into this week's issue and a super fun short film. 🔥

This week's sponsor

The Spotlight

A couple, trapped in a stranger's home, with no way out.

That's the whole setup.

Then the woman notices a tear in the back wall… and from there, it goes completely bananas.

Here's the thing about me. I need to be surprised. In music, in animation, in any story. When you've watched as many films as I have, you start guessing where things are going, even if it's just quietly in the back of your mind.

This one? No clue. Zero.

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And that's the trick. The whole film hangs on one question, what's behind that door?. You don't understand what's happening, so you stay glued until the end to find out. Simple, effective storytelling that grabs you without using much at all.

The characters barely have faces. Almost no expressions. The opening scene is borderline boring… but something's off. You can't put your finger on it. Something is just wrong.

That slow wrongness is where the craft is. Nathan never tells you it's weird. He lets you feel it.

The look and the sound

It's full 2D, with a retro style that feels like you're watching an old VHS tape. And the soundtrack is packed with '80s synths, which I absolutely loved. For a few months now I've been going back to those sounds from my childhood, even playing a couple of synths myself.

Put the visuals, the synths, and the craziness together, and it reminded me of A Clockwork Orange. Same surreal, unsettling energy.

Fair warning

It's about 6 minutes, and it leaves you hanging. On purpose. It's uncomfortable, and you just have to deal with it.

If you need a happy ending, or at least an ending where you know what happened… skip this one. You'll never find out what's behind that door. You'll have to read the characters' reactions and imagine the rest yourself.

I finished it, smiled, and thought… that was smart. Funny, weird, unexpected. Exactly the kind of thing only animation can pull off.

Kudos, Nathan. Beautiful one.👏

🎬 Credits​
​Director: Nathan Harbonn Viaud
​Production: Nathan Harbonn Viaud - Mystical Door
​Animation: Nathan Harbonn Viaud
​Music: Anna Cordonnier, Amandine Robillard
​Sound: Mélia Roger (sound editing), Matthieu Fraticelli (mix)

SHARE this film with your animator friends❤️

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The Job Fair

• ​SaaS Storyboard Designer (Contract) - Clio · Remote (Canada)​
  Clio makes legal software, and their in-house Multimedia team needs someone to own pre-production on their product explainer videos. You turn briefs and scripts into storyboards and animatics that hand the animators a clear blueprint, from rough exploration frames to polished boards for sign-off. Intermediate level, contract, and a perfect example of animation work that lives completely outside the animation industry.​
  ​Posted: September 10, 2026.
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• ​Design Director, Motion - R/GA · London, UK (Hybrid)​
  A senior motion seat at one of the big agencies, leading motion across brand, product, experience and campaigns. The twist is that they want someone who can turn motion principles into systems and machine-readable tokens, with AI and generative tools at the centre of the workflow. They ask for 6 to 8+ years of agency experience, After Effects and Figma, with Cinema 4D a strong plus.
  ​Posted: September 10, 2026.
  ​
• ​Junior 2D Animator - Giant Ant · Vancouver, Canada (Hybrid)
  ​Giant Ant wants a junior After Effects animator who feels right at home in the graph editor. You would work across a wide range of styles for their clients under the Animation Director, with stretch assignments and even leading some jobs as you grow. Hybrid in their Vancouver studio, and the salary is published at $65,000 to $90,000 CAD.
  ​Posted: September 4, 2026.

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The Random Stuff

👀 Pluribus

A couple of lunch breaks this week went to Pluribus, on Apple TV. It's created by Vince Gilligan (yes, the Breaking Bad guy), and he directed some of the episodes himself. You feel it immediately. It lives almost entirely in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the way it's shot, it sometimes feels like a Breaking Bad spin-off… except it's sci-fi.

I went in knowing nothing. The title gives nothing away, and I'm not going to either. 😊 What blew me away is that it's sci-fi with almost no visual effects. No UFOs. No laser beams. Pure psychological sci-fi.

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And the whole thing rests on Carol Sturka, played by Rhea Seehorn. She's just annoying enough, and complex enough, to carry the entire show on her shoulders. Insane. There's a lesson in there for us animators too… you don't need spectacle when the concept and the character are strong enough.

Bad news: Season 2 probably won't land before late 2027, maybe even 2028. Doesn't matter. Go watch it.

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📱 The iPhone Duo's opening animation

Confession… I'm deep in the Apple ecosystem. Apple Watch, MacBook, iPhone, multiple iPads, AirPods permanently in my ears, and probably a dozen Macs over the years. I do have a Windows PC for 3D and animation work, but every time I have to open it, I feel like shit. If I could, I'd live on my Mac 100% of the time.

I was watching live when Steve Jobs revealed the first iPhone, almost 20 years ago. And I was disappointed! I was expecting an iPod Touch. I didn't care about a phone at all… until I realized this phone was becoming way more than a phone.

This week, Apple announced the iPhone Duo, their first foldable. And for the first time in a long while, I actually want this form factor. It feels like an iPad Mini in your pocket. But at $1,999… I just don't see myself putting that much money into a phone.

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Here's what I want you to look at, though. The animation when you open it. It's so clever and so well done. That's exactly what Apple is good at… Samsung has been selling foldables since 2019, and Apple shows up seven years later and makes it feel like they invented the category, just by executing at a level nobody else reaches.

​Go to the Apple website, grab the phone, and drag it open yourself. From a pure animation, motion design, and VFX point of view, it feels like magic. Play with it for five minutes. You'll see what I mean.

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🎧 Rick Rubin x Max Richter

Another Tetragrammaton episode, because Rick Rubin keeps booking exactly the people I want to hear. This time it's Max Richter, one of the composers I love most. If you don't know the name, you probably know the music. His piece "On the Nature of Daylight" has been used in films like Shutter Island and Arrival.

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I love everything about this one. Rick's energy, and the calm, peaceful mind of someone like Max, who knows so much about music, especially classical music. It's two great musicians just talking about music, no rush, no agenda.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, put it on during your next long render. It's a great, great, great interview.

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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. 🥰

Philippe Duvin​
Founder, Animator NOW

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